Award-Winning Blog


Meet With Your 27,000 Best Donors Tonight

Some days I wish I could call an emergency meeting of all Agitator readers, if for no other reason than to get your immediate reaction to one or another of our insane ideas — or at least Tom’s insane ideas. Until last week I figured that the time, cost and logistics of reaching 5,000 Agitatees […]

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141 Shopping Days Until Christmas

Thursday’s mid-year release of the Blackbaud Index shows overall charitable giving up 2.2% and online giving up 14% for the first six months of 2013. More importantly, it should remind us all that now — today, or tomorrow at the latest — is the perfect time to get started planning for online year-end fundraising, tuning […]

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Latinas Have The Purchasing Power

That’s not a typo. Hispanic women are the growing powerhouse of consumer spending in the US. Not only are their numbers and buying power increasing dramatically, Hispanic women seem to call the shots when money decisions are made within the typical Hispanic household. [Of course, my wife says that’s just a continuation of a long-established […]

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Music To My Ears

Peter Buffett, musician and philanthropist, wrote this piece — The Charitable-Industrial Complex — last week in the NY Times. Much of what he says relates to the programmatic side of what major donors attempt to do and their motivations. For example, he describes “conscience laundering” … “As more lives and communities are destroyed by the […]

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Millions Of Words, But Only Six Emotions

Nice short item from Seth Godin the other day. He says there are only six ‘buttons’ to press — or, “keys on the keyboard” — if you’re trying to spread an idea or sell something … Anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness and surprise. Four negatives, one positive, and one that could go either way (probably […]

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Meet Your Email Competition

It’s not bad enough that every nonprofit you compete with for funds is badgering your donors with email appeals. Their appeals are just the tip of the iceberg. This remarkable infographic from ExactTarget shows you just how crowded those in-boxes will get over the balance of the year. According to ExactTarget, the average online retailer […]

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