Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Emotion vs Logic — The Economists Weigh In

Late last month we stated what is obvious to any direct response fundraiser: emotion trumps logic. Most Agitator readers readily agreed. And the scriveners over at FutureFundraising Now and Ahern Communications looked up from their illuminated manuscripts and smiled knowingly. But now, the economists have weighed in with proof positive. Well, positive and negative. Life […]

Learn More June 4, 2014

Ode To Age

“Not long ago, the best way to get young people to donate was to wait thirty years.” So observes Aussie fundraiser Sean Triner at Pareto Fundraising, in a wry and fact-filled post on 101Fundraising crowdblog. Although noting that face-to-face recruitment has produced some success with acquiring younger donors, Sean more or less stands by the […]

Learn More June 3, 2014

Clueless CEOs — Barriers To Growth, Part 4

Stagnant organizations are generally marked by lousy boards and clueless, or worse, arrogant CEOs. Without the leadership of an engaged, aware and willing-to-learn CEO you might as well forget about growth. Why? Because there’s likely to be no serious investment funds made available … no radical organizational change, led from the top, to break down […]

Learn More June 2, 2014

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