Thanks for the great response to last week’s Agitator reader survey. We’ve gotten heaps of advice to think about … and some nice compliments too.

So … who are you?

If there’s such a thing as the ‘average’ Agitator reader, you are most likely to be a direct response fundraiser, in ‘the business’ for 4-10 years, working in a charity or nonprofit whose annual revenue is less than $10 million. And you read The Agitator, half of you daily, primarily for its strategic focus.

But that ‘average’ profile doesn’t really give the full picture of what is a rather diverse readership. For example, 47% of readers have been in the biz over ten years … 23% over twenty years. Plenty of experience that group can share with the 53% with less than ten years under your belts.

One way to do that is via more exchange through the Comment feature on our blog. Comments have been steadily rising … but more are better. And you can use our tracking feature to monitor (and participate in) comments on any given post.

And while clearly the core focus of our readers is direct response fundraising — and within that category, direct mail — an almost equal number give yourselves a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ job description. Somewhat to our surprise, there appears to be relatively little ‘specialization’ yet in online fundraising (7% claimed that focus), and relatively few of our readers specialize in major gifts or planned giving (another 7%).

25% of our readers work on the ‘other side’ as independent consultants or in fundraising/marketing firms.

Finally, four in ten of our readers work for nonprofits with revenues over $10 million, with half of those working for groups with revenues over $50 million.

About two-thirds of Agitator posts currently relate to direct response fundraising, with the balance fairly evenly divided between broad strategic issues/trends and other specialty subjects. That seems to track well with our readership.

We discovered that the Agitator blog feed is very faithfully read (50% daily, another 40% 2-3 times a week), while fewer blog readers say they also visit the website regularly for its additional offerings. Seem to be two largely different audiences.

We’ve not been as energetic as we should about enriching the website content (over and above the blog posts). But stay tuned. We’ll soon be launching our Innovation Center on the website, which will offer much more in-depth case studies and resources regarding the use of new fundraising tools and approaches … featuring both our own findings and case material furnished by Agitator readers and partners.

So those are the basic stats. We also received several hundred open-ended comments regarding what we might do better or differently. We still working through those, and will report on what we’ve heard and learned.

Thanks again to all who participated. You’ve helped us immensely and hopefully you’ll see The Agitator improve as a result.

Roger and Tom