Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Simply The Best

I’m never disappointed with how Charity:Water goes about raising funds to deliver safe, clean water to those who need it. Their year-end fundraising campaign is a great example of doing it right. Here’s a screenshot of the email appeal I received … Since this is a year-end appeal, and the recipient already knows all about […]

Learn More December 16, 2013

Why We Don’t Trust Data

Angie Moore, in Tuesday’s FS Online post Predicting Weather is not Like Predicting Donations, notes that a good many fundraisers deny themselves the benefits of predictive modeling simply because, just like the weather forecast, they don’t understand what’s behind it. Given the “increasingly crowded and competitive landscape”, Angie urges fundraisers to drop their current, and […]

Learn More December 13, 2013

Death Of A Fundraising Pioneer

Russ Reid, a pioneer in monthly giving and direct response television (DRTV), died Saturday, December 7 at his home in Sierra Madre, California. He was 82 years old. Word of Russ’ death reached The Agitator via Tom Harrison, the chairman of the agency that Reid founded in 1964 and that still bears his name. Tom’s […]

Learn More December 12, 2013

Retain Or Renew?

Roger and I bang and bang and bang away at ‘retention’. We think it’s supremely important. Any organization worth a reply card or ‘Donate’ page can entice a new donor to part with some cash. Hey, just throw them a chotski. The real challenge of fundraising is hanging on to that donor and nurturing their […]

Learn More December 11, 2013

Phoning In The Content And The Money

Digital world monitor comScore has released the latest figures on smartphone ownership in the US. As of October, 149.2 million people in the US owned a smartphone, representing 62.5% penetration. The most common application on those phones by far is Facebook (76%), with apps like Google Search (52%), YouTube (48%), Gmail (46%), Instagram (26%) and […]

Learn More December 10, 2013

Benefiting From Your ‘User Reviews’

We’ve all heard about the influence of ‘word of mouth’ on consumer purchasing these days. Commercial marketers regularly place word of mouth above advertising, PR and other marketing as the most trusted — and consequently most significant — influence on consumer behavior. There are books on the subject. Try this one — Word of Mouth […]

Learn More December 9, 2013