Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Roger Loses

Awhile back, Roger instigated an Agitator poll on the tension between privacy and transparency in the conduct of nonprofit and political affairs, including fundraising associated with causes and politics. As usual, to defend official secrecy, he laid on us a lot of angst about big brother and political despots, reaching all the way back to […]

Learn More January 5, 2007

Election Surprise

Here are some interesting stats from the Pew Research Center on the nature of political communications in the rather intensely fought 2006 mid-terms. See how good a political tactician you are … Rank these communications tactics by the frequency with which they were used to contact registered voters. You might be surprised. Personal visit at […]

Learn More January 4, 2007

Online Retail Spending Soars

I like to see more folks spending more money online, because that means they'll make more contributions online as well. Trust me on this. Online spending is habit forming. So I'm happy that comScore Networks, a leading online market research outfit, reports that $23 billion was spent on retail websites (excluding auction sites) in the […]

Learn More January 3, 2007

Giving Totals for 2006

In case you missed it over the holidays, a survey for the Wall Street Journal conducted by Harris Interactive found that 83% of Americans contributed to a charity in 2006, with average total giving of $1220 (down about a hundred bucks from 2005). Here are the categories used, with percentage of respondents giving to each. […]

Learn More January 2, 2007

Wanted: Mavericks

From our archives. Happy New Year! Have you ever just run with an idea? Had a hunch … set up a test or experiment to prove it out … and done all this without permission or an approved budget? Then you'd qualify as a “maverick” according to Polly LaBarre (a former senior editor at Fast […]

Learn More January 1, 2007

Kid Squanders Relief Money

If you've been reading The Agitator over the holidays, you've seen we've been having some fun — hopefully spreading Christmas cheer — courtesy of one of our favorite humor sources, The Onion. This is our absolute favorite “report” from The Onion, originally posted on The Agitator back in July … but just a teaser here: […]

Learn More December 31, 2006