Award Winning Blog - Agitator

The Corvallis Effect and Donor Fatigue

A mysterious student has been attending class at Oregon State University for the past two months enveloped in a big, black bag. Only his bare feet show. Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11am the Black Bag sits on a small table near the back of the classroom. The class is Speech 113 – basic […]

Learn More June 9, 2021

Turning Vision Into Reality — Update on CopyOptimizer

Because it’s been a year since Kevin first unveiled CopyOptimizer™ this is an appropriate time for an update. His dream was creation of an online tool to help everyone–including you and me– write better, more effective copy. Anyhow, that vision has now turned into a reality. Lots of fundraisers are currently alpha testing it. I’ve come to recognize its immense value—especially where email is concerned. By and large the quality of copy where email is concerned is downright dreadful. Not healthy, especially when more and more organizations are relying […]

Learn More June 7, 2021

A “Winning”Test

Would you consider sending the same ask to the same person in the same time period but through two different channels? This technique is sometimes employed with emails that match the direct mail message and are timed to coincide with arrival in the physical mailbox. We tested the same notion but with a request for […]

Learn More June 4, 2021

Personality and The Words You Use

The University of Cambridge has a demo app predicting your personality on the Big Five based on word usage vis-a-vis your social media accounts. It’s quite accurate on seemingly very little data – I only linked to my infrequently used and only in a professional capacity, Twitter account. You’d think that’d be a biased sample […]

Learn More June 2, 2021

REMINDER: FREE SUMMER SERIES

It ain’t Sheakspeare in the Park, or the Tamglewood Music Festival, nor one of the Edinburgh Festivals, but it’s custom made for fundraisers open to re-thinking and re-imagining how to best approach post-pandemic challenges. This Free Summer Series is brought to you by DonorVoice, the Behavioral Science Fundraising Agency and you can register here In these short, […]

Learn More June 1, 2021

Tarnishing the Honor of Memorial Day

Here in the U.S. we’re headed into a long weekend that culminating in Memorial Day on Monday. Although the day is intended to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in performance of their military duties, many folks will pay tribute by donating to charities that address a variety of issues facing veterans. Sadly, it […]

Learn More May 28, 2021