Behavioral Science Posts

What About People Who Don’t Answer Donor Surveys?

When you are in the business of asking donors about themselves and customizing their donor journeys based on that, you almost always get the question: “But what about those folks who don’t answer the survey?” There are couple of answers to this.  The first is: keep asking.  If there’s a datum that you need to […]

Learn More June 21, 2018

Are You a Modern or Medieval Fundraiser?

Donors are changing far faster today than most of the organizations they give to.  Their expectations are rising at the very moment their trust and loyalty are declining. Unfortunately, far too many nonprofits fail to understand this reality.  As a result they’re woefully unprepared to cope.   Few organizations understand why their donors give… few bother […]

Learn More June 20, 2018

Listening to the Wrong Donors

Jeff Brooks recently posted his 5th Law of Fundraising, which is “The more effective the fundraising campaign, the more complaints it will generate.” If this dictum were the law of gravity, I would have floated away.  Some of my most effective campaigns have come in with donor notes that complimented the communication – a rarity.  […]

Learn More June 18, 2018

Donor Communications Control

We gave you Shakespeare. We gave you the Beatles. And in the fundraising world, we gave you Ken Burnett. So, it is with pride that us Brits claim our island as the birthplace of relationship fundraising. But it’s been a miserable few years for us British fundraisers. We’ve been beaten up in the media and […]

Learn More June 8, 2018

Dining With Donors

It had been years since I visited an all-night diner. So, the other night, road weary and longing for a cheeseburger and fries, I pulled into a real live, old-fashioned, aluminum clad diner and made my way to a booth with its own jukebox. Heaven. BUT… something was amiss. Out of place. Unfamiliar. With my […]

Learn More May 9, 2018

When Have You Acquired a Donor?

When you received their donation, right?  Once you have their sweet sweet cheddar in your bank account, the person has made a donation.  Thus they are a donor.  They have been acquired.  Q.E.D.  On to the next blog post. But let’s consider this in reverse.  You go to a new restaurant.  It’s so horrid you […]

Learn More May 4, 2018

Key Fundraising Ingredients

What better way to end the week than with Dilbert;  sent along by the ghost of Tom Belford who hovers like a hawk over The Agitator. A reminder that all the great research, advice, and case studies available to fundraisers ain’t worth much without investing the time and toil required to put them to work […]

Learn More April 20, 2018

Attacking the Dreaded Rebrand with Donor Focus

I’ve been through rebrands.  I’ve been through prostate exams.  And I know which I’d rather go through again. That’s why when the question “what does donor identity mean for a rebranding organization?” came up on last week’s webinar, I started to experience all of the side effects you’d see in the average pharmaceutical ad. (“Ask […]

Learn More April 19, 2018

(Lack of) Speed Kills

When Amazon started, people were nervous about providing  a credit card number in hope that their books would arrive. (Don’t @ me, 25-and-unders, this was a real thing.)  Will my book arrive?  Will it be what I intended?  Is this whole Internet thing a scam? So a large part of Amazon’s infrastructure works to convince […]

Learn More April 5, 2018

The Value of “Random Amazement”

This week Nick and I deal with the critically important function of “Donor Service.” Let’s start with this fundamental question:  Do you really know what good donor service looks like? I sure hope so, because as we’ve reported before, nearly 20% of all donors who drop out quit because of lousy donor service. Consequently, any […]

Learn More April 3, 2018

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