Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Invitation: 2nd US Donor Commitment Study

We wanted to give Agitator readers advance notice of – and an early opportunity to participate in – the 2012 U.S. National Survey on Donor Commitment. Following the successful pattern of last year’s study in the US and this summer’s in the UK, loyalty and commitment among acquisition donors to 50 organizations will be analyzed […]

Learn More September 19, 2012

Keeping Pace With Hispanic Market

Courtesy of Lee Vann at Captura, a Hispanic marketing agency, here’s a pile of resource links for keeping track of the Hispanic market. Tom

Learn More September 18, 2012

Take This To Your CEO & Board, Today!

Here’s your disturbing wake-up call for Monday, September 17th — and for the rest of this year no doubt. An almost tsumani-like wave of major media stories on questionable nonprofit practices has hit the shores of our sector and shows no sign of quietly fading away. Great damage is in store for our sector. And […]

Learn More September 17, 2012

The Six Envelope Hot Spots

The other elements of a direct mail package can be weak — or even fail — yet the package can succeed. The single exception of course is the envelope! An envelope that is opened is 100% successful; a mailing that is unopened is a 100% failure. Do you know the six outer envelope ‘hot spots’? […]

Learn More September 14, 2012

Retention Mailings Up

The Agitator is gratified by this report from Fundraising Success indicating that retention mailings have grown by 16% from 2010 to 2011. As Ethan Boldt observes: “…fundraisers are putting more emphasis on keeping the donors they have on their rolls.” Hallelujah! [Check our postings under ‘donor retention’.] He also notes that expire mailings also went […]

Learn More September 13, 2012

Warming Up For Year-End: 6 Email Mistakes To Avoid

Because such a large proportion of online contributions arrive in the final 45 days of the year, now’s a good time to start sharpening your email campaign skills. Neil Patel, head of the audience metrics firm Kissmetrics, publishes a great blog worthy of subscription. In Neil’s experience here are the six reasons that most most […]

Learn More September 12, 2012