Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Godin Trashes Fundraising Galas

In a recent post titled Gala economics, marketing maven Seth Godin trashes fundraising galas. He argues: “…the gala is actually corrupting. Attendees are usually driven by social and selfish motivations to attend, and thus the philanthropic element of giving–just to give–is removed.” Of course, one could argue that many ‘big checks’ are so-motivated, at least […]

Learn More October 18, 2011

The Only Fundraising Question You Should Ask

Two of the biggest technological curses infecting fundraising are Word and Excel. Microsoft might be the archenemy of intelligent fundraising. Word, with its copy and paste function has demeaned and degraded copy to the point where we’ve convinced ourselves that the homogenized gruel we serve our donors is truly good copy. Heaven help us. [I’ve […]

Learn More October 17, 2011

Struggling with donations? To (mis) quote Carville, It is the brand, stupid.

A recent Harvard Business Review article, well written as usual, persuasive as usual, is nevertheless, an echo of likely thousands of articles and books before it. The bold headline, “The Cure for the Non-Profit Crisis”, boils down to one central, oft-cited, oft-repeated admonition, Strategic focus is the key to success. They use the term “coherence”, […]

Learn More October 14, 2011

Who Are The First Movers?

As reported in Direct Marketing News, idea merchant Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point, Blink, etc) delivered a speech recently in which he said, when it comes to innovation … don’t be first! I can just hear Roger now: “He must have delivered that same speech to some big nonprofit fundraising conference … and everyone has taken […]

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When Do Fundraisers Need Help?

As in … outside consultants. I liked these words of advice from Pamela Barden, via Fundraising Success. Consider an outside consultant — a “personal trainer” as she puts it — when: 1. Mentally, you’ve set limits. As in … “There’s no way we can do that; we don’t have the resources.” “We tried that several […]

Learn More October 13, 2011

How Would Nonprofits Rate?

The Agitator caused a stir awhile back when we reported that not all nonprofits enjoyed particularly high levels of commitment … a critical attitude our colleagues at DonorVoice actually measured for fifty nonprofits and charities in a national survey. Now I notice that Harris Interactive has just released a survey of how Americans rate 22 […]

Learn More October 12, 2011