Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Know Thy Customer (Donor, Member, Activist)

If there's any principle more fundamental to marketing success, The Agitator sure can't think of it. Suggestions welcome! Knowing your customer means more than operating on gut instinct, wishful thinking or the perhaps dated presumptions of your nonprofit's founding fathers and mothers. It means … First, collecting pertinent data on individual customer characteristics and behavior, […]

Learn More March 12, 2007

Politics And The English Language

Marketing guru Guy Kawasaki is embarrassed for only having recently read George Orwell's 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language. No apologies needed, Guy. You've done a service by pointing illiterates like The Agitator's editors to Orwell's timeless piece. We urge our readers to sit down this weekend with your morning cup of coffee or […]

Learn More March 10, 2007

Optimistic Bob

Yesterday we applauded the RED campaign, the cause marketing initiative spearheaded by Bono and Bobby Schriver. It's been taking some knocks lately — undeservedly, we argued — for under-delivering and for distracting folks from actually giving (versus consuming). Optimistic Bob, one of our readers, entered a pointed comment to our post, to which we want […]

Learn More March 9, 2007

Green Light For RED

Bloggers and marketers are a-twitter over the question of whether Bono's RED campaign is some kind of hustle. And beneath this specific controversy lies a more fundamental charge that most cause marketing is suspect, because it leverages that evil-of-all-evils –consumption — and puts the good guys in bed with villainous corporations. A number of our […]

Learn More March 8, 2007

Top 10 Reasons To Start A New Nonprofit

Even though I've been involved with a lot of start-up cause groups over the years, and thrown my share of grenades over the wall, this post will indelibly mark me as an old fart. But here goes … One of my favorite bloggers, The Nonprofiteer, reacting to a Time mag article titled Rethinking Nonprofits, raises […]

Learn More March 7, 2007

Will Your Webmaster Save Your Butt?

The New York Times just ran an interesting article titled, Social Networking's Next Phase. The piece offers a clue as to why the ability and imagination — the marketing smarts — of the web team at your nonprofit is so critical. Nonprofit websites have evolved from simple brochureware, to cluttered electronic libraries, to full-time fundraising […]

Learn More March 6, 2007