Award Winning Blog - Agitator

We Require 2 Weeks Notice For Sudden Death

Last week, Phyllis Freedman, the gift planning specialist and just plain savvy fundraiser, asked in her blog, What’s Wrong With This Picture? The question — and far more importantly, the answer — deserves everyone’s immediate attention, but especially those working in planned giving. A gift planner had asked for advice based on these facts. Years […]

Learn More March 4, 2014

Bet You Can’t Give It Up

Pew Internet Research reminds us that the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web is in March. They date the occasion to publication of a now-famous paper by Tim Berners-Lee proposing an information management system — ‘distributed hypertext’ — that became the conceptual and architectural structure for the Web. To mark the occasion, they’ve compiled […]

Learn More March 3, 2014

Remarkable Donate Pages

Yesterday’s post, Tighten Your Web, talked about the importance of attending to the fundraising efficacy of your website and its donation conversion process. We suggested some things to try and to test to improve its performance. Now I’ve just come upon 10 Great Nonprofit Donation Pages as picked by web design company Wired Impact. What […]

Learn More February 28, 2014

Tighten Your Web

My suspicion is that many new, prospective donors are knocking at the door of your nonprofit website, but ‘escaping’ because your ‘web’ isn’t sticky enough to catch them. Perhaps they were driven there by some communication from you, or by some event that brought your ‘category’ or maybe even your specific organization to their attention. […]

Learn More February 27, 2014

Punishing Good Deeds

Too many organizations today continue to be guided by the burn and churn mindset reminiscent of the bad old days, when donors were viewed as readily expendable. Easily and cheaply replaced by inexpensive new donors drawn from a seemingly inexhaustible acquisition pool. Given the rising costs of acquisition and falling retention rates, it surprises me […]

Learn More February 26, 2014

Communication Versus Transaction

Last week I noted some figures that online fundraising accounted for 6.4% of all fundraising in the US in 2013, while the growth rate for online fundraising was 13.5%. And with some math jujitsu I projected that at that rate online fundraising might take 17 years to break the 50% of fundraising barrier. Blackbaud’s Steve […]

Learn More February 25, 2014