Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Fairy Tale Fundraising

I’m looking forward to joining a small, bright band of nonprofit execs, consultants, editors and other assorted members of our fundraising tribe on May 9th in Philadelphia for Fundraising Success magazine’s first Engage Conference. The format of the conference is quite different from the usual DMA, AFP, DMFA gatherings. First of all, it’s deliberately small […]

Learn More April 30, 2013

Happy Birthday Willie!

Last week I was critical of an Oxfam video featuring crowdsourced video content. Actually, I love the idea of sourcing content (of all kinds, for that matter) from donors, volunteers and especially the beneficiaries of whatever it is you do. What I didn’t like was the execution. It told no story about the need it […]

Learn More April 29, 2013

What’s Your Innovation Quotient?

Here’s an article — Teaching The Old Dog Some New Tricks — that caught my attention simply because of its opening teaser line … “Business has only two functions: marketing and innovation.” Now, the author isn’t sure whether he’s quoting management guru Peter Drucker or novelist Milan Kundera, but no matter. Personally, I think it’s […]

Learn More April 26, 2013

When Words Fail

Confession: I’m a slut when it comes to words. I believe, too much so, that they matter more than any other symbol of human communication. Understandable, because I once made a living as a copywriter. But this doesn’t forgive my sins of omission in highlighting other forms of communications that make a real and important […]

Learn More April 25, 2013

The Courage To Change

Early this year the 100 year-old American Cancer Society (ACS) rocked the direct response ecosystem with its decision to stop all direct mail acquisition … stop the use of direct mail to non-dm acquired donors … and remove the ACS list of donors from all exchange universes. Judging from comments I overheard at the February […]

Learn More April 24, 2013

‘No Sale’ Oxfam Video

Agitators readers know I’m a sucker for online videos to deliver important messages and sell causes and charities. See here and here in the past week alone! But this one from Oxfam is a ‘No Sale’ as far as I’m concerned. Yes, I applaud the use of crowdsourcing to generate mission-related video. Huge potential for […]

Learn More April 23, 2013