Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Moral Calculus to Giving

The giving decision often hinges on a moral judgement – is giving to help this person, place or thing the morally right thing to do? But two people can be a firm “yes” for different reasons since we don’t all use the same morality lens. There are five morality lenses onto the world. Care/harm: Sensitivity […]

Learn More April 26, 2023

Is Yours a “Bad Puppy” Email Schedule?

A frequent topic in our weekly Agitator editorial meetings is the gawd-awful frequency and quality of most email appeals. No matter how many times we cite the danger of overdoing this stuff and wrecking retention, driving away donors the practices of more, more, more continues. No doubt some fundraisers believe if someone gives you money […]

Learn More April 24, 2023

Pronouns Matter

I or we. You or us. He or she. Tiny words lumped into a category with articles and prepositions called functional words. They’re the opposite of ‘content’ words, the meaty stuff of nouns, verbs, adjectives. How can these tiny words matter? For starters, they’re social words. They help maintain conversation flow by indicated who or […]

Learn More April 21, 2023

Have You Been Selected?

Sometime last weekend, I think it was about 7:35 pm Saturday evening, as I worked my way through the week’s river of despairing news and its ever-flowing tributary of emails telling me why my immediate help –even $3 –would make the difference, my spirits suddenly lifted. Right there on that forlorn evening appeared an email […]

Learn More April 19, 2023

Do Donors Care About Your Solution or the Problem?

Would you be more willing to help the spotted owl if a solution offered to save 10% of the habitat or 50%? Randomized experiments show it doesn’t matter. Odd, right? What about swapping out the spotted owl for reptiles? Support goes down. But, swap in turtles for lizards and support goes back up. Your $.50 […]

Learn More April 17, 2023

Is Your Quality Data 3,008 or So 2000 and Late?

The Black-Eyed Peas may not be in my most played list but hey, a catchy, memorable lyric is a catchy, memorable lyric. Retention data is the rearview mirror view on quality, it’s 2000 and late. It’s a lagging indicator of quality. You don’t need more donors, you need more donors who stick around. But if […]

Learn More April 14, 2023