Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Video Testimonials

From Video-Commerce.org, some encouragement to use — you guessed it — video testimonials. Most fundraisers have long used donor (and even better) beneficiary testimonials in their printed communications. Effective to be sure. But they can’t quite pack the same punch as hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth. ‘Face-to-face’ testimonials deliver more authenticity and more […]

Learn More June 4, 2012

Life After Fundraising

“Life after fundraising” doesn’t mean you stop trying to save the world. Take the example of one of our favorite fundraising veterans, Mal Warwick. Mal ‘dropped out’ of fundraising a couple of years ago to devote his energies to One World Futbol. We’ll let his latest update speak for itself … Hi, Folks! I’m writing […]

Learn More June 1, 2012

Conversation About Identity

Many US nonprofits are striving to understand and begin to enter the Hispanic fundraising market. Those who are not, should be! Awhile back, we noted the work being done at the Pew Hispanic Center to shed light on this important population group. Check out this interactive infographic. Their recent report on Hispanic identity, When Labels […]

Learn More May 31, 2012

How Does Your Packaging Compare?

One of the key lessons in the Walter Isaacson’s book, Steve Jobs, is the passionate attention and priority Jobs gave to design, even to the point where design considerations often over-ruled engineering constraints (frequently obliterating them). As recounted by Isaacson (p. 78), Jobs’ first mentor and investor, Mike Markkula, boiled the Apple marketing philosophy down […]

Learn More May 30, 2012

Our Accomplishments Together

Debra Richmond commends this email Annual Report from Be The Match, a bone marrow registry helping patients get transplants from non-related donors. I agree. Using simple infographics, the email (subject line: Our Accomplishments Together ) effectively delivers the bottom line results (how could you not scroll through?), emphasizing that you — the donor — made […]

Learn More May 29, 2012

Taking Risks With Your Fundraising

Yesterday’s post talked about evaluating overall effectiveness of marketing (including fundraising) programs. I cited a McKinsey article that included the following as one of five key questions to examine in your organization: How are we managing financial risk in our marketing plans? McKinsey talks about setting risk parameters that enabled some changes in the marketing […]

Learn More May 25, 2012