New free webinar: We had such a positive response to our webinar series in May and June we are starting back up.  First up: Beyond A/B: Running Thousands of Tests at Once.  Erica Best of No Kid Hungry and Steve Rudman of Concord Direct will join me to discuss the method behind No Kid Hungry’s test of thousands of mail pieces at once and how it helped boost results.

What face-to-face does for your brand.  On Friday, Roger talked about how some organizations say a type of fundraising isn’t “on brand” when they really mean “I don’t personally like it.”  Telemarketing and face-to-face fundraising seem to be the most frequently cited in this arbitrary assessment of what donors want.

It turns out there’s data on this – the UK Institute of Fundraising asked donors what they thought of face-to-face fundraising.  This is a stern test, as face-to-face is far more prevalent in the UK and thus donor opinions could be more negative than here in the United States.  But it turned out that:

• People were more likely to engage with fundraising in both door and street F2F than fundraisers predicted.
• Door-to-door fundraising was viewed as positive (and above average) for its appearance, personalization, authoritativeness, and generally being a welcomed form of fundraising. Street beat the average for “ease of response” and “convenient.”
• People were more likely to donate, share, and research an organization than fundraisers expected for door.

The study concluded: “Door-to-door continues to be viewed as positive and strong, remaining one of the most effective fundraising methods to reach and engage large numbers of individuals across the UK.”  There are some other good quotes there if you are looking for evidence with which to confront your brand police.

Another vote for nonprofit activism and advocacy.  Two weeks ago, we talked about how not advocating for solutions for your issues is, in essence, a vote for the status quo.  In the piece, we quoted from an excellent piece by Billy Shore, founder of Share our Strength.  Well, he’s back at it: Mr. Shore has a piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review called Getting Political is Good for Everyone.  In it, he shares the five lessons for getting political.

Continued learnings from the 2020 candidates. Roger talked a couple weeks ago about the subject lines political candidates use that get open rates.   Gwen Emmons of M+R had another interesting piece talking about the emailification of ads, the move of some candidates to use email-like tactics to make you “open” the digital ad.

 More information on YouTube’s Gangnam Style problem.  Last week, I talked about how YouTube’s recommendation engine went from valuing popularity to recommending content similar to what you are watching.  There was a footnote that this can result in spirals of hate and conspiracy theory, as people get sucked into ever darker video holes.  A couple eagle-eyed (and eagle-earred?  Is that a thing?) readers pointed out there is an excellent Reply All podcast about this very topic here.  If online algorithms are of interest to you, it’s well worth a listen.

Test of the month – a reminder.  We introduced the test of the month webinars a couple weeks ago.  You can still sign up for these with The Nonprofit Alliance here.  Thank you to the 100+ who have already signed up.

Free donor journeys white paper.  We talk consistently about the need to create different donor journeys based on identity.  But how?  Here’s a free white paper that can help.

What else from the recent or distant Agitator past needs an update?  Let us know in the comments or by email.

Thanks,
Nick