Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Right Way To Cultivate

Here is a terrific comment on yesterday’s Agitator post from Andrew Kramer describing how his organization, Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) in Houston, builds cultivation into the guts of their program … and the enormous benefits reaped. He was taking me to task for treating cultivation merely as a monetary cost. Actually, The Agitator has been […]

Learn More December 17, 2009

The Toughest Fundraising Calculation

I’ve been hoarding some recent posts by Seth Godin that are especially pertinent to fundraising. Yesterday I talked about a post where his message was, in effect. don’t ask for money on the first date … cultivate, then ask. I suggested that his dictum might apply in the increasingly challenging world of new donor acquisition, […]

Learn More December 16, 2009

No Money On The First Date

Marketing maven Seth Godin wrote The First Transaction, an interesting post about the need for cultivation to precede any ask for money. It’s a short post, so I’m reproducing most of it here … "Digital transactions are essentially free for you to provide. I can give you permission to teach me something. I can watch […]

Learn More December 15, 2009

$10 Million Gets My Attention

Regular readers know I urge "restraint" with respect to social media fundraising … in the sense that I believe there are higher priorities if your goal is to raise money today. But I received a message recently from Mandy O’Neill at Charity Dynamics, an interactive marketing agency, describing some of their success with fundraising — […]

Learn More December 14, 2009

When Silence Is Golden

I noticed this brief post on Social Media’s SmartBlog. It makes a hugely important point about social media. "It’s tempting to focus on social media as a pulpit for your own ideas. Who will you connect with? What will you say to them? How will you build those relationships into something tangible? But the fact […]

Learn More December 11, 2009

Only “C” For This Fundraising Video

An Agitator reader commended this fundraising video … "I loved this video appeal from the Jewish Federation in Philadelphia. It is simple and lovely, probably low budget." http://www.jewishphilly.org/page.aspx?ID=204926 I’m afraid I have to disagree. I’m always saying "more emotion" in fundraising. Certainly this video (more like a slide show) tries to touch our heartstrings … […]

Learn More December 10, 2009