Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Dealing With An 800 Pound Gorilla

The Chronicle of Philanthropy just announced that giving is up 10.8% at America’s top 400 charities. Rah, Rah, Rah! However, elsewhere in the universe, if you’re a small nonprofit in your local community or region trying to raise funds for, say, homeless shelters or a health services charity or an arts group, might this be […]

Learn More October 20, 2014

Putting Your Emails In Context

Forrester Research has just released some interesting bits of information from its recent study querying 33,500 US online adults (I wonder if that means you don’t have to be an adult offline … but I digress). This research should remind you that your organization’s emails arrive in a blizzard of competing messaging. And according to […]

Learn More October 17, 2014

Tool For Assessing Your Communications

Spitfire consults with nonprofits on communications and issue campaign planning. But don’t stop reading if you’re a fundraiser! If you’re a fundraiser, at the core of what you do is delivering effective messages to the right people, right? Spitfire has developed an intriguing ‘self-help’ tool called Smartscan that you can use to assess the strength […]

Learn More October 16, 2014

Trivial Pursuit In Fundraising

Over and over Tom and I receive emails and comments claiming there just isn’t enough time or staff resources required to make some of the basic changes we suggest, or engage in much innovation. Yet, anyone who’s spent time with most nonprofits knows that’s simply an excuse without much truth to it. Tom’s post yesterday, […]

Learn More October 15, 2014

Size Doesn’t Matter

Yesterday I chided Agitator readers a bit on the retention issue, suggesting nonprofits were showing too little interest in their fleeing donors. I was rewarded (and so, I suspect, were Bloomerang and Pamela Grow!!) by the Comment from Ann Kensek at The Counseling Service of of Addison County in Vermont (CSAC-VT). Clearly, CSAC-VT is not […]

Learn More October 14, 2014

Cassandra, Chicken Little and Pollyanna

Cassandra says the end is here, can’t you see?! Chicken Little says the sky is falling … it just hit us on the head. Pollyanna says hogwash, everything is fine and will only get better. Most fundraisers appear to be Pollyanna’s. I’m inferring that from the pattern I see in Agitator reader comments to the […]

Learn More October 13, 2014