Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Agitator’s Christmas Tradition

Here is The Agitator’s most enduring (only?) tradition. For our fifth Christmas, we urge you to get into a mirthful holiday mood by listening to this unforgettable rendition of O Holy Night. Tom is especially fond of this performance, as it takes him back to Midnight Mass and his Catholic grammar school choir days. We […]

Learn More December 22, 2011

Upbeat Fundraising News

Here’s a good round-up of end-of-year fundraising projections, courtesy of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Chron’s own polling indicates that nearly six in ten charities expect to raise more in 2011 than 2010, with 28% expecting less. One out of five in survey said contributions are outpacing their 2010 donations by 20% or more. The […]

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Avoiding the Baby and the Bath Water Problem in Direct Mail Testing

We’ve written about the massive inefficiencies with the way direct mail testing is done today. The high points are covered here. One particularly odious problem is throwing out the baby with the bath water when the organization mails a test package with many (or more than 1 for that matter) test element – i.e. a […]

Learn More December 21, 2011

Through The Rearview Mirror Of 2011

As Christmas approaches Tom can’t find his Grinch costume. Roger’s out of coal. So we did the next best thing: made our list, checked it twice, and found out which posts were ‘naughty’ and which were ‘nice. The Agitator’s esteemed Department of Analytics carefully measured which 2011 posts received the most readership, which garnered the […]

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Fundraising Year In Review

This is the first of two posts on the year now ending. Today, a summary of giving for 2011 and some trends in direct mail. Tomorrow, the 2011 Pulse of Agitator readers. As we head for 2011’s fundraising finish line The Atlas of Giving on Friday reported that overall giving this year will finish 7.4% […]

Learn More December 20, 2011

Online ‘Fundraising’ A Misnomer?

A couple of small items caught my attention lately regarding online fundraising, mostly because they re-raised in my mind the question of what actually constitutes ‘online fundraising’. One was a short blog post by Jeff Brooks, Why it’s hard to raise funds online. Citing Smart Insights Digital Marketing blog, Jeff says it takes: 3 seconds […]

Learn More December 19, 2011