Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Are You Using the Power of Retro Fundraising?

Summer is coming to an end. Schools are about to re-open. Remember that first day back at school? It was full of excitement and eagerness. You had a new bag, new supplies, and you probably couldn’t wait to see your friends. Or maybe it was a bit different for you. Maybe you were shy, or […]

Learn More September 2, 2022

The Science of Personalized Matching

At DonorVoice we use the term personalized matching to describe the process of creating persuasive appeals that align with the phychological characteristics of the recipient donors. If you’re a regular reader of the Agitator, you already know that personalized matching works. Personalized matching applies the old adage “know your audience” to large-volume marketing. But you […]

Learn More August 31, 2022

Oscar Wilde on Fundraising Copy

“Books are well written or badly written. That is all.” Well, whatever aesthetic criteria Oscar had in mind when talking about literature, we can now scientifically say the same for fundraising copy. All I’ve ever done is write copy (I mean, I’ve done other stuff with my life, but not for a living). But it’s […]

Learn More August 29, 2022

Avoiding Being Asked? Say it Ain’t So.

If people enjoy giving then why would they ever actively avoid a fundraising ask? Being solicited and the joy that can arrive from being charitable are not synonymous. Heck, sometimes they aren’t even distant, far-flung cousins. Relatedly, the act of giving is not what brings joy. It is how people react afterwards. We don’t give […]

Learn More August 26, 2022

If You’re Good at Something Does it Matter More?

Teachers were asked by their school district to complete a survey. The experiment was a 2×2 design (one of our faves): The result? A nothingburger. No difference in survey participation between A-D, randomly assigned groups. To quote Paul Harvey, “And now for the rest of the story.” Researchers noticed a difference in survey participation on […]

Learn More August 24, 2022

Idea Problem or Execution One?

There are two parts to innovation, idea generation and delivering on those ideas. Academics at the London School of Economics (James and Kotak) and Oxford (Tsomocos) built a macroeconomic model to understand productivity growth as a function of idea generation and our collective ability to deliver on them. They used a sample of NYSE companies […]

Learn More August 22, 2022