Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Rest of The Retention Story – Part 2

We’ll never make much progress solving the retention problem until we get rid of the myopic and wrong-headed metrics used by most direct response fundraisers to measure ‘success’. One reason for the mistaken use of myopic metrics stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the term ‘attribution’. In reality it means assigning results or performance to […]

Learn More August 27, 2013

When Emotion, When Logic?

We all know the two sides of our brain have their different ways of looking at the world and responding to what the world, including all of us fundraisers, throws at it. While a bit over-simplistic, we accept the basic notion that one side favors logical analysis and categories while the other favors emotion and […]

Learn More August 26, 2013

Bad News From Breaking Bad

You’ve heard the old chestnut: ‘No publicity is bad publicity’. Well, the folks at the National Cancer Coalition are re-thinking that one! This ‘charity’ was recently listed as #21 on the “America’s Worst Charities” rankings by the Tampa Bay Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting. OK, by any definition, that’s not good publicity. But […]

Learn More August 23, 2013

Google This!

Enter the terms ‘donor’ and ‘digital’ into Google and you get 13,600,000 results. Yesterday Google itself added to the searchable research pile on donors’ digital behavior. In a study titled The Path to Donation (download summary here), Google and the market researchers from MillwardBrown Digital revealed that donor research leading up to year-end giving starts […]

Learn More August 22, 2013

Loyalty … By Carole King

Roger is revving up the retention engine, as you saw in yesterday’s post. Today I’d like to help set the mood. In one of the best songs ever written (IMHO), timeless Carole King worries about the enduring loyalty of her lover. The next time your team gathers to talk about donors, retention and loyalty, get […]

Learn More August 21, 2013

The Rest Of The Retention Story

I’m just about finished with my book — Retention Fundraising — that will be headed to the publisher at the end of this week. But some of the key stuff in the book just shouldn’t wait. Hopefully you can put some of the research and findings to work immediately. Of course, I’ll flog the book […]

Learn More August 20, 2013