Award Winning Blog - Agitator

I Feel the Need, The Need for Speed

Come on, I had to do it. That was a coming of age period for me, formative years and all. Plus a line that corny has to be good. But now it’s back to our original, behavioral science fundraising channel. Here are three story attributes that matter to success. Volume is bad. Does your story […]

Learn More July 18, 2022

Should Charities Be More Commercial?

How many charities have a fee for service revenue line? Hospitals, lots of cultural, place-based charities, the entire public broadcasting world…more than you might think. Does having a commercial revenue line create conflict with service delivery to beneficiaries? Or how about community building? It may be hard to be inclusive if you make more profit […]

Learn More July 15, 2022

What if Donors Could Give More Now and Pay Later?

A huge bonus springing from the BBB’s Wise Giving Alliance’s Heart of Giving Podcast are the windows host Art Taylor opens onto the personalities and motivation of folks who do the work, provide the charitable services, and come up with innovations worth exploring in our sector. Such was last week’s podcast featuring Dominic Kalms, the […]

Learn More July 13, 2022

The Plague of Churn – Donors and Staff

Money isn’t everything. Direct cash outlays to the poor can make them psychologically worse off if those outlays are temporary. In an experiment poor people were given $2000, $500 and $0 (control group). Both groups getting the money were objectively better off having spent it on bills, food, clothing for kids, etc. But, both were […]

Learn More July 11, 2022

Be Distinctive, Not Differentiated

“If I had a nickel.…” No good story ever comes from that start. But, seriously, if I had a nickel for every time I heard a charity brand talk about what makes them unique and then sit through a rattling off of a completely undifferentiated list of programmatic focus areas – e.g. we help women, […]

Learn More July 8, 2022

Words Matter. Handle With Care.

Words have always mattered. In this highly partisan, explosively charged times they matter even more. Take the term ‘white privilege’. To some people it summarizes the combined effects of historical, economic, and cultural forces that allow a larger percentage of whites to climb the socioeconomic ladder than Blacks or Hispanics To other folks use […]

Learn More July 6, 2022