Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Fastest Way to Perfect Supporter Satisfaction

Q: What’s the fastest way to get perfect supporter satisfaction ratings? A: Have all your dissatisfied supporters leave and never come back. If that isn’t your preferred option, you might be interested in another. If so, mark your calendar: 4th November, 10am EST, Webinar on Donor Satisfaction. Kevin and I will share a new and […]

Learn More October 27, 2021

The Stuff In Between Our Words

Copy writing is all about the words. Or is it? What about all the little bits pushed in between? Punctuation usage can tell us a lot about writing style. Which copy looks easier to read? You don’t need to see any of the words to pick the one on the left. If you picked the […]

Learn More October 25, 2021

The Danger of Mistaking Change for Progress

I’ll never forget the little old lady. Early in my career I called on her to discuss the college’s plan for a new library, hoping she’d become a major contributor. She served tea and little cucumber sandwiches. We chatted amiably and then got down to business. With great enthusiasm I showed her the architect’s schematics, […]

Learn More October 22, 2021

There are No Best Practices

That is our headline from an analysis of (newspaper) headlines that found no discernible pattern in determining what makes for winning headlines. I know, dizzying. The analysis was performed on a a big data set: 141,000 A/B headline tests run by 293 newspaper websites. The project was done by academics at Northwestern’s Computational Journalism Lab. […]

Learn More October 20, 2021

Gen Z to Save the Day

“There is a revolution under way . . . It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions, and social structure are changing in consequence. Its ultimate creation could be a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. This is the revolution of the new generation.” This was written 51 […]

Learn More October 18, 2021

Supercharge Your Giving Tuesday

With Giving Tuesday ( November 30) on your near-term planning horizon I’m hoping you’ll choose to think once, twice and even thrice before dipping into the Giving Tuesday Sea of Sameness by offering up one more of the hundreds of matching gift offers that will be indiscriminately dumped on donors. For starters I recommend you […]

Learn More October 15, 2021