Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Remarkable “Wet Blanket Challenge”

Last month the ALS Association won fundraising’s equivalent of the Mega Million Power Ball Lottery — picking up 3 million donors and $100+ million in August alone from the “Ice Bucket Challenge”. Then on Friday they blew it. Up until then our tireless Agitator editors were happily and busily white boarding the steps that fortunate […]

Learn More September 1, 2014

How Privileged Are You?

Sometimes even fundraisers need food for the soul. Tom and I serve up over-sized portions on techniques, strategies and tactics, and other helpful (we hope!) stuff to help you with your job. We’re a bit light on the broccoli equivalents. Not that we’re opposed to balanced mental nutrition for fundraisers, it’s just that sometimes it’s […]

Learn More August 29, 2014

Do It By The Numbers

I’ve been doing some end-of-summer cleaning out of my Agitator ‘inspiration bin’. The place where I store things to write about. I realized that I had gathered a heap of ‘number stuff’ … all fairly recent items, but my how they accumulate! So here are few for you list keepers. 3 Things You Can Do […]

Learn More August 28, 2014

Through The Prizm

Remember PRIZM, the market segmentation tool originally developed by Claritas (now owned by Nielsen) and widely used in the 90s? We used to have great fun looking up zip codes to see which had the most people characterized as ‘Blue Blood Estates’, ‘Bohemian Mix’, or ‘Shotguns & Pickups’. There were (still are) 60-odd segments or […]

Learn More August 27, 2014

No Marketing Department?

Rarely do I disagree with creative/copywriting whiz Jeff Brooks. But in a recent excerpt from his new book, The Money-Raising Nonprofit Brand (see, I flogged it), he argues that one of the six signs of a well-run nonprofit is that it has no marketing department. Jeff argues: “…the very existence of a marketing department lets […]

Learn More August 26, 2014

Buy Roger’s Book … Or Else!

Roger has written a book on donor retention. It’s titled: Retention Fundraising: The New Art and Science of Keeping Your Donors for Life. And FINALLY … it’s ready to order! I’ve read the book four times now in its various draft iterations. And learned more each time. And I thought I was already on top […]

Learn More August 25, 2014