Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Latest Wake-up Call

At the very time when the stock market is dropping, unemployment is rising and fundraisers are attempting to read the tea leaves in preparation for next year’s budgets, Target Analytics has released their Index of National Fundraising Performance for the 1st Quarter of 2008 … and the picture ain’t pretty. Not only did the number […]

Learn More July 7, 2008

Bringing Donors Closer To The Cause

Mal Warwick’s e-newsletter is always full of excellent practical direct marketing advice for fundraisers. Mal has been running a series featuring online fundraising and engagement "best practices" as seen by Tom Gaffny, EVP at Epsilon. You should tune into this series, where Tom is walking through his top twelve techniques for bringing donors closer to […]

Learn More July 3, 2008

The Internet And Consumer Choice

The Pew Internet Project recently released The Internet and Consumer Choice, a report on how online Americans use the internet to help inform purchases they make. Unfortunately, the study didn’t look specifically at decisions regarding donations (are you listening Pew?!), but it still yields useful insights to nonprofits seeking to raise funds online. Some takeaways […]

Learn More July 2, 2008

Thank You For Stealing

The maxim very successful fundraisers live by was set forth by George Bernard Shaw 80 years ago: "The mediocre borrow, genius steals." In short, when you see a winning concept, campaign, technique, whatever, just steal it. Adapt it. Run with it. Which brings me to today’s plea: All of us need to be sending […]

Learn More July 1, 2008

How To Raise Funds Online

For months, we’ve been urging readers to track the online fundraising exploits of presidential candidates, where new ground has been broken almost weekly … especially by Barack Obama. The Obama campaign is to online fundraising what George McGovern was to direct mail fundraising in 1972 … the trailblazer. Though the Obama folks might not like […]

Learn More June 30, 2008

Boomer Gloom Affecting Fundraising?

Have The Agitator and DonorTrends discovered the Fundraising Rosetta Stone … demystifing the real reason behind falling acquision and retention rates and other recent fundraising plagues? We think so. In reporting our 2005 DonorTrends survey three years ago, we noted that Boomers had climbed to the top of the donor heap, surpassing Seniors (born before […]

Learn More June 27, 2008