Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Celebrate This Agitator Tradition With Us

Whether you’re still celebrating the results of the mid-term elections or figuring out how to avoid the return of the in-office Christmas party that was mercifully cancelled in the Covid Years, we hope you’ll find time, once again, to l fall on your knees and sing along to The Agitator’s favorite carol. Once again, for […]

Learn More December 24, 2022

If You Ain’t First You’re Last?

One of the greatest movies of all time for those of us who enjoy parody, slapstick and juvenile humor is Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights. He spends most of his life measuring it against an impossible standard of “if you ain’t first you’re last”, a motto from his father who was high on peyote at the […]

Learn More December 21, 2022

Are Your Donor Conversations Any Good?

Conversation abounds in the world of fundraising whether in-person or over the phone. Everybody makes note that we should be active listeners and strive for making a conversation, well, you know, “conversational”. That feels thin. The social science world has done a lot to get a more robust answer. This has implications for humans talking […]

Learn More December 19, 2022

Is Twitter Political?

Much ink has been spilled decrying social media rabbit holes and political echo chambers, threatening our democracy by increasing hyper-partisanship and extremism. And that was before Musk. What if it’s fake news? It’s true there are hyper-partisan people on Twitter. It’s also true many of these hyper-partisans are opinion influencers with big followings. The problem […]

Learn More December 16, 2022

I Think, Maybe

Conversational hedges are words or phrases indicating uncertainty, tentativeness, or modesty in a conversation. Words like “maybe,” “I think,” or “I’m not sure”. What role do they play? They can make the speaker appear more credible and trustworthy by acknowledging uncertainty. Hedges can also make the speaker seem less pushy, which in turn makes the […]

Learn More December 14, 2022

PI…WWW…AI

I’m old enough to remember the world pre-internet, PI, and the first, niche Tandy personal computers. The screens were microscopic, monotone. You’d run some basic scripts on DOS prompts and that was about it. Early internet was terminally slow but we didn’t know any better. You can still hear the whirring, dinging and high pitched […]

Learn More December 12, 2022