Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Promise Me

Go ahead, make a commitment! That’s the advice of David Kravinchuk at the FLA Group, a Canadian fundraising consultancy. David argues that few donors these days give out of a sense of duty or obligation or blind trust, as older generations did. Today’s donors want to see results. If you want their contributions, your nonprofit […]

Learn More May 12, 2010

The Middle-Aged Brain

Let’s stick with Boomers another day. OK, a little broader … this is about “middle-aged” brains (ages 40-65). Marketer Anne Mai Bertelsen writes in Engage: Boomers about an interview she heard based on The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain, by Barbara Strauch (I’ve ordered it!). It turns out the middle-aged brain is better at: […]

Learn More May 11, 2010

Scary Thought

Awhile back Karin Kirchoff at Defenders of Wildlife sent us an email commenting on Boomers in relation to an apparently shrinking donor universe. She mused: "I remember many years ago (like 15 years ago) sitting in on a session at a conference led by an expert in psychographic marketing who was reporting out on the […]

Learn More May 10, 2010

Who’s Mailing What?

From DirectMarketingIQ, here’s an analysis of the direct mail stream over the past two years. The data are drawn from the 10,000 mail piece archive of Who’s Mailing What! The big news is that fundraising mail has flourished in comparison to other commercial mail over the last two years … rising from 13% of the […]

Learn More May 7, 2010

Who Tweets?

The latest data suggests that Twitter has stalled out at 17 million users. Here’s a good analysis. Personally, I take this as a welcome sign that there is still some semblance of substance and sanity on the planet. If someone in your nonprofit is trumpeting the urgency of getting on board the Twitter phenom, fire […]

Learn More May 6, 2010

Busted Nonprofit brand

I’m hugely impressed with Nancy Schwartz’ analysis of the Komen For The Cure’s (Komen) disastrous cause marketing partnership with Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). Nancy does a terrific job of both dissecting the bad idea itself and then commenting on Komen’s communications response (or more accurately, lack thereof). She calls her article a case study … […]

Learn More May 5, 2010