Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Email Advice For Smaller Nonprofits

The Agitator is often asked for advice by readers working in smaller to mid-sized nonprofits, where limited staff and resources mean folks are juggling many responsibilities and solutions need to be straightforward and more "off-the-shelf." We honestly can’t do justice to each request, but we try to be useful. And in particular we watch for […]

Learn More April 9, 2008

State Of The News Media

Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has just released its State of the News Media 2008. This is a "must read" report if your role includes getting your nonprofit’s message disseminated to the public. The report discusses important changes in how news reporting occurs, what gets produced, and what consumers seem to be looking for. […]

Learn More April 8, 2008

What’s An Email Address Worth?

Eric Rardin at Care2 offers this calculator to estimate the value of an email address. As he notes, while this calculator focuses on donations, nonprofits can assign additional, less quantifiable values to their e-names reflecting other benefits (e.g., branding, advocacy impact). Using his methodology, Eric has come up with some benchmark values for email addresses in […]

Learn More April 7, 2008

50 Ways To Increase Direct Mail Response

The Target Marketing Group is offering a webinar on April 24 titled 50 New Ways to Increase Response. Cost is $79. The session is specifically focused on commercial direct mail, package components, etc., but many of these tactical best practices will probably apply to DM and online fundraising offers and presentation as well. I can’t vouch […]

Learn More April 4, 2008

Are Women Served By The Web?

Diane Mermigas, editor-at-large of MediaPost and a self-described "professional boomer with four children," has written this interesting critique of websites branded as "for women." She says most of them are missing the mark in terms of style, content and relevance. Her favorite "for women" site seems to be WowOwow.com, which "bucks the predictable by providing […]

Learn More April 3, 2008

Where Do You Begin?

This post from Seth Godin — Where do we begin? — got me thinking about copywriting. I’m using "copywriting" expansively here — a direct mail letter, email appeal, web copy, press release, note to major donor, cover letter for your resume. What do you assume about your reader? What does he or she know about you, […]

Learn More April 2, 2008