Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Path to Hell is Paved With…Adverbs

So wrote Stephen King in his book, On Writing, further exclaiming he’d shout it from the rooftops. Adverbs aren’t officially a part of our Copy Optimizer Readability or Story Scores but they are a weak part of speech, leading to lifeless, dull writing. The show don’t tell adage is as known as it is ignored. […]

Learn More November 2, 2022

Is Your Charity More Like Edgar Allen Poe or Jules Verne?

Edgar Allan Poe arguably invented the modern detective story and was a key creator of the Symbolism movement in poetry, plus he wrote one of the first science fiction novels in 1838. He died young and penniless. Jules Verne invented nothing though gets credit in some quarters for inventing the sci-fi genre with his 1863 […]

Learn More October 31, 2022

Simple Writing Pays Off (Literally)

I stole this headline from a Harvard Business Review article. The literal in this case is, well, literal. [Sidebar: Are we all going to stand idly by while “literal”, literally becomes synonymous with figurative? My British friends blame Americans and vice versa. I say a pox on both our houses, it’s happening, let’s put out […]

Learn More October 28, 2022

People With Less Free Time Volunteer More?

I’ve always heard the cash or time trope. Hell, I’ve said it. People give of time or treasure depending on which resource they have more of. Makes perfect sense except there’s little evidence beyond the anecdotal to support it. A German research study examines the impact of income and life’s other competing interests on discretionary […]

Learn More October 26, 2022

Who Owns the Story?

That’s the rhetorical question underlying an Amref Health UK report, a charity focused on health in Africa. The report shares loads of useful detail on a direct mail test pitting what they call participant stories against charity stories. The report is authored by outside consultants, Jess Crombie and David Girling, in partnership with Amref. The test […]

Learn More October 24, 2022

Should I Sustain or Should I Go Now? Stop Pressure Tactics.

Join in Please consider joining us for the Should I sustain or should I go now learning session. If you think donor experience matters to sustainer retention then the vague term needs to be broken down into specifics and we need to get more precise. Here’s an example, a telefundraising campaign to convert digital leads […]

Learn More October 21, 2022