Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Terrible Fundraising Headline

I love Todd Cohen’s Philanthropy Journal. Excellent range of content. I’m a faithful reader. But I hate this March 26 headline: Fundraising out of sync with giving habits Todd’s story leads as follows: "Technology is changing the way people give, with different generations preferring to give in different ways, and nonprofits should adjust their fundraising […]

Learn More March 31, 2010

More On Checklists

Early in March, we published Checklist Heaven, a post citing direct marketing wiz Denny Hatch on the value of checklists for direct marketers. Denny in turn had been inspired by The Checklist Manifesto, a book written by Atul Gawande. All of this prompted UK’s John Rodd to go buy the book, and write this review, […]

Learn More March 30, 2010

Nonprofit “Customer Service”

As presented in Fast Company, here are some tips on building loyalty via exceptional customer service. They’re offered by Micah Solomon, co-author of Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit. Do nonprofits have "customers" and do they deliver "customer service"? You better believe it! I think every one of Solomon’s seven tips applies … especially when you roll […]

Learn More March 29, 2010

New Generational Giving Data

Convio has produced this valuable white paper on generational giving patterns. It’s based on a 2010 survey of 1500 recent donors to nonprofits. The paper is framed around four segments — Matures, Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y. It’s chock full of data on how different generations give, their giving amounts, how they interact with […]

Learn More March 26, 2010

Adopt A Nerd

I was intrigued by this email fundraising appeal from Environmental Defense Fund (one of my alma maters), because it offered me some choice as a donor. However, I don’t think EDF pushed the choice concept as far as they could (see MyProjects for a look at what real donor choice looks like). The choice […]

Learn More March 25, 2010

Advice On Monthly Giving

Heaps of practical advice on monthly giving programs in this exchange between Lisa Sargent and Jo Sullivan. Jo grew ASPCA’s monthly giving program from 9,.000 donors to 140,000 in the span of ten years. That qualifies as success in my book! Jo talks about cultivation of monthy donors, who and when to invite, whether to […]

Learn More March 24, 2010