Search Results for: survey

I’m a fan of Freakonomics books and podcasts.  While they occasionally have some howlingly bad science (e.g., most solar panels are not black and the assumptions that go into their oft-quoted drunk walking is more dangerous than drunk driving contention are profoundly odd), their contrary points of view often cause me to reassess.  That’s a […]

We here it all the time from people with, as best we can tell, absolutely no background in survey research or quantitative analysis whatsoever.  Many of these people mask this lack of knowledge with an often wrong, never in doubt tonality. On the flipside, and in their defense, they have likely come across some really […]

Using the 2012 presidential election as the backdrop for our post on predictive analytics, I highlighted the work of Nate Silver, the wunderkind statistician who runs the 538 Blog at the New York Times, and the fact that he was driving the seat-of-the-pants pundits nuts. Despite some incredulous political pundits, Nate correctly predicted the winner […]

Many thanks to the Agitator readers who responded to our Punch Bowl Survey, looking at perceptions fundraising consultants and clients have of one another. Today we discuss the results. We’ve teased you the past few days with some of the more provocative — some caustic — verbatim comments our respondents have made. So at the […]

Up until this point, we’ve not blogged much on survey research design and best practices – a 101 or “how to” kind of post.  We are going to start now and hopefully, it is useful.  If not, speak up. A caveat upfront; our view is that survey research, especially questionnaire design and analysis is not […]

Nothing fancy about last week’s Agitator survey. We asked one question: “What percentage of your nonprofit’s 1st time donors make a second gift?” [Folks at agencies and consultants were asked to indicate an average over the clients they’ve typically served.] Here are the results … 31% — Less than 30% 31% — 30% to 39% […]

Don’t know how I missed this, but back in November Harris Interactive released this very interesting survey on the charitable giving habits and plans of Americans. Their report includes some interesting trend data comparing 2007 and 2010 responses. Most respondents (48%) categorize themselves as follows: “I make some kind of small contribution of time and/or […]

Here are two recent donor surveys that have come to our attention. Given the usual focus on studying Boomers, we were surprised read on Social Citizens blog about this 2010 study of Millennial Donors conducted by fundraising agencies Achieve and JGL. A fresh study will be released in April. The basic message of the Millennials […]

Back in February I reported in The Agitator this sequence of events … I received an e-mail from Gene Karpinski at the League of Conservation Voters (on whose e-list I'm happy to park) “sharing” with me “an important message” from his friend Rodger Schlickeisen of the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund regarding the urgent need […]

Today we are huddled in Washington, DC cogitating over how to improve The Agitator. It's our way of celebrating National Philanthropy Day in the US (in case you missed the parades). Meantime, we'd like to share the results of our recent Agitator reader survey, which will be guiding our direction. As of this writing, 154 […]