Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Beware Of The ‘S’ Word!

Excuse me, but I just gotta get this out of my system. I am so fed up with reading and hearing from those who use the term ‘strategy’ without the slightest idea what it means. It’s a disease of dumbness and idiocy that has particularly infected the consulting community. Were it not that it’s a […]

Learn More April 16, 2014

Thinking ‘Lifetime’

Yesterday I talked about the simplest step your organization can take to increase the lifetime value of your donors — tighten up your acknowledgement process. If you didn’t check out this compelling data from Grizzard establishing that point, please do so. But then I got to thinking, how many Agitators readers might still not be […]

Learn More April 15, 2014

Make This Improvement Your #1 Fundraising Priority

Debbi Barber at Grizzard, in a post last week titled One Simple Way to Improve Retention, hit the nail on the head. She recommended one improvement that would unfailingly yield higher lifetime value from any nonprofit’s donors. And it ain’t brain surgery, although it could well require a change to your fundraising mindset and priorities. […]

Learn More April 14, 2014

The Eyes Have It

High powered commercial brands leave nothing to chance when it comes to marketing. For example, product placement on grocery shelves is a fine art, and the care that goes into packaging what is offered on those shelves is equally informed by meticulous research. If you don’t think major bucks are spent on optimizing that shelf […]

Learn More April 11, 2014

Using Celebrity Spokespersons

Using celebrities … here’s a topic you don’t see discussed much in terms of ‘best practices’. Yet celebrities are quite available and generous in working with charities and nonprofits. Some, like UNICEF and Amnesty International, have successfully developed the use of celebrities into an art form. Right off the bat, I should probably employ better […]

Learn More April 10, 2014

Online Fundraising: Known Knowns And Known Unknowns

Just in case find yourself in a game of Online Trivial Pursuit, you’ll need to know that in 2013 nonprofits received 1.7 cents for every online fundraising message delivered and 60 cents for every website visit. These factoids — and far, far more of much greater importance — are revealed in The 2014 M+R Benchmarks […]

Learn More April 9, 2014