Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Grouper Eats Shark

A couple of days ago I posted on the plight of small charities contending in a limited fundraising market with an over-sized competitor — Dealing With An 800 Pound Gorilla. In the situation described, the ‘gorilla’ was a local healthcare charity raising a bit over $1 million in Maine, where there are about 6,500 registered […]

Learn More October 23, 2014

Ebola Body Bags Or Billions: The Fundraiser’s Choice

EDITORS’ NOTE: On September 4th The Agitator sounded the alarm , questioning whether fundraising efforts were rising to the level required for the impending Ebola disaster. Our conclusion, in the post Fundraisers and Ebola, was “NO!” We urged our sector shed it’s complacency. Many Agitator readers agreed. Seven weeks later, on Monday, October 20th, the […]

Learn More October 22, 2014

We Don’t Have A Donor Retention Problem!

Confess … did you ever think you’d see a headline like that on an Agitator post?! Don’t hyperventilate now, because in fact Roger and I haven’t reversed course, and don’t intend to. But that said, a couple of recent — somewhat contrarian — posts from Analytical Ones caught my attention. In We don’t have a […]

Learn More October 21, 2014

Dealing With An 800 Pound Gorilla

The Chronicle of Philanthropy just announced that giving is up 10.8% at America’s top 400 charities. Rah, Rah, Rah! However, elsewhere in the universe, if you’re a small nonprofit in your local community or region trying to raise funds for, say, homeless shelters or a health services charity or an arts group, might this be […]

Learn More October 20, 2014

Putting Your Emails In Context

Forrester Research has just released some interesting bits of information from its recent study querying 33,500 US online adults (I wonder if that means you don’t have to be an adult offline … but I digress). This research should remind you that your organization’s emails arrive in a blizzard of competing messaging. And according to […]

Learn More October 17, 2014

Tool For Assessing Your Communications

Spitfire consults with nonprofits on communications and issue campaign planning. But don’t stop reading if you’re a fundraiser! If you’re a fundraiser, at the core of what you do is delivering effective messages to the right people, right? Spitfire has developed an intriguing ‘self-help’ tool called Smartscan that you can use to assess the strength […]

Learn More October 16, 2014