Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Raining Cats & Dogs For ASPCA

Responding to our post, Give Your Donors A Voice, Ayumi Stubbs shares with The Agitator the success of the ASPCA with inviting supporters to submit their own content for ASPCA's website: “Last year we started a simple cat photo contest that we promoted to our weekly newsletter subscribers (ASPCA News Alert). Our expectations were low […]

Learn More May 24, 2007

Salvation Army … Fading Brand?

Months ago an Agitator post applauded the Salvation Army in the face of a New York Times article probing whether the organization was losing its way. Critics questioned whether it was appropriate for the Salvation Army to use proceeds of a $1.5 billion bequest from McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc to build community centers that offered […]

Learn More May 23, 2007

The Not-So-Hidden Bonanza

Last week the Journal of Philanthropy carried the summary of a study by Campbell & Company on bequest giving. And once again I found myself asking why arent fundraisers — particularly those good in direct response — falling all over themselves to get in on what the Journal of Planned Giving estimates to be a […]

Learn More May 22, 2007

Give Your Donors A Voice

By now, most nonprofits publish an e-newsletter of some sort. These range from uninspired re-hashing of print newsletters to original e-pubs that take full advantage of the tools that can make online publications far more dynamic and compelling. For example, commercial marketers increasingly are enlisting their customers to create and submit content of their own […]

Learn More May 18, 2007

Evaluating Your Online Investment

A recent review of some of Convio's online benchmarking data reminded me of the importance of true bottomline metrics. Especially in view of results from a recent survey by blogger Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention indicating that barely one-third of nonprofits actually measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. Unbelievable! The other two-thirds should be […]

Learn More May 17, 2007

What Does It Take?

I just read the results of a client's survey that, among other things, was seeking to identify the issues that respondents regard as “crucial to the well-being of the country.” Out of eighteen issues offered to a constituency that tilted “liberal” on social issues, only 20% selected “fighting for a better life for disadvantaged Americans” […]

Learn More May 16, 2007