Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Moving Messages

Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry, creators of techPresident (the award-winning* place to follow how presidential candidates are using online media), have written a great piece on how messages move in our new internet-driven media environment. The immediate context of their article is the campaigns, and the candidates failure — as the authors see it — […]

Learn More September 19, 2007

A Reminder About Testing

My favorite source of info on direct marketing testing is MarketingSherpa. Yesterday they reported a test they had conducted with their own online newsletters that underscores what it means to get down into the weeds and test everything! They were aiming to improve click through rates from brief items in their various e-newsletters through to […]

Learn More September 18, 2007

The Taxman Cometh

There's no question in our minds that more transparency is called for where the work of non-profits is concerned. Afterall, non-profits are just as likely as for-profit organizations to get fouled up by questionable financial practices. That said, it's highly questionable whether the Internal Revenue Service should be playing the role of expert where the […]

Learn More September 17, 2007

WARNING: Here Comes the Direct Mail Temperance Union

No sooner had we filed yesterday's post reporting that online fundraising may account for only 1% to 5% of total non-profit contributions than our inbox revealed the latest attack on a major fundraising workhorse — Direct Mail. On top of our stack was a piece by Laura Novak in the New York Times titled “For-Profit […]

Learn More September 14, 2007

Internet Fundraising Continues to Climb

Inside Indiana Business reports that internet and e-mail fundraising continues to be “increasingly successful”. Citing the latest Philanthropic Giving Index survey released Tuesday by The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University ,34.4% of the 164 non-profits responding to the survey reported “success” with internet fundraising and e-mail solicitations– a more than double percentage increase since […]

Learn More September 13, 2007

Check Out Unity08

Unity08 is an online political movement that aims to offer the American voters an alternative choice to the major party candidates on Election Day 2008. They plan to conduct an online nominating process — over 100,000 delegates have signed up so far — and then to get the selected Presidential and Vice-Presidential nominees on the […]

Learn More September 12, 2007