Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Donor You Don’t Know

You thought you “knew” her … the donor who’s given you $200 a year faithfully for the past five years. You’re happy to have her, because she’s loyal and responds to your first renewal notice, saving you money. Aren’t we content? Then you read she passed away and left $1 million to your competitor. But […]

Learn More August 18, 2010

Nonprofits’ Growing Use Of Social Media

As reported in eMarketer, here’s a chart, based on data compiled by UMass Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, showing the growing use of social media tools by charities. eMarketer says corporates should be learning from nonprofits’ use of these tools. Personally, I think we’re all still learners in this field. Tom

Learn More August 17, 2010

How To Write Fundraising Copy

Recently received my update on new packages and resources in the terrific SOFII files. Somehow I had never noticed the “tutorial” on writing fundraising copy offered by Jerry Huntsinger, one of the best ever. He’s up to installment #22 — “Whatever happened to real stories about real people?” If you write — or depend upon […]

Learn More August 16, 2010

Single Channel Is Dead

Boy, did Steve MacLaughlin at Target Analytics make today’s post easy! Here’s the lead from his recent blog post: “Direct mail is dead. Email is dead. TV and radio are dead. Face to face is dead. Telegraph is dead. Social media is dead. There are so many obituaries being written these days that it’s hard […]

Learn More August 12, 2010

Why You?

I was reading this article on FundraisingSuccessMag.com about lessons from Haiti fundraising. The article is useful to read in its own right, but one comment in particular caught my eye and set me puzzling in a different direction. The comment, by Amanda Seller of the UN Refugee Agency: “People are so informed that we are […]

Learn More August 11, 2010

Dare To Run The Agitator Gauntlet?

Friday I showed you an online fundraising appeal from environmental group EDF. And I had the temerity to say it was damn good, asking … what’s wrong with this appeal? Whoa! We received a whole bunch of comments on the appeal … most of them critical. Mostly on two accounts … first, the copywriting itself […]

Learn More August 10, 2010