Award Winning Blog - Agitator

‘Crafting’ versus ‘Producing’ … Writing Songs versus Jingles

According to comScore, US e-commerce sales (via desktop) were up 13% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2013. In that quarter, there were over $50 billion in retail e-commerce sales, and online sales accounted for over 10% of discretionary dollars spent, the highest share yet recorded. OK, so people are buying more and more online. […]

Learn More September 19, 2013

How Does Your Donor Behavior Compare To Canada?

An excellent review of the donor landscape in Canada has just been released by fundraising agency hjc and Blackbaud. The study profiles giving behavior across four generations — Civics, Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y — looking at giving amounts and future intentions, preferred channels, focus of giving, the works. Plus, here and there, some […]

Learn More September 18, 2013

Yelling Louder Won’t Sell

Yesterday, I wrote about overdoing negative messaging. Another marketing communications error is simply turning up the volume. A recurring mistake amongst many marketers, faced with declining response, is simply to ‘yell louder’. That is, keep pumping out the same message, just buying more ads, trying more channels, etc. This article, Yelling Louder Won’t Sell Your […]

Learn More September 17, 2013

Negative Versus Positive Framing

Think about it … we’d all rather hang around positive — versus negative — people. So why wouldn’t that apply to a nonprofit that’s looking to establish a donor relationship with you or me? Why would you expect a continuing barrage of negative, downer messages to make a donor look forward to your ‘visits’?! That’s […]

Learn More September 16, 2013

Excellent Red Cross Infographic

Does anyone know if there’s a competition for nonprofit infographics? There should be. Apart from the sheer attention-getting appeal of creative visual presentation of important number-based information, which of course is the purpose, the construction of infographics has a way of concentrating the organization itself on crystallizing precisely its core message. A valuable exercise with […]

Learn More September 13, 2013

The Rest Of The Retention Story – Part 4

Mastering ‘retention’ requires hard work: research, organization-wide involvement across departments, and a willingness to swim against the conventional currents in the Sea of Sameness that is drowning our sector. Unlike ‘acquisition’, fundraisers can’t just sign a purchase order for lists, printing, copywriters and consultants then hope for the best. To briefly recap my points so […]

Learn More September 12, 2013