Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Has Your Check Arrived?

I’m not sure there’s any lesson here, but I just can’t resist browsing through lists like this. From the Chronicle of Philanthropy, here’s a list of America’s Top 50 donors in 2011, the amounts given and the lucky charities. These 50 donors gave $10.4 billion … although #1, Margaret Cargill, an heir to the fortune […]

Learn More February 6, 2012

Komen Versus Planned Parenthood

Officially The Agitator is a blog about nonprofit fundraising and communications. So I’m recommending you read Getting Attention’s Nancy Schwartz’s excellent analysis of the Komen vs. Planned Parenthood debacle from the perspective of what makes for effective (and ineffective communications) and smart fundraising (on Planned Parenthood’s part) in response to threat. Tom P.S. Stuff ’em […]

Learn More February 3, 2012

Want to know what donor centric should look like?

This is a fantastic Rorschach test for nonprofits (courtesy of a London based shop, Targetbase Claydon Heeley). What do you see on the left side? What do you see on the right side? If the answer to the both has the words “cute” and/or “funny” then you’re human. If both responses do NOT include […]

Learn More February 2, 2012

Mobile Shopping for Charities

Pew Research has just released this study on how Americans use their mobile phones to assist with in-store purchasing decisions. There’s an underlying phenomenon here that’s highly relevant, I think, to nonprofit fundraising. Pew reports that more than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store to […]

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What is Important To Your Donors? Is This Even the Right Question?

What is important to your donors? What keeps them as donors? Is the answer to these two questions the same? Our answer is a definitive “it depends”. What is important can be very different if asked in a vacuum or depending on the context provided. We’d argue however, that while asking in a vacuum is […]

Learn More February 1, 2012

Direct mail: How To Beat The Control

Donor acquisition is entering its 6th year of a prolonged and steady slump for most organizations. And probably another year of playing the blame game —“poor lists”, “weak economy”, “increased competition” — won’t make things better. Neither will ordering your copywriters, no matter how talented, to “beat the control” be of any help. After 40+ […]

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