Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Forget About Donor-Centric

All year long you’ve been hearing various bloggers, including me and Roger, talking up ‘donor-centric’ fundraising … i.e., in various ways, making your fundraising about your donor, not your organizational ‘imperatives’. It’s a mindset more conducive to relationship building. And with good intentions, you probably filed away a post or two, promising that you’d try […]

Learn More September 9, 2013

I Don’t Want A Relationship … Do I?

Roger and I are big believers in building donor relationships, based upon positive donor attitudes and experiences, in order to maximize donor lifetime value. However, reading this rundown on successful direct mail tactics employed by candidates in 2012 left me wondering … would I want a ‘donor relationship’ with any of these folks? That led […]

Learn More September 6, 2013

Wise Words About Charities And Branding

The other day blogger Jeff Brooks headlined a post … How to kill your fundraising. And the answer he gave was: Investing in brand. Well, I thought that was one of the most annoying things I had ever heard from Jeff (who I regard very highly). So I read on and discovered he was passing […]

Learn More September 5, 2013

The Rest Of The Retention Story – Part 3

The most fundamental flaw in the conventional fundraising belief system is this: “Donors are born, not made.” Believers are certain that somewhere out there, if only they can find the right data overlays, if only they employ the right predictive acquisition models, or if only they can hit on the right exchange lists, there’s an […]

Learn More September 4, 2013

Left Out In The Cold, Again

Faithful Agitator readers know how much I admire the survey work of Pew Research. When it comes to insights into media and technology use, political attitudes, and social trends, they’re top rate. So why does their study of public esteem for various professions bug me? Because they don’t include fundraisers, or even a broader category […]

Learn More September 3, 2013

Will Your Donors Share Information?

Direct response fundraisers realize that customizing appeals to specific donors will lift results. But what information is available to allow you to make just the right appeal? In the fundraising sector, we’re pretty good at capturing and using transactional information — past giving history (which should include what kind of appeals have been responded to, […]

Learn More August 30, 2013