Award Winning Blog - Agitator

It’s Your Choice

As you crank up for the year-end email blitz (not to mention whatever you’re doing for #GivingTuesday) you might want to bear this in mind: You have less than 3 seconds to capture a reader’s attention; Those 3 seconds translate into just 12 words to motivate the consumer to read more before the message is deleted. […]

Learn More November 23, 2015

Data Dashboard For Online Giving

Kudos to Network for Good for its new ‘data dashboard’ which (for US fundraisers) records a variety of metrics related to online giving — including number of donors, frequency of giving, dollar amounts, day of year, region, and type of cause. The data, based upon millions of donations made through the Network for Good online giving […]

Learn More November 20, 2015

If Only I Knew What You Know

Can you imagine your doctor practicing medicine without a clear understanding of best practices? (“Now let me see, some docs prescribe a 2 day course of penicillin, the guy down the hall says 15 days, but I think 4 days are about right.”) Or … hiring a lawyer who worked only on intuition, ignoring case law […]

Learn More November 19, 2015

Kiss 8 Of 10 Good-Bye

Looking at 2014 data from over 8,000 respondent groups, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project reports that on average nonprofits retain only two out of ten first time donors. That’s not a misprint: the retention rate for first time donors is a scant 19%. Below you’ll find an infographic from Bloomerang illustrating this and related retention stats. […]

Learn More November 18, 2015

Paris And A Sector Of Optimistic Grinders

Tom Watson has written an excellent column in the Chronicle of Philanthropy reflecting on the aftermath of the Paris attacks — The Horror of the Paris Attacks Reminds Us Why Nonprofits Matter. He opens fittingly with this quote from Voltaire: “Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.” Commenting on the […]

Learn More November 17, 2015

In Search of the Silver Bullet

Over the weekend I worked on the ‘Top 10 Bad Practices’ section of a book I’m writing. Because this is the season when many groups are putting out or reviewing Requests for Proposal (RFPs), I thought I’d share some of my notes — and a special video — with you in case you’re on either […]

Learn More November 16, 2015