Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Time for the Non-Profit Sector to Get More Commercial (& Steal…)

To misquote Oscar Wilde, “the meek borrow, genius steal…”, and steal (or borrow if you insist) is exactly what the non-profit sector must do in rewriting its best practices to address the intractable problem of lousy and declining retention rates. Let us first stipulate, this post is not about bashing the sector. To the contrary, […]

Learn More June 27, 2012

Online ‘Donation-Killers’

We’re developing a bit of theme this week, sticking with online fundraising. Thanks to Joanne Fritz at About.com for bringing attention to a report on nonprofit websites by Jakob Nielsen, the guru of website usability. Done over a year ago, I confess to completely missing this one. Joanne summarizes his report, which costs $188 (but […]

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Online Politics Update

For those who study how political campaigns use the online channel, and advocacy groups in particular should, here’s a recent update from ClickZ Politics … the latest in political use of Twitter, mobile, and the ‘plain old’ web. Your donors will be receiving a blizzard of political persuasion and fundraising messages in the next four […]

Learn More June 26, 2012

How Important Are Your Donate Pages?

Last week we triggered a robust discussion of optimum website Donate pages. Lots of good suggestions, reported here, including specific examples various readers recommended. Just how valuable are those pages? Consider this finding from Penelope Burk’s recent donor survey, looking at nearly 12,000 donor/respondents in the US (more in Canada) … 83% of respondents said […]

Learn More June 25, 2012

We Prove Every Dollar

My e-mailbox today included these two messages. From the Chronicle of Philanthropy, I received this article, Donors Say They Would Give More If They Saw More Results, reporting on robust research conducted by fundraiser Penelope Burk. But I have to ask: has anyone ever conducted donor research that did not conclude: It’s the Results, Stupid! […]

Learn More June 22, 2012

Why Not Raise More Money?

The other day, this headline caught my attention: What’s Holding Your Nonprofit Back From Raising More Money? Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a consulting pitch from a firm called Social Velocity. Nothing wrong with that. What that firm would do to provide a broad assessment of revenue potential is: Interview stakeholders Review documents […]

Learn More June 21, 2012