Today’s post is #1001 from The Agitator.

With one thousand down, we’re eager to publish one thousand more and hope you’re equally eager to read them!

When we started The Agitator in 2006, fundraising was enjoying a bull market. Just about everything worked. Just about everyone comfortably met their fundraising targets.

As we begin 2010, however, most nonprofits are struggling with their fundraising. The recession lingers, but even taking the economy into account, fundraising seems to be getting harder, not easier.

We find especially troubling the latest report from Target Analysis’ National Index of Fundraising Performance on direct mail fundraising. We find Target’s ongoing quarterly reports invaluable and comment on them regularly. For some time now, their figures have shown that the overall number of donors is diminishing. Dropping to the point where new donors no longer offset attrition, and higher per donor income from existing donors no longer offsets the fall-off in the overall active donor population.

In the next two days we’ll give you our sense of what the trends reported by Target Analysis mean and what you should be thinking and doing to counter them.

On the upside, online giving continues to grow strongly, as evidenced by the latest figures from online fundraising giant, Blackbaud, the same company of which Target Analysis is a part. Later this week we’ll share our thinking, as well as our questions, about what these upbeat data mean.

These are two of the themes you can expect The Agitator to revisit continuously over the coming year:  1) How nonprofits can find new donors regardless of channel; and 2) Where online fundraising – including via social media – is headed.

A third theme, one we believe is critically important to the nonprofit future, is how nonprofits can mine optimum value from their existing donors. We believe much of what passes for “donor development” has become routine and, frankly, lazy.

We believe nonprofits are leaving substantial money "on the table” because their strategies and tactics are stale and unexamined, because new tools capable of driving more effective fundraising are not employed, and because inadequate attention is given to targeting available resources against donors with greatest lifetime giving potential.

In covering these first three areas we will give a great deal of focus to technique, channels and tactics – the “how” of fundraising.

However, before the “how” comes the “what.” What is any given nonprofit raising funds for, after all? At a strategic level, how sharply and freshly is it presenting itself and its mission in the marketplace? How consciously is it adapting to change in its issue environment … to changing needs or expectations of the clients or constituencies it serves … or to the changing demographics, psychographics, and financial circumstances of its available audiences? And at an operational level, how well crafted and effective are the messages and “asks” designed to energize donors and raise funds?

Given the foundational importance of the “what,” you can expect The Agitator to spend more time on “making the case for support” in the months ahead. This will include our recommendations on the research and tools that nonprofits should be using to better understand donors’ preferences and expectations, as well as to augment the woefully under-utilized ability to pre-test fundraising communications.

Hopefully this will all add up to 1,000 more posts and links that you will enjoy and find useful.

Roger & Tom