Award Winning Blog - Agitator

If Your Strategy Works for the ‘Average Donor,’ It Works for No One

We treat the average gift like gospel – reporting, obsessing and buidling decks on it. That would make sense if donor behavior followed a nice, clean bell curve, tall in the middle, tapering on both ends. In that world, averages matter. Standard deviation matters. Outliers? They’re noise. But your donor data probably doesn’t live in […]

Learn More May 2, 2025

Short Sentences Didn’t Kill Good Writing, Lazy Ones Did

Sentences have gotten shorter. Way shorter. In the 1700s, the average English sentence ambled along for 40–50 words like a drunk uncle telling a fishing story. Today, we average 15–20 words before we feel the need to hit “period” and move on with our lives. This isn’t some “vibe shift” it’s measurable. Sentence lengths have […]

Learn More April 30, 2025

The Contagion of Giving

We don’t usually review children’s books here at The Agitator. But today, we make an exception—not out of novelty, but necessity. We’re All in This Together: Leo’s Lunchbox, a new picture book written by Senator Raphael Warnock and illustrated by TeMika Grooms, might seem like a simple tale for little ones: a boy shares his […]

Learn More April 28, 2025

Are You Fundraising Like a Cable News Channel?

The echo chamber is getting louder, we tune out damn near everything that doesn’t match what we already believe and we’re much more likely to distrust anyone not like us. Partisan agreement between spouses was around 60% in the mid 60’s, it’s now closer to 85%. Pew research shows partisans have few friends from the […]

Learn More April 25, 2025

Trump and the Sistine Chapel Playbook

It’s the day after Earth Day, and if you’re not already furious, allow me to help. Donald Trump is once again treating the IRS like a blunt-force weapon, threatening to revoke the tax-exempt status of Harvard—yes, Harvard—under the camouflage of “fighting antisemitism.” That’s rich, considering the administration’s actual gripe seems to be that Harvard wouldn’t […]

Learn More April 23, 2025

Ask Avoidance Isn’t a Donor Defect, It’s a Design Problem

When a donor doesn’t give, we usually default to two explanations: The timing must’ve been off. We didn’t make it emotional enough. The fix? Try again. Ask harder, add more urgency., insert a sadder story. But behavioral science tells us something else might be going on: people avoid emotionally triggering fundraising not because it wasn’t […]

Learn More April 21, 2025