Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Is Community Service The New Green?

This story from Brandweek says Yes. One marketer says "green" is too intellectual … the payoff for getting involved is too distant. Others attribute a surge in community service to the exhortations of President Obama. Here are two excerpts that struck me … "Perhaps no community service push received more attention of late than Starbucks […]

Learn More February 6, 2009

Year-end Results

We’re seeing some discussion by fundraising consultants of their clients’ year-end results. Here are two examples … M+R Strategic Services (look for "Ups & Downs of Online Giving") talks about theirs … with interesting results from Oxfam America. And Nick Allen of Donordigital makes some observations about number of gifts remaining steady, while average gifts […]

Learn More February 5, 2009

The Theology Of The Hammer

Early yesterday, Millard Fuller, the co-founder of Habitat for Humanity, died suddenly. The ministry he and his wife Linda founded in 1976 out of a small gray house in Americus, Georgia has provided poverty housing for 1.5 million people. The papers, networks and fundraising trade press will herald the fact that, a millionaire by 30, […]

Learn More February 4, 2009

Online Fundraisers: The Eyes Have It

Here is a provocative piece of advice for online fundraisers from copywriting maven Jerry Huntsinger, an Agitator guest writer. Jerry argues that — first and foremost — websites need to feature emotion, not information. But information is the focus of too many nonprofit websites, especially their key landing pages, where the initial battle to engage […]

Learn More February 3, 2009

A Remarkable Statistic

Last week The Agitator devoted a great deal of attention to social networking sites and their importance to fundraisers … though I submit that — despite lots of "be my nonprofit’s friend" and "support my walk for …" fundraising experiments — no one has yet found the key to unlocking this potential. Here, from TechCrunch, […]

Learn More February 2, 2009

More Value From Missionaries

This week I’ve pitched the importance of leveraging your "missionaries" with new social networking tools as a fundraising strategy. I’ve also suggested ways to identify which of the 10-15% of your donors might be your missionaries. But missionaries have an additional value beyond any direct personal fundraising they might do. I submit that they are […]

Learn More January 30, 2009