Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Fundraising in Inflation and Under Threat of Nuclear War. 7 Survival Tips for 2022

Here we go again. The phone’s ringing, the email inbox dinging as colleagues attempt to figure out what to do in a world that more than ever seems to be falling apart. Over Agitator’s 15 years our readers have witnessed a litany of financial meltdowns (2008), pandemic disasters (2020) and now in 2022 inflation coupled […]

Learn More March 14, 2022

Fundraising Lessons From the Liberty Ship Innovation

Shipbuilding pre-WWII was akin to fundraising before mass market channels existed—highly bespoke and tailored to the buyer, time consuming and with non-scalable labor as the primary input. Necessity often being the mother of all invention, the shipbuilding industry in the United States underwent a radical transformation to meet the needs of the Allied cause. But […]

Learn More March 11, 2022

The Exquisite Corpse of Direct Mail

If direct mail is dead it’s one hell of an exquisite corpse. And, with each passing week it grows even more exquisite. Not that it’s ever died; just grown more valuable, important, and increasingly informed by more and more science. We’ve been on the direct mail soap box a long time, particularly urging small to […]

Learn More March 9, 2022

The Anatomy & Science of Conversation

Conversation abounds in the world of fundraising whether in-person or over the phone. Everybody makes note that we should be active listeners and strive for making a conversation, well, you know, “conversational”. That feels thin. The social science world has done a lot to get a more robust answer. This has implications for humans talking […]

Learn More March 7, 2022

The Last Mile Matters

In supply chain world the last mile is that last step to get the Amazon package to your door. It’s notoriously expensive and cumbersome and it can be the difference between turning a profit or not. Your last mile equivalent is the paper or digital equivalent reply form. This last mile is a good place […]

Learn More March 4, 2022

Half of All Impressions are Wasted

Attention Direct Marketers: This may seem like a branding post and the “soft” metrics of awareness and people liking your brand. It is! And that’s a big, big part of your job even if you aren’t actively putting time against it. Why? All your direct marketing has much, much, much more immediate failure than success. […]

Learn More March 2, 2022

Award-Winning Blog

Fundraising in Inflation and Under Threat of Nuclear War. 7 Survival Tips for 2022