Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Do Or Die Time

We’re now into that ‘do or die’ time of the fundraising year. Surely you’ve laid your plans for the big year-end push … exactly how many mail and email appeals will you squeeze into the next 122 days? How many of those will be in the last 10 days?! Pamela Barden’s recent post — Fundraising’s […]

Learn More August 31, 2015

Engaging Your Donor’s Reptilian Brain

I’m a pretty basic guy. So ‘reptilian’ pretty much sums up my brain activity. So I was thrilled to contemplate what I might learn when I saw this headline on Roger Dooley’s Neuromarketing blog: 7 Ways to Engage Your Customer’s Reptilian Brain. Gotta be some fundraising insights there. And I wasn’t disappointed. 1. Speak to the […]

Learn More August 28, 2015

Fixing Hidden Leaks #5: Online Forms

This is the 5th in a series of posts on identifying and fixing hidden leaks in the donor retention bucket. -The Editors In the field of product development ‘the minimum viable product (MVP)’ is the product with the highest return on investment versus risk. When it comes to nonprofit websites and forms it seems to me […]

Learn More August 27, 2015

Don’t Forget the Port-A-Potty

The Agitator pays little attention to event fundraising. Probably it’s because Tom and I are a bit past our prime marathon days. Additionally, for the fancier events we long ago exchanged our too-tight tuxedos for ‘relaxed fit’ jeans. Or truth be told, maybe it’s because we have absolutely no expertise in this area. Whatever the reason, […]

Learn More August 26, 2015

The 30-Minute Visit

My radar picked up an article the other day titled The Art of Fundraising, written by Gary Laermer of the YMCA of Greater New York and published on Huffington Post. When I got into the piece, I found it was aimed at the development end of the fundraiser spectrum — major donors and corporate gifts. But […]

Learn More August 25, 2015

Sleeping Fundraising Giant Awakens

What advice would you give to Chinese fundraisers intent converting the world’s largest middle class into donors? That was Ken Burnett’s assignment at the First China Fundraising Conference in Beijing last month. The Conference, sponsored by the newly formed China Association of Fundraising Professionals (CAFP) and supported by four major foundations, aimed at putting increased […]

Learn More August 24, 2015