Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Do You Have a GoodHart?

Columbia University recently skyrocketed from #18 to #2 on the US News college rankings. They spent lots of time and energy understanding the ranking metrics and methodology and then, they, well…lied. One of its own math professors confirmed as much. Columbia claimed 96.5% full time faculty, real number more like 74%. A 6:1 student to […]

Learn More November 6, 2023

Giving Tuesday 2023: Tips and Hacks

Over the years we’ve offered many tips (as in Try Dying for Giving Tuesday) and many admonitions (see Avoid the Snoringly Generic Approach to Giving Tuesday) Most recently, Kevin’s 2023 entry weighed in with Livng Dusday our study of 573 Giving Tuesday emails scored on meeting (or not) […]

Learn More November 3, 2023

Livng Dusday

Over the last two years we’ve collected 573 Giving Tuesday emails. Here’s a lexical analysis that categorizes email subject lines and assigns Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness scores. Why do those scores matter? These are our core, psychological needs. If my brief interaction with your brand leaves me feeling need satisfied then you’ve created an internal […]

Learn More November 1, 2023

How Do Donors (Not) Open The Mail?

Like everyone, I’ve got a habitual, auto-pilot process for managing the physical mail. And since I, like many a reader, am on a million and one seed lists and donate to charities I receive a #$@% ton of charity mail. Plus, my family has what seems a daily supply of last-mile delivery from online, consumer […]

Learn More October 30, 2023

It Takes A (Personality) Village

The goal of diversity is better ___________. There are lots of ways to fill in that blank; one option is business success. And there are lots of ways to define diversity, one of which is how we see the world, our innate traits. This first bar chart shows companies broken out by number of […]

Learn More October 27, 2023

The Donor’s Experience Matters But Not Equally

Word of mouth is an interesting phenomenon because it’s inherently organic and somewhat unpredictable and impossible to turn off. If you have an online presence you’ll get word of mouth whether you want it or not. And even if you could erase your online presence, there’ll forever be ‘offline’ WOM. And while charities aren’t purpose […]

Learn More October 25, 2023