Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Speaking Up For Mail

We recently noted the latest Pew Internet Research findings on US online habits across various generations. Here’s the main point: “In what they term the ‘biggest online trend’ Pew reports that certain key internet activities — including donating — are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups.” Bonnie Catena of Amnesty USA offered this […]

Learn More February 1, 2011

Haiti Fundraising Aftermath

A year ago, Bryan Miller at Giving in a digital world made an online contribution to each of ten UK charities raising money to assist earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. Then he sat back and collected the avalanche of mail and online follow-up appeals he received. Let’s say the results were not uniformly impressive! Here […]

Learn More January 31, 2011

Auf Wiedersehen … And Thanks

I’ve always thought of him as a kid. After all, he is several years younger than I. For years and years Mal Warwick has always been there. At conferences. Giving seminars. On planes. On panels. No one I’ve ever met gave back more to our profession than Mal. So today, when I opened my email […]

Learn More January 28, 2011

Judging A Fundraising Letter

Courtesy of SOFII, here is the latest direct mail tutorial from copywriting guru Jerry Huntsinger. This one talks about evaluating a fundraising letter. Jerry’s points, embellished in his tutorial … 1. Give yourself some positive reinforcement. 2. Get your mind off the letter of complaint you read earlier this morning. 3. Don’t try to edit […]

Learn More January 27, 2011

New Donor Surveys

Here are two recent donor surveys that have come to our attention. Given the usual focus on studying Boomers, we were surprised read on Social Citizens blog about this 2010 study of Millennial Donors conducted by fundraising agencies Achieve and JGL. A fresh study will be released in April. The basic message of the Millennials […]

Learn More January 26, 2011

How Does It Make You Feel?

Have you ever asked this rather crucial question of your nonprofit’s donors: “How does supporting [your organization] make you feel?” ActionAid in the UK is doing just that … in this creative way. Check out their ‘Happy Bubble’ campaign. Do your donors feel something about your organization? Or do you just take that for granted? […]

Learn More January 25, 2011