Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Generosity Pays

Although I doubt it’s intentional, far too many fundraisers spend far too much time and money biting the hands that feed their organization. It happens every day. Poor donor service. Lousy communications. Little or no donor recognition … sometimes not even a simple thank you. Of course this pitiful lack of concern for the donor […]

Learn More May 6, 2013

Stop Mailing! Don’t Stop Mailing!

Here’s a perennial debate that occurs in nonprofits that are large enough to have separate programs (staffs, bureacracies, silos) for direct response versus major gift solicitation … When should the ‘peanuts’ crew — the staff that generate those $25, $50, $100 contributions — give way to the ‘plums’ people — the major gift officers who […]

Learn More May 3, 2013

Waiting For Inspiration

The New York Times recently headlined … For Millenials, a Tide of Cynicism and a Partisan Gap. They were previewing a series of polls regarding Millenials political and social views by Harvard’s Institute of Politics. A finding that makes me want to throw my hands up in despair is that those age 18-29 split evenly […]

Learn More May 2, 2013

Who Should Set Fundraising Targets?

Faithful Agitator reader Reinier Spruit at Greenpeace International and 101fundraising blog has shared the results of his interesting survey on setting fundraising targets … We are going down … We have no target! His survey of 103 fundraisers reported that: 29% set their own targets; 53% proposed a target to their manager, who made the […]

Learn More May 1, 2013

Fairy Tale Fundraising

I’m looking forward to joining a small, bright band of nonprofit execs, consultants, editors and other assorted members of our fundraising tribe on May 9th in Philadelphia for Fundraising Success magazine’s first Engage Conference. The format of the conference is quite different from the usual DMA, AFP, DMFA gatherings. First of all, it’s deliberately small […]

Learn More April 30, 2013

Happy Birthday Willie!

Last week I was critical of an Oxfam video featuring crowdsourced video content. Actually, I love the idea of sourcing content (of all kinds, for that matter) from donors, volunteers and especially the beneficiaries of whatever it is you do. What I didn’t like was the execution. It told no story about the need it […]

Learn More April 29, 2013