Award Winning Blog

Is Email Dead? Or Just Dying?

Just when online fundraisers are beginning to get a handle on email fundraising (testing customization, subject lines, etc), a new challenge is raising its head.Large numbers of netizens are abandoning their traditional email and choosing instead to message directly via their social networking sites. It’s like having cell phone users disappearing from your outbound telemarketing […]

Learn More October 2, 2008

Online Prospecting – Prez Candidate Style

Candidates McCain and Obama are aggressively using paid search word buys to court prospective supporters.Basically, this involves buying small text or banner ads that display when someone uses the relevant search engine — Google, Yahoo, whatever — to seek online info using a particular word or phrase … like “economic crisis” or “Iraq war.” A […]

Learn More October 1, 2008

Latest Fundraising Stats: Read ‘Em and Weep!

Target Analytics has just issued the results for its Index of National Fundraising Performance for the first half of 2008. Read ‘em and weep! · Fewer than one third (31%) of the organizations in the index had positive donor growth in the first half of 2008 –a continuation of the declining trend over the past […]

Learn More September 30, 2008

Direct response TV lessons

Historically, the most consistently successful nonprofit fundraisers using DRTV have been the child sponsor agencies — Save the Children, Worldvision, Christian Children’s Fund, etc.* Their campaigns effectively married strong emotional visuals and case statements with the sound ROI economics of monthly giving.I’ve always thought that animal welfare and protection organizations would be another logical candidate […]

Learn More September 29, 2008

AGITATOR WEEKEND: Bailouts and Debates

The Agitator’s Week In Review. This was a week for politics, beginning with the Washington, D.C. soap opera over the on-again-off-again bailout of the U.S. financial system and ending with the on-again Presidential Debates in Oxford, Mississippi. Regardless of where you stand on the bailout you have to feel a sense of pride last […]

Learn More September 27, 2008

Rate Your Website Against The Candidates’ Sites

Over on Convio’s blog, Connection Cafe, their staff has been comparing the websites of Obama and McCain on key attributes like accessibility, ease and clarity of navigation, and — of most interest to me — engagement features and pathways.Online politicking pundits, like the folks at TechPresident (who, BTW, are doing a brilliant job of reporting […]

Learn More September 26, 2008