Award-Winning Blog


We’re Stoked!

Roger and I have just seen the latest CBS News/NY Times poll that says 43% of Americans agree with the views of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Only 27% disagree; 30% are unsure. As reported by CBS News’ Political Hotsheet: “While there are different agendas within the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement, nearly all of the […]

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The massive (but fixable) problems with direct mail testing

See if this sounds at like your organization: The direct mail test ideas that actually make it into the mail stream are almost all incremental and rarely (mostly never) beat the control.  You spend enormous amounts of time and money coming up with test ideas, producing them and managing the logistics, only to have the […]

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Terrific Fundraising Insights

Mark Phillips of UK’s Bluefrog fundraising agency, is a consultant I’d probably hire. I’ve never met him. I’m going strictly on the quality of his insights as expressed on his blog, queer ideas. His recent post, with the dry-as-toast title, Five things we learned at the IFC, is a treasure chest of little pearls (he […]

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How (Dis) Loyal Donors Process Direct Mail from You and Your Competitors

Let’s first get a definitional piece addressed up front.  We define loyalty based on how Committed Donors are to a brand.  This is attitudinal loyalty, derived by what they think and feel about an organization and we have proven its link to donor behavior. A behavior based view of loyalty is often spurious.  Using both, […]

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First, Make Rice

Roger and I are planning to push hard for innovation in posts to come. But don’t mistake that thrust for our abandoning of the necessity to master the basic fundamentals of fundraising. Seth Godin wrote a real gem on this point a couple of weeks ago. It’s short, so I’ve reproduced in its entirety … […]

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Putting The Lipstick On

A couple of posts back, we said, “The product matters“. In response, along comes Kathy Swayze with a comment saying what few fundraisers dare to say: “Your ‘quality of the product matters’ resonates. But how many fundraisers are stuck trying to put lipstick on a pig because the mission, focus and actions of their organization […]

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