Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The M+R Benchmarks Are In. The Numbers Are Whispering Something Most Fundraisers Don’t Want to Hear.

There’s a moment in every M+R Benchmarks Study when the room goes quiet. Not because the data is shocking, but because it confirms what many already know—and haven’t acted on. This year’s M+R Report doesn’t scream. It sighs. Growth… but bring a microscope Online revenue is up—sometimes sharply, depending on the slice of the data […]

Learn More April 27, 2026

From Your CFO Upon Discovering ROAS

Memorandum To: The Board From: The CFO Re: Capital allocation opportunity Classification: Time-sensitive Per the industry’s most-cited annual benchmark study, paid search advertising currently returns $2.48 in revenue for every $1.00 of spend. This is a documented figure, widely distributed and cited in conference keynotes. We recommend an immediate and substantial increase in paid […]

Learn More April 24, 2026

Do People Give With Heart or Head?

There’s a new meta-analysis in Nature Communications from Matthew Hornsey, Jessica Spence, and Cassandra Chapman that’s worth your time. Cassandra’s work in this area has been consistently thoughtful and this is no different, trying to answer the age old question: do people give from the heart or the head? The short answer is both. The […]

Learn More April 22, 2026

Connection starts where most segmentation stops

If we want real connection, we have to stop pretending generic segmentations are anything but shortcuts. We slice people up by what’s available—age, income, gender, channel, how they transact, etc. But the minute we start grouping by these surface traits, we’ve injected bias. And not just demographic bias, behavioral bias. We’re assuming the thing we’ve […]

Learn More April 20, 2026

Past behavior predicts future behavior, and that’s bad.

Past giving predicts future giving, and that’s where the circular logic of donor understanding begins. It’s like saying, someone is on time because they tend to be punctual. True, but not useful. Yes, past behavior can improve efficiency. But you can efficient your way out of business. What this sector needs is more effectiveness—not just […]

Learn More April 17, 2026

Awareness Isn’t a Funnel, It’s a Filter

Coincidence or serendipity intervened for this follow up to my last post, where I argued saying “trust” and “relevance” isn’t the same as understanding it. On Saturday I came across a real gift, a doctoral researcher shared raw data from a study with real donors across 26 charities that measured relationship and brand concepts from […]

Learn More April 15, 2026