Award Winning Blog

Know Your Audience! Or Fail.

Effective marketing begins with knowing your audience … whether it’s choosing mailing lists or appropriate media for your message, or crafting the message itself. Without a very clear understanding of the person, customer, or donor you are trying to reach, speak to and elicit a response from, you’re doomed from the start. How many times […]

Learn More June 22, 2009

US Govt Buys Twitter, Facebook!

Breaking news from reliable Agitator sources … Realising that social nets like Twitter and Facebook have yet to establish a viable business model, but are essential for promoting democracy (at least abroad), the US Government has decided to purchase the two networks outright. Said President Obama: "We would have preferred to see that users of […]

Learn More June 19, 2009

Twitter: Not Just For Revolutions

Happy to hand the megaphone today to Guest Agitator Janice Christensen, for her thoughts on the powerful mobilizing — and through that, fundraising — role of Twitter. Janice is the former Director of Campaigns of Amnesty International USA, a board member of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC) and a principal in DonorTrends. […]

Learn More June 18, 2009

Online Donations: Usability Testing

Many thanks to Abny Santicola at Fundraising Success mag for pointing us to the latest usability testing on nonprofit websites by design guru Jakob Nielsen. Nielsen is the best at this. His methodology is to observe in realtime how visitors actually use websites, read e-newsletters, etc. I wish there were a Nielsen of direct mail […]

Learn More June 17, 2009

Boomers Crash Social Net Party

Here’s a fun account from MediaPost of the phenom of Boomers joining the world of online social networking. As the article begins: "’Congratulations! Your parents just joined Facebook. Your life is officially over.’ Such is the greeting visitors receive upon entering the blog ‘Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook,’ which – as the name implies […]

Learn More June 16, 2009

Does Your Nonprofit Make Friends?

Last week, I raised the question of whether your donors relate to your organization as "friends" or merely "acquaintances?" The hypothesis being that donor loyalty requires building a "friend" relationship. I suggested a simple first step, like including photos of the signers of your letters and emails. So far, no one has dumped on the […]

Learn More June 15, 2009