Award Winning Blog - Agitator

New Math For Fundraisers

Here’s a fundraising scenario and projection for you to play with. Assume your nonprofit has 100,000 active donors, 15% of whom are "missionaries" — that’s the proportion of donors who, in our DonorTrends survey, consider themselves active recruiters for at least one cause or charity they support. Your nonprofit might have a bigger or smaller […]

Learn More January 26, 2009

Spaceship Broken – Need Parts

I’ll bet most fundraisers — together with each and every commercial marketer on the planet — will send out more email solicitations in 2009 than you ever have before. The email In-boxes of prospects and donors will be inundated as never before. How can you help your email campaigns penetrate the e-chaos and be more […]

Learn More January 23, 2009

An “Obama Effect” On Fundraising?

I’ve been wondering whether there will be an "Obama Effect" on nonprofit fundraising. Will the enthusiasm about President Obama in so many quarters translate somehow into increased charitable giving? Although it would be awfully hard to prove, I think it might, for three reasons: 1. For many, Obama has supplied a booster shot of hope, […]

Learn More January 22, 2009

More Caution Re Online Social Nets

Yesterday I suggested that fundraisers not go overboard with the resources you devote at this stage to social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. Here is some more caution. As reported by Mediapost, a recent study by market research firm IDG found that members of social networks tended to click on ads less than […]

Learn More January 21, 2009

Social Nets – A Fundraising Distraction?

First, the good news. A recent "must read" data memo from the Pew Internet Project reports that 35% of American adult internet users have a personal profile on an online social network site … four times as many as three years ago. More detail on the percentages of online folks who have a social net […]

Learn More January 20, 2009

What Are You Doing Tomorrow?

Beginning with the New Year, Tom and I have been pounding away on the subject of “loyalty." The term means different things to different folks. A key factor is likely to prove to be "involvement." ( We have a series of surveys and other analytic projects in the works which we’ll share with you later. […]

Learn More January 19, 2009