Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Myanmar Tops In Giving

The Charities Aid Foundation (UK) has published its World Giving Index, which uses three simple questions to measure ‘giving’ around the world. The Gallup polling organization asked these questions in 145 countries during 2014. Here are the questions: Have you done any of the following in the past month? Helped a stranger, or someone you […]

Learn More November 13, 2015

Beware Of The Sustainer Strangler

I know you have lots on your plate as we near year-end. But if you have monthly sustaining donors or any type of installment givers, please add this data processing/payment processing morsel to your ‘Urgent: To Do’ list. In response to the rising tide of credit card theft and fraud over the past few years, […]

Learn More November 12, 2015

The Old And The New

Two stats in a recent newsletter I received were reminders that the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ can co-exist quite nicely, thank you. On the one hand, this DM News article reports that the US Postal Service expects to deliver 15 billion pieces of holiday mail this Christmas season (including 600 million packages), a 10.5% increase […]

Learn More November 11, 2015

Major Gift Fundraising For Smaller Organizations

Lots of time and money is spent on identifying success factors in major gift fundraising for large organizations. Very little on factors that make a big difference for smaller organizations. Until now. Amy Eisenstein, author of Major Gift Fundraising for Small Shops, has just released a study done in conjunction with Prof. Adrian Sargent, director of […]

Learn More November 10, 2015

Are Your Donors Losing Interest?

Most of the discussion that occurs around the sorry state of donor retention deals with failure on the part of nonprofits to even take notice of their situation. In some cases to even know what to measure, let alone understand how to respond in terms of organization-wide attitude and communication tactics. The underlying assumption is […]

Learn More November 9, 2015

The Fundraising Stupidity of ‘Free’ and Cheap

It never ceases to amaze me how stupid and cheap so many nonprofit CEOs, board members and, yes, even fundraisers can be. The consequences that spring from ignorance about the importance of investing in fundraising and a zealously misplaced focus on ‘cost savings’ yield horror and frustration for staff and almost always result in calamity […]

Learn More November 6, 2015