Can You Persuade Donors?

Jack Trout was a TV ad man who helped pioneer the concept of brand positioning .  He famously quipped, “If your assignment is to change people’s minds, don’t accept the assignment.” Seems he knew what he was talking about.  A huge study of TV effectiveness on changing people’s attitudes and beliefs about social issues found […]

Do You Process Dots or Look for Patterns?

We report average gift as gospel.   And if the giving by your donors looks like the normal, bell curve on the left then average and standard deviation  (how tall or wide is the middle part) will have told you all you need to know.  This world view assumes the outliers are distraction.  How many times […]

Merry Christmas

Celebrate This Agitator Tradition With Us

Whether you’re still celebrating the results of the mid-term elections or figuring out how to avoid the return of the in-office Christmas party that was mercifully cancelled in the Covid Years, we hope you’ll find time, once again, to l fall on your knees and sing along to The Agitator’s favorite carol. Once  again, for […]

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 measuring it 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 […]

Are Your Donor Conversations Any Good?

Conversation abounds in the world of fundraising whether in-person or over the phone. Everybody makes note that we should be active listeners and strive for making a conversation, well, you know, “conversational”.  That feels thin. The social science world has done a lot to get a more robust answer.   This has implications for humans talking […]

Is Twitter Political?

Much ink has been spilled decrying social media rabbit holes and political echo chambers, threatening our democracy by increasing hyper-partisanship and extremism.  And that was before Musk. What if it’s fake news?  It’s true there are hyper-partisan people on Twitter.  It’s also true many of these hyper-partisans are opinion influencers with big followings. The problem […]

I Think, Maybe

Conversational hedges are words or phrases indicating uncertainty, tentativeness, or modesty in a conversation.  Words like “maybe,” “I think,” or “I’m not sure”. What role do they play?  They can make the speaker appear more credible and trustworthy by acknowledging uncertainty. Hedges can also make the speaker seem less pushy, which in turn makes the […]

PI…WWW…AI

I’m old enough to remember the world pre-internet, PI, and the first, niche Tandy personal computers.  The screens were microscopic, monotone.  You’d run some basic scripts on DOS prompts and that was about it. Early internet was terminally slow but we didn’t know any better.  You can still hear the whirring, dinging and high pitched […]

Supporter Motivation Is Under Your Control

Motivation is arguably the coin of the fundraising realm.   If a donor feels motivated to give, they’ll keep doing it. Motivation differs by amount, a lot or little and by type, high or low quality. And most importantly it differs by situation or context.   We all experience this;  different levels of motivation for different jobs […]