Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Grist Envy

Before the internet, many cause organizations represented the only trusted source of in-depth information available nationwide on issues that people cared passionately about. If you really wanted to delve into money and politics, you joined Common Cause. Into human rights, you joined Amnesty. Civil liberties, the ACLU. Into the environment, a variety of choices. These […]

Learn More July 28, 2010

Cut Attrition In Half

Want to know how CARE International cut in half the attrition rate of its face-to-face acquired donors? They’ve created an online reporting approach that speaks in a personalized way to individual donors, telling them in specific terms what their (i.e., “Your“) contributions are accomplishing. Wow! Doesn’t that sound like a no-brainer? Well, the concept might […]

Learn More July 27, 2010

Magnets Anyone?

Here’s an article from DirectMarketingIQ extolling the virtues of involvement devices in direct mail appeals. Magnets are a classic. First of all, yes, lots of testing confirms that this stuff generally lifts response (but that’s not an excuse to not test before you commit your own nonprofit to thousands of tchotchkes). The article asserts that […]

Learn More July 26, 2010

Improve Your Online Fundraising

Here’s a great presentation from Convio on improving the fundraising performance of your website. I like it because its recommendations are data-driven … they didn’t spring out the imagination of someone’s creative department. And I like the recommendations because they are specific and produced real results for the client who is the subject of the […]

Learn More July 23, 2010

Excitement Or Peacefulness?

Here’s a brief article at Engage: Boomers that once again reminds us as marketers/fundraisers to think carefully about our audience and put ourselves in their shoes. Brent Bouchez, principal in a firm that focuses on messaging to the 50+ universe, cites a Stanford Graduate School of Business study on age and happiness, which found — […]

Learn More July 22, 2010

Telefundraising Works

A few days ago we posted on telephone solicitation, the neglected stepchild of fundraising. The post generated some comments like I’d like to give more exposure to. First, from Adrian Salmon, writing about the experience of Save the Children UK: They printed full-page colour advertisements in newspapers asking readers to text in the word ‘ceasefire’ […]

Learn More July 21, 2010