Award Winning Blog - Agitator

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 April 30, 2015

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 April 29, 2015

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 April 28, 2015

Is It Out Of The Question?

Over the weekend I noticed a small report that last week — April 23rd — to be exact, marked the 10th anniversary to the day of the first YouTube video appearing on the internet. As the article commented: “… it was only 10 years ago that we came stumbling out of the Dark Ages and into the […]

Learn More April 27, 2015

Using Cancer

Let me say at the outset that The Agitator is a HUGE fan of the MobileCause blog. In my view, the advent and use of smartphones will turn out to be as important to fundraising as the advent of the postage stamp. [Go ahead, dispute that one Agitator readers!]. And MobileCause is normally very astute on the […]

Learn More April 24, 2015

The Future Of Fundraising: Bright Or Bleak?

Fundraising is in for a bleak future. More bleak than at any time in the past 40+ years. And there’s little evidence fundraisers have the capacity to implement plainly needed changes. This happy piece of insight is delivered in a new, important and thought-provoking series by veteran U.K. fundraiser Ken Burnett. It began running this […]

Learn More April 23, 2015