Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Direct Mail Testing To Nowhere

I suspect a good part of the reason why fundraising and especially acquisition is so flat or down lies in the business-as-usual, risk adverse nature prevalent in the contemporary nonprofit mentality. A mindset focused on protecting the institutional status quo … of defending one organization’s turf against another organization’s ambition … of making sweeping and […]

Learn More May 30, 2014

Selling Socks

In a recent Fundraising Success post, Angie Moore asked: “Are you marketing and raising funds the right way for today’s donors?” She went on to discuss ‘outward-focused’ and ‘inward-focused’ marketing, using these definitions: Outward-focused: This type of marketing and sales is focused primarily on identifying the needs of the customers and matching the products and […]

Learn More May 28, 2014

Fishing For The Same Fish?

In his series of posts on Barriers to Growth (more to come next week), Roger is focusing on institutional impediments, among them lousy boards, misguided fundraising investment policies, and lack of an internal growth culture. These are issues a nonprofit can attack directly … all that’s required is talent and will, producing smarter fundraising. Let […]

Learn More May 27, 2014

Being Creative

Roger and I are always going on about innovation. Here’s a reminder post, but try searching ‘innovation’ on The Agitator website for plenty more. Being innovative means being creative. And what are the prerequisites of being creative? According to humorist John Cleese, there are five necessary conditions … Space — away from your usual pressures […]

Learn More May 23, 2014

Passion Assassins

In his post yesterday, Proud To Be A Fundraiser, Roger cited an article by our UK colleague and fellow curmudgeon Ken Burnett, titled Keeping the right fundraisers. Now, given that The Agitator’s niche audience consists entirely of fundraisers of various stripes and capacities, one might think that both of those titles would attract a fair […]

Learn More May 22, 2014

Proud To Be A Fundraiser

Flogging registration and attendance at the U.K.’s Institute of Fundraising’s July Conference, Alan Clayton lays out why pride in our profession is so important. In Proud to Be a Fundraiser, the Clayton of the Clayton Burnett consultancy that commissioned the Great Fundraising study by Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang reminds readers of Adrian’s intonation: “In […]

Learn More May 21, 2014