Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Beware of Fundraising Foreplay

Too many fundraisers engage in too much foreplay. Just think about the hours and hours spent on preparing spreadsheets, ‘strategic plans’, Power Points and draft budgets interspersed with and followed by meetings, meetings, meetings — all with good intentions but resulting in little of no action and consequently little or no growth. One trait that […]

Learn More July 12, 2016

Why Not Start Over?

Roger is now about five posts into his ‘Starting Over’ series … advice on taking an entirely fresh look at what it will take going forward to succeed with nonprofit fundraising. [Note: I actually made a spelling mistake in the last word of the previous sentence … originally writing ‘fundraiding’! Now is that Freudian or […]

Learn More July 11, 2016

Starting Over #5: Growing Without Direct Mail

When we first announced the Starting Over series, the very first comment we received came from Sarah Nutbrown who works for a small nonprofit in New Zealand. Sarah wrote, “We’re just starting to build up individual giving, with limited resources, all ideas on where we focus our energy are more than welcomed. Sean Triner said […]

Learn More July 8, 2016

Donorus Specificus: Evolution Of The Donor

Yesterday Roger argued that fundraisers need to know their donors’ identities. And he was talking about individual donors … and not just the $1,000, $5,000 or $10,000 (or whatever your ‘major gift’ threshold is) variety. He admitted this would be hard work: “This is an approach that most fundraisers will dismiss out of hand as […]

Learn More July 7, 2016

Starting Over #4: Understanding Donor Identity

In his post, Is There A ‘Donor Journey’? Tom raises a key question and some of our most thoughtful readers answered, in essence, course there is, BUT … in the case of many organizations that journey is mighty flawed. And the reason most donor journeys, donor experiences, ‘touches’ or whatever you want to call them […]

Learn More July 6, 2016

Is There A ‘Donor Journey’?

Marketers are great as using metaphors to conceptualize the process they think consumers go through as they approach making a purchase. Perhaps the most widely embraced paradigm has been the ‘consumer journey’ — the path the consumer follows from initially feeling or identifying a need to actually plunking down the dollars. I had some free time over […]

Learn More July 5, 2016