Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Focus On Fundraising Metrics That Really Matter

Yesterday I explored ‘vanity metrics’ and briefly explained why they’re not very helpful for serious decision-making. Or how, in the case of Benchmarking, they’re often ignored or mis-applied. Today, we’ll move to metrics that truly matter. By my definition an important metric – a metric that matters – is one that triggers the “What-should-I-do-differently-to-improve?” question. […]

Learn More July 12, 2013

Stop trying to beat the control. Just build a better one to start with.

Snickers. Tide Detergent. Cheerios. What images do these branded products conjure up? A candy bar, sure. How about the color of the packaging? Brown for Snickers, red for Tide, yellow for Cheerios. You may not even be a candy bar consumer and yet it’s likely you have a reasonably good recall of what the Snickers […]

Learn More July 11, 2013

Fundraisers … Beware Of Vanity Metrics

If you truly believe that fundraising is mostly art’, not ‘science’, then stop reading. Chances are you’re going to neither understand nor care which metrics matter in fundraising. It’s fashionable these days for many nonprofit fundraisers and their consultants to claim they’re ‘data-driven. Problem is, most focus on the ‘data’ part of the slogan, but […]

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Giving For Now … Or For The Future?

I’m heartened to see the Chronicle of Philanthropy giving ample column inches to the issue of fundraising integrity, with these excellent opinion pieces by Jeff Schreifels and Mark Rosenman. Jeff’s piece, About High Fundraising Costs: It’s Complicated, makes this argument: “It’s time to make sure everyone understands that direct marketing is about the long run, […]

Learn More July 10, 2013

Thoughts On Draining The Swamp – Part 1

When it comes to cleaning up fundraising corruption and just bad stuff in our sector it’s clear that the regulators don’t have the resources and some of our trade associations have been too quiet, while others just don’t have the balls. So what should we as individuals or organizations do, if anything? Frankly, the bad […]

Learn More July 9, 2013

The Wall Has Arrived

Although you can read this post in its entirety (we wouldn’t want you to miss this announcement), as of today all other content on The Agitator, present and to come, will be behind The Wall … as in, our paywall. Starting tomorrow, the daily Agitator post you receive in your email via Feedblitz will be […]

Learn More July 8, 2013