Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Planned Giving’s Urban Legend

Couldn't help but pay extra attention to the “Are Charities Losing Out on the Wealth Transfer” post in the always interesting blog review in Give & Take, Peter Panepento's column in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Robert Frank, author of Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich, predicts […]

Learn More August 17, 2007

Who Is Your Opposite?

Here's a marvelous observation from Seth Godin: “One of the hardest things to do is invent a brand with no opposite. You don't have an anchor to play against. Does your team agree on who your opposite is?” As it applies to your nonprofit or firm, the question forces you to think through who YOU […]

Learn More August 16, 2007

Put Her In Stocks!

No, not the financial kind! The Washington Post, in an article fittingly titled In Fundraising's Murky Corners, details the shameful shennanigans of Linda Chavez, who managed to raise about $24.5 million through a series of PACs, but disbursed only 1% for their stated purposes — “fight to save unborn lives,” fighting “big labor bosses,” and […]

Learn More August 15, 2007

Disaster Strikes!

And what do you do? Weird and damaging events can happen, even to happy-go-lucky nonprofits. As Seth Godin notes in this post, complaining about poor communications during a recent city-stopping three-inch rainfall plus tornado in NYC, some things just can't be predicted. But to paraphrase his advice: you can be really good at communicating with […]

Learn More August 14, 2007

Ideacide

Guy Kawasaki, original marketer of the Mac, is my favorite collector of thinking about innovation and innovators. In this post, he's relayed the “seven sins of solutions” as articulated by Matt May, author of The Elegant Solution. May seems to have coined the marvelous term “ideacide” to describe the process of killing innovative thinking. Here, […]

Learn More August 10, 2007

Prize For Funders?

Holden Karnofsky at The GiveWell Blog has been making a good case that foundations should release far more information about their outcomes. How poorly or brilliantly are their grants achieving the intended goals? And what can the rest of us — nonprofits and funders alike — learn from the vast experimentation that is occurring? What […]

Learn More August 9, 2007