Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Does Your Lead Generation Attract the Best Donors?

Given the tsunami of petitions, surveys and other devices flooding both my postal and digital mailboxes it’s clear that more and more organizations are turning to lead generation as the first step in their donor acquisition programs. The question, of course, is just how well do these leads convert to good donors? And what steps […]

Learn More January 14, 2022

Are You Fundraising At or To Your Supporters?

This question of ‘at’ or ‘to’ struck me when reading a report from a UK agency that ran ads for a US animal rights advocacy charity. I found the thinking behind the ads and the testing to be wildly superficial and uninteresting and almost certainly leaving lots of money on the table. But, I realize […]

Learn More January 12, 2022

A Low Risk, High Reward Approach to Fundraising

In recent years we’ve tried to show how breakthroughs in research, particularly in behavioral science enable knowledgeable fundraisers to reap some mighty impressive rewards that come from a more in-depth understanding of “why” a particular donor gives (identity), why different messages are required for different donors (personality/psychological profiles) and how these elements are used in […]

Learn More January 10, 2022

What Works Best: The Spoken or Written Word?

We know that all fundraising writing or speaking should be conversational and personal. It should avoid long words, nouns, prepositions and adjectives that all make the copy feel dense. But which approach works best? We’ve scored lots of copy and transcribed phone conversations that follow written scripts. Neither has an inherent legup on being conversational […]

Learn More January 7, 2022

Corporate Political Giving: A Threat to Democracy or Just a Study in Hypocrisy

A year ago, following the January 6th mob attack on the Capitol we noted in Funding the Insurrection, “Money in politics is a very powerful force. So is withholding it.” Back then we wondered how corporate donors and their political action committees (PACs) would react to those 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election. […]

Learn More January 5, 2022

Getting the Damn Envelope Open: Part 2

Way back in 2020, which is at least 12 years ago in Covid time we wrote about the role of emotion to increase intention to open the envelope. Intention is a necessary mental way-station to actual opening, it matters. The more intent, the less likely there’s a gap between intention and doing. A few key […]

Learn More January 3, 2022