Award-Winning Blog


Are Donors And Nonprofits ‘Misaligned’?

In his four-part series — Raise More, Ask Less — Roger made a plea: listen to your donors and honor their preferences. Even if this suggests hitting them with fewer fundraising appeals. Indeed, Roger offered ‘contrarian’ evidence that asking less can actually yield more money. You can review Roger’s case here — Part 1, Part 2, […]

Learn More

Big, Hairy Barrier Threatens Fundraising Mega-Opportunities

Ken Burnett has now published Part 3 and Part 4 of his thought-provoking five part series on the Future of Fundraising. Our summary of Parts 1 and 2 found here, asking whether Agitator readers thought the future was ‘bright’ or ‘bleak’, generated lots of great comments. By and large, I’d say reader consensus came down […]

Learn More

Words vs Video

I love words. I’ve made most of my career out of educating and persuading people through words. And yes, with an occasional photo or graphic to back me up. But now there’s video … but not just video … online video. YouTube just announced that its year-over-year growth in daily visitors is up 40%. And the […]

Learn More

When The Government Comes Knocking

The finances of the Clinton Foundation have now come under renewed scrutiny with the launch of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid. This is not unexpected in the hard-hitting rough and tumble of high-stakes politics. What is highly worrisome to me  — and should be to any nonprofit — is the potential abuse of basic constitutional principles […]

Learn More

Thinking Like For-Profits

I spend a heap of time watching how for-profits market their services and wares, looking for nuggets of insight, research or technique that might have applicability in our nonprofit space. My cherry-picking goals are usually modest — how is the commercial world employing a new platform like mobile, how are they earning a return from customer […]

Learn More

Disaster Fundraising: Be Honest

Last week I saw a reference to a television (HBO) documentary — Haitian Money Pit — that, among other aspects of political corruption and paralysis, sheds light on the fate of charitable funds raised for Haiti in the aftermath of its 2010 earthquake. As described in the item I read (unfortunately, I wasn’t able to view it … […]

Learn More