Award Winning Blog - Agitator

How Do They Get Away With It?

#1 on the list of America’s “50 Worst Charities” according to a collaborative report from The Center for Investigative Reporting and The Tampa Bay Times is the Kids Wish Network. The Times/CIR investigation reveals that over the past 10 years this knock-off of the highly respected Make-A-Wish-Foundation, has “channeled nearly $110 million donated for sick […]

Learn More June 12, 2013

Read This! Then Shower!

The Center for Investigative Reporting has just released a series of reports including The 50 Worst Charities and The Failure of Regulation that should both sicken your soul and make your blood boil. A year-long study by a team of investigative reporters from the Center, The Tampa Bay Times and CNN not only names names, […]

Learn More June 11, 2013

Charities … Don’t Evaluate Your Work

This two-part series by Caroline Fiennes — Most Charities Shouldn’t Evaluate Their Work — in the Stanford Social Innovation Review left me scratching my head. The tantalizing headline drew me in. Then I tried to absorb the basic message of her formula: Impact = Idea x Implementation At best, charities are capable of what Fiennes […]

Learn More June 10, 2013

Update On The Wall

Last week we announced — You Knew This Day Would Come! — that The Agitator would disappear behind a paywall on July 1. Since hardly any US fundraisers will be working that Independence Day week, probably only our non-U.S. readers will notice. Maybe we’ll push The Wall launch to July 8 to level the playing […]

Learn More June 8, 2013

Three Reports To Note

A few reports have accumulated on my desktop that I’d like to pass along for weekend browsing. First, especially for our UK readers, but with trend data all email fundraisers might be interested in, here’s the National Client Email Report 2013 from the Direct Marketing Association UK on email marketing in the UK. Notably, B2C […]

Learn More June 7, 2013

Are You One Of A Kind?

Is your nonprofit one of a kind? By that I mean, do you do something truly unique … either in terms of mission or strategy for accomplishing your core objective? If you do, you get to begin meeting your fundraising challenge with an enormous advantage. Your market (prospects) presumably readily recognizes you and your distinctiveness. […]

Learn More June 6, 2013