Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Welcome Advice

I mean just that … courtesy of Fundraising Success. From Craig DePole at Newport Creative Communications, here’s some very straightforward advice on how to welcome your new donors. In brief (if your nonprofit’s first year retention rate is less than 40%, I suggest you read the whole article): Make it timely. Make it personal … […]

Learn More April 11, 2011

Fire Them … Or Train Them

Yesterday Roger threatened to fire the direct response fundraising staffs at the top 83 charities in the US. Clearly, he was agitated! We got this comment from John Whitehead at Water Aid in the UK: “I don’t know if things are similar in the States, but here in the UK I can see a decline […]

Learn More April 8, 2011

Fire The Top 83 Direct Response Fundraisers?

Yesterday, Target Analytics published its Index of National Fundraising Performance for the 12 months ending December 31, 2010. Not a pretty picture. And frankly, if I were the CEO or a Board Member of one of the 83 big organizations included in this Index, I’d probably be looking for some new resumes to replace some […]

Learn More April 7, 2011

Students Use Online Advocacy

Harvard’s Institute of Politics has collected some interesting data on college-age and young adults and their online advocacy. As reported in ClickZ Marketing News … “Among 18- to 29-year-old Facebook users, 21 percent said they’ve used Facebook to advocate for a political position, 29 percent have liked an issue, and 24 percent have liked a […]

Learn More April 6, 2011

Cause Marketing Dampens Giving?

As reported by Marketing Daily, here’s a study from the University of Michigan Business School that suggests cause marketing dampens giving. Marketing professor Aradhna Krishna conducted studies involving 300 college students to see whether consumers who bought products linked to a social cause would reduce subsequent donations to that cause. She found that charitable giving […]

Learn More April 5, 2011

Ridiculous Top 16!

Sorry, I’m in a bad mood today. Probably shouldn’t be writing this post. But Roger promised that we would “shake things up a bit more” this year. So here goes. I opened this recent article in Fundraising Success with great anticipation — 16 Provocative Ideas That Will Raise More Money. Helluva promise. This was supposed […]

Learn More April 4, 2011