Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Starting Over #9: Understanding Strategy

An essential element for any organization, whether brand new or starting over, is a focused and concise strategy. The problem is that most organizations and their consultants don’t have the foggiest idea what a real strategy is. In the absence of a true strategy it’s almost certain that the status quo will be perpetuated. In […]

Learn More August 4, 2016

Where Are Your Hispanic Donors?

Hispanics are now the fastest growing voter block in the US, including in most swing states. According to Pew Research: “The number of Hispanic eligible voters has grown at one of the fastest clips of any group over the past eight years and is projected to be 40% higher in 2016 than in 2008, according to […]

Learn More August 3, 2016

The WikiLeaks Warning for Fundraisers

In the P.S. to his post Big Can Be Beautiful Too, Tom, commenting on readers’ remarks notes, “I thought the key takeaway was about organizational culture — it starts at the top and, irrespective of the size of the organization, can be stifling or inspiring.” Nothing more aptly illustrates this than the release last week […]

Learn More August 2, 2016

Do Fundraisers Abuse Emotion?

Last week I posted on the topic of emotion in fundraising, riffing off of Ken Burnett’s piece, Adventures in Emotional Space. Whenever I write about emotion in fundraising, I’m generally urging the need for more of it (in comparison to logic and building the rational case). But of course, we all know about having ‘too much […]

Learn More August 1, 2016

Celebrate!

We’d like to think that all the generations of women and men who worked, volunteered, sacrificed and, yes, donated through all the decades to create last night’s landmark moment in American history are joyously celebrating wherever they are. We sure are! We’ll let the pundits and commentators deal with what Hillary Clinton’s nomination means in […]

Learn More July 29, 2016

Big Can Be Beautiful Too

I can’t let Roger’s paean yesterday to pursuing one’s fundraising career in small nonprofits stand with no countervailing comment. I appreciate all the reasons why small is beautiful … although many times those reasons are given by folks who have no choice but to make the best of ‘small’ and find virtue in it. Yes, […]

Learn More July 28, 2016