Award Winning Blog - Agitator

State Of Mobile Fundraising & Engagement

On May 19th my colleague Kevin Schulman and I will host a session titled “What’s Next in Mobile” as part of the Fundraising Success Virtual Conference and Expo. In preparation for that session, I wanted to first determine “What’s Happening Right Now in Mobile?” The answer is somewhat unsettling when it comes to the nonprofit […]

Learn More May 9, 2011

Write Four Stories

I like this story-writing exercise recommended by Leah Eustace at Good Works. After reminding us why storytelling is so important to fundraising, Leah suggests four stories to write: Write the story of the people who founded your organization. Interview your favourite donor about why she gives so often and has given for so long. Interview […]

Learn More May 6, 2011

Is Anybody PURLing?

I’ve been doing some reading on the integration of direct mail (as simple as postcards) and online response — e.g., 8 Key Takeaways for Personalized URLs. As you probably know, the same data that you would use to personalize a direct mail package can be used to generate complementary web pages unique to each respondent. […]

Learn More May 5, 2011

Lesson In Higher Ed Marketing

This post isn’t about fundraising directly, but it does shed some light on marketing higher ed institutions via email. And The Agitator has a lot of higher ed (and other) readers trying to reach a younger demographic. When you think about it, with today’s youth being the ultimate wired (and wireless) population, it makes perfect […]

Learn More May 4, 2011

More Copywriting Lessons

Given that we’ve been commenting on copywriting lately, I’ll continue down that path with these two observations from How the Web Makes Direct Mail Better by Douglas Broward of Grizzard Communications, writing originally in Convio’s Connection Cafe. First, on direct mail copywriters learning from the web world … ” … reading — still the most […]

Learn More May 3, 2011

The Role Of Sex In Fundraising

Poor Tom. Battered by Agitator readers (rightfully!), all in response to his Direct Mail Package 101 post offering the healthy admonition to use good copy produced by good copywriters. Unfortunately, he neglected to cite any female copywriters. I know for a fact that Tom isn’t a copy misogynist. For the nearly 40 years we’ve worked […]

Learn More May 2, 2011