Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Limited Seating Webinar: Tapping the Power of Behavioral Science

If you’re really serious about growing your organization, you must focus on answering this one question: Why do donors do what they do? Unless you can empirically answer that question you’ll continue to be stuck with inefficient, scratch-the-surface guesswork, incremental testing to nowhere, and the oxymoron ‘flat-growth’. Today, the answers to this question of ‘why’ […]

Learn More September 7, 2016

A New Fundraising Classic

This morning the publisher officially released Data Driven Nonprofits, a book I believe will become a classic in our sector. Researched and written by Steve MacLaughlin, Blackbaud’s Director of Analytics, Data Driven Nonprofits is to the ‘science’ of fundraising what Ken Burnett’s Relationship Fundraising is to the ‘art’ of fundraising. This book is long overdue. Or, […]

Learn More September 6, 2016

The Season Ahead

For many Agitator readers summer’s over. Next week triggers the starting gun on the sprint to year-end. Our readers in the US will mark the end of summer with this Labor Day weekend. Readers in Canada and Europe have already turned the calendar page to September and noted the shortening of daylight hours. And Agitators […]

Learn More September 2, 2016

Where are your missing bullet holes?

During World War II, the Allies puzzled about where to put armor on their bombers. Strategic attacks needed these flying fortresses, but this necessity also made the bombers a prime target. Armor is heavy. And heavy is flight’s mortal enemy, as anyone knows who has run down the sidewalk wearing a cape flapping their arms. […]

Learn More September 1, 2016

Summer Dream Becomes Fall Nightmare As RFP Surfaces

Somewhere out there on a beach, in a forest or on some mountain trail there’s a CFO, CEO or new VP for Development making mental notes on the agenda for the fall Board Meeting. And you can bet one of her/his suggestions will be to put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) in hopes of improving […]

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Losing Donors Through Your Donate Page

In The Hidden Cost of Complexity I noted that given a choice, the harder something is to use, the less people will use it. The more difficult something is to read, the fewer people will read it. Our sector spends millions and millions on making things more complex and only a tiny amount understanding how […]

Learn More August 31, 2016