Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Is Your Fundraising News-Driven?

For some nonprofits, fundraising can be quite sensitive to the headlines … a natural disaster here, a Supreme Court nomination there. I once had a client castigate me, rightfully, for "sitting on" an urgent appeal opportunity until Monday, triggered by an event that occurred the previous Saturday (this is pre-Internet, I’ll say in meekest of […]

Learn More July 31, 2009

Calculating Your Online $$ Potential

Convio is brandishing a new "fundraising calculator" that claims to compute the future value of your integrated direct mail, telemarketing and online fundraising stream. Says Jordan Viator of Convio: "The tool allows nonprofit organizations to estimate their online fundraising potential based on their actual number of donors, donations and online donor activity — giving them […]

Learn More July 30, 2009

What Makes You Special?

Yesterday I suggested that competition amongst nonprofits for the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of donors might become more fierce; that this would be good for the causes served; and this trend would force more attention to communicating the core defferentiating qualities of competing groups. In other words, your "story" had better be about why you […]

Learn More July 29, 2009

Feeling More Competitive?

I was reading this article from Online Spin about the competition between Nielsen Online and comScore as to who has the biggest and best online panel for measuring online behavior. This is the sort of thing that market researchers can get quite passionate about. And indeed, given that marketers are spending billions on online advertising, […]

Learn More July 28, 2009

Wow, What A Goof!

Something possessed an Agitator reader to share this amazing goof with us. We’ll keep this person anonymous to protect the guilty, as well as the organization, to spare it (you’d all recognize it) the embarrassment. Here it is: "While with the [organization], I screwed up a letter back in the day of literally cutting and […]

Learn More July 27, 2009

Before You Write A Word!

We welcome a Guest Agitator today, copywriter Lisa Sargent (www.lisasargent.com). Lisa has a bone to pick with nonprofits who try to write effective fundraising copy — themselves or through consultants — without an explicit creative brief to provide the essential guidance. She’s right. Here’s Lisa … Will this letter win … or lose? I have […]

Learn More July 24, 2009