If You Ain’t First You’re Last

One of the greatest movies of all time for those of us who enjoy parody, slapstick and juvenile humor is Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights. He spends most of his life against an impossible standard of “if you ain’t first you’re last”, a motto from his father who was high on peyote at the time he […]

Statistical Significance Smificance…

Your SmartPhone Makes You, More You

I hate my phone and love it. Check that; I love my phone and hate my kids’ phones. Check that;  I love my phone and hate my kids’ phones except when I need to reach them but even then, I still kind of hate their phones because they insist on texting with initials and shorthand […]

Petitions With Purpose

I’m sure everyone in the advocacy world wonders just how well the flood of digital petitions we dump on Congress by the millions is really working.   Whether they’re simply tallied–“Yea” in this spreadsheet column, “Nay” in the other before a staff member hits delete or the autoresponder thanks the voter and promises to take their […]

Data Analysis 101: The Z-Score is Your Friend

This likely speaks volumes to my social network but I consider the z-score a friend.  The z-score is a way to compare apples to oranges. First, a baseball example then a fundraising copy one. Babe Ruth is an apple from 1919 with 29 home runs.  Barry Bonds is our orange from 2001 with 73. Did […]

Data Visualization 101: Bar Charts Suck

We do a lot of data visualization in the fundraising world.  Bar charts are stock in trade, built into every off the shelf product out there.  We use them and I hate them.  Why? This comparison courtesy of a company called 3iap and a study they ran with academics nails the issues with the good […]

Give Before Midnight. Save Democracy

Spoiler Alert:  Chances are your $3 contribution rushed to Nancy Pelosi won’t save democracy.  Not even if your donation is matched 10X and arrives by midnight as requested. These days –about every 11 minutes –my email inbox dings with news that another message from a Democratic candidate,  the party itself, or some strange sounding political […]

Generational Labels Are Lazy

It’s a summertime (and Fall, Winter and Spring) Agitator tradition to tilt at windmills and lament the profoundly stupid use of generational labels. It’s Quixote”esque” because of the bullshit asymmetry principle: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it. But, we’re wearing our muck boots […]

What the Hell is Cadence?

Cadence had its heyday in the 1800s according to the fount of all wisdom, the Google machine.  But it’s making a heck of a comeback as it turned the corner from a musical, rhythmic usage to business speak, 101.   What might we have lost in this talk of cadence for our direct marketing and […]

Behavioral Science > Nudging

Behavioral economics (aka “nudges”) is the observation that sometimes people behave irrationally.   You can google it and find long lists, infographics and diagrams listing reams and reams of biases.  It seems all the cool kids have a bias they invented. You can also find lots of non-scientists and non-researchers espousing expertise because they read a […]