Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Water Is Wet

Jeff Brooks blogging at Future Fundraising Now is always making fun of research. To Jeff, research is a distraction from the real world — that is, the world in which individuals make actual donations (or don’t make them) in response to identifiable stimuli (e.g. specific letters, emails, calls), which behavior can then be tracked, measured, […]

Learn More October 20, 2011

UK Donor Commitment Study

Our colleagues at DonorVoice are going to replicate in the UK their recent US study of donor commitment. The call is out for UK charities who would like to participate in the study, which will be conducted in association with Ken Burnett and SOFII. Here is what Ken said about the US study, as well […]

Learn More October 19, 2011

Want to Increase Referrals & Donations? Start Listening to Donors.

We are big believers in the need for the non-profit space to catch up with its commercial brethren in soliciting and acting on donor feedback. If we had a motto (and we don’t), it would be that non-profits need to start measuring and managing – i.e. acting on – donor attitudes with the same focus […]

Learn More October 18, 2011

Godin Trashes Fundraising Galas

In a recent post titled Gala economics, marketing maven Seth Godin trashes fundraising galas. He argues: “…the gala is actually corrupting. Attendees are usually driven by social and selfish motivations to attend, and thus the philanthropic element of giving–just to give–is removed.” Of course, one could argue that many ‘big checks’ are so-motivated, at least […]

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The Only Fundraising Question You Should Ask

Two of the biggest technological curses infecting fundraising are Word and Excel. Microsoft might be the archenemy of intelligent fundraising. Word, with its copy and paste function has demeaned and degraded copy to the point where we’ve convinced ourselves that the homogenized gruel we serve our donors is truly good copy. Heaven help us. [I’ve […]

Learn More October 17, 2011

Struggling with donations? To (mis) quote Carville, It is the brand, stupid.

A recent Harvard Business Review article, well written as usual, persuasive as usual, is nevertheless, an echo of likely thousands of articles and books before it. The bold headline, “The Cure for the Non-Profit Crisis”, boils down to one central, oft-cited, oft-repeated admonition, Strategic focus is the key to success. They use the term “coherence”, […]

Learn More October 14, 2011