Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Who Better To Talk To?

If you are seriously interested in arresting your nonprofit’s declining retention rate, there are several approaches you can take — tactical improvements to your cultivation and renewal streams, improving ‘customer service’ aspects of your operations, telling a more compelling story (delivering both emotion and results). Of course these are not mutually exclusive approaches … probably […]

Learn More January 22, 2014

Don’t Talk To Me When I’m Not Listening

Tom’s Black Monday post Help Isn’t on the Way is the second of a one-two punch alerting us to two deadly and widespread trends summarized by the research firm Analytical Ones on their blog: The scary phenomenon of shrinking files caused by poor retention and lousy acquisition rates; and, The fact that new donors (average […]

Learn More January 21, 2014

Help Isn’t On The Way

Here’s some bad Monday morning news from our friends at Analytical Ones. These are folks you might not want to bring along to cheer up your next Board meeting! Last week The Agitator mentioned their article, Unsustainable Trends. There they were talking about the sad day when growth in your average gift size can no […]

Learn More January 20, 2014

Pew On Social Media

As in Pew Internet Research, that is. I was going to try to go the entire month of January without mentioning social media (this is chiefly a fundraising blog, after all), but here I am … caving in barely half-way into the month. Pew has published its latest round of research into social media use, […]

Learn More January 17, 2014

The Experts On Retention

Blackbaud has done the nonprofit sector a favor by compiling a new eBook, npEXPERTS: Show the Love. The eBook shares the insights of 13 leading fundraising professionals, including The Agitator’s very own Roger Craver. Here’s the line-up: The Case for Donor Retention: Why Retaining Donors is the Single Most Important Piece of Your Long-Term Fundraising […]

Learn More January 16, 2014

Take Your Pick: Overly Confident Or Confidently Stupid

“Often wrong, never in doubt.” That’s the mantra of many consultants, CEOs and development directors who survive year after year despite non or lousy performance. Like you, I’ve often wondered why so many dumb asses survive in our sector. Of course all of us know the answer: there are scores more nonprofit openings than competent […]

Learn More January 15, 2014