Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Only a Week?

I was struck, again, at how behavioral science is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere in the nonprofit world. If you look at the program side of our sector you’ll see lots of examples of behavioral science at work. Hell, the UN has a behavioral science committee and a working group and a subcommittee and a steering […]

Learn More June 1, 2022

What Makes You Tick? What Makes Other Fundraisers Tick?

Back in 2013 the landmark study, Underdeveloped: A National Study of The Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising, a joint project of CompassPoint and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund sounded the alarm about the development and fundraising profession. The study presciently warned that instability in the nonprofit sector would result in 50% of the development […]

Learn More May 30, 2022

Think Locally, Act Locally

How do people think about and organize their giving? Do people have a favorite charity or two for each sub-sector that matters to them? The pie-chart of giving method? What about the stacked bar chart method where folks are single-issue oriented and give to 5-7 conservation charities, for example? I expect most readers would bet […]

Learn More May 27, 2022

Digital Donor Abuse

With another batch of primary elections behind us and more still ahead…with the future of Roe v. Wade and reproductive rights hanging in the balance…with heartbreaking scourge of mass shootings at schools and shopping centers…there’s barely time to ponder the ultimate fate of life as we know it either by pandemic, famine, flood, locusts, or […]

Learn More May 25, 2022

Calling all Copywriters

Your words matter. Anybody saying people don’t read copy hasn’t done a copy test to prove they do. Heck, we’ve done seemingly really minor copy tweaks and seen that matters. Subject line testing anyone? All copywriters know the copy needs to be simple and relatable. It should read like a personal letter or conversation. And […]

Learn More May 23, 2022

Do The Opposite?

Some might say I’m contrarian. Some might be right. In keeping with what some people think, try this on… Charities need, More debt Less revenue diversification Less leanness (i.e., they need bigger reserves) Higher overhead This isn’t contrarian for the sake of it. Consider that the opposite of what I’m prescribing is (more or less) […]

Learn More May 20, 2022