Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Riding History’s Wave

This week, while most of the world focused on The Guardian’s bombshell reports on Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence officer turned whistleblower, The Agitator turned to The Guardian for news of real interest to our readers. With just 7 days remaining before we go behind The Wall – the paywall – The Guardian confirms […]

Learn More June 22, 2013

When Sharks Become Vegans

“Bizarre” … “Startling” … “Surreal” Those were just a few of the adjectives in reaction to this week’s news that Guidestar, Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance have done an about face and launched a campaign to now convince donors they really shouldn’t focus too much on overhead costs when evaluating […]

Learn More June 21, 2013

Do You Know Your ‘Failure Rate’?

This is a long, but very, very important post. So freshen up your coffee before proceeding. The other day I received an email from an Agitator reader asking: “Why do you think most fundraisers are so resistant to innovation and change?” A good question. An important question. I batted out a kneejerk and facile response […]

Learn More June 20, 2013

Giving USA 2013: GoodNews … And Bad

Giving USA 2013, the annual report on philanthropy, published by the Giving USA foundation and researched and written by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, was released yesterday. It should please both the ‘glass-half-full’ and ‘glass-half-empty’ folks among us. You can download a summary here. First the ‘good’ news. The $316.23 billion contributed […]

Learn More June 19, 2013

Retention Is The New Acquisition

Lots of folks pay lip service to the importance of donor ‘retention’. Far fewer know much about it, let alone do much of anything about it. As acquisition costs rise and response rates plummet, Tom and I have stepped up our rants on retention. In our view, retention is the new acquisition. And it’s welcome […]

Learn More June 18, 2013

Jeff Gets Upset … Me Too

I love it when creative whiz Jeff Brooks gets upset over the mind-boggling bad judgments nonprofits make — regarding names, logos, taglines, positioning and messaging — in the name of better branding. The examples he comes up with, as in this post — Change your name at your own risk — are usually breathtaking. Virtually […]

Learn More June 17, 2013