It’s spring, so it’s time for a bit of housecleaning.  Here are updates from the research, field, or my own fevered brain on the Agitator posts you know and love.

The return on customer experience.  We talk a lot about the importance of donor experience.  In fact, Craig Linton, who you may know from Fundraising Detective, will be joining The Agitator next week to talk about the tracking the return you get from creating great donor experiences.  Our friends in the for-profit sector have also been busy on this, showing that customer experience leaders outperformed the S&P by 33%; laggards underperformed the index by 55%.

New educational opportunity.  In December, we talked about the new (at the time) Nonprofit Alliance and the need for us nonprofit folks to hang together or hang separately.  The Alliance is now launching Pivot and Prevail a one-day educational conference in NYC on May 23.  It will cover industry trends, what others are doing to buck negative trends, and data privacy and security needs.  You can join the discussion with the nonprofit sector’s best (and me!) for a mere $85.

Facebook continues building the wall around their garden.  (And we, not Mexico, are going to pay for it.  Back in February, we talked about how Instagram, like Google and Facebook before them, was not committing to sharing donor data with nonprofits, preferring to keep the customer experience in house.

In order to increase donations on their platform, Facebook could have gone one of two directions: 1) make it easier to build a relationship with donors by allowing nonprofits to get their donors’ data, perhaps using their already developed functionality they use for lead downloads; 2) make it harder to fundraise outside the Facebook platform.

Those familiar with the House of Zuck will not be surprised they took the latter course.  You now can’t use the “Donate Now” language on any ad that does not link to a Facebook donation form.  Instead, you must use something more generic like “Learn More.”  This is not a reason not to use the platform; it is, however, a reason to look at ways to use the platform to bring respondents to your data garden by offering content of interest and value.  You can learn more from our white paper here.

The fundraising slump is global.  Also in February, we reported that UK charitable giving was down 4.2% year-over-year.  Now the Charities Aid Foundation is reporting 14% of UK charities (and 21% of those under one million pounds in revenue) say they are “struggling to survive.”  This doesn’t seem to be an idle worry–  charity closures were also up 27% in 2018.

Customization and localization isn’t just good, as we reported in 2016.  It can help the environment.  Researchers created three donor hangers as part of a recycling effort: 1) individualized feedback on the person’s own recycling; 2) group feedback on the area’s recycling prowess (a social norming type campaign); and 3) information about how to recycle and why it is good.  No surprise that last one had no impact.  Individualized feedback led to 23% more material being recycled; group feedback led to 19% more material.  The more you can customize and localize your appeals, the more revenue they will get almost all the time.

Updates from the campaigns.  We’d previously reported on the political hivemind centering in on the phrase “chip in” as a way of garnering additional donations.  Now the new hotness on the 2020 campaign trail: 404 error pages with a purpose:

Who’s winning the Democratic 404 page Primary? pic.twitter.com/T0yGMuR1Ga

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) February 1, 2019

This should be easy to do on your site and can help you spread your message to those who mistype or click an old link.

#OxfordCommas4Life.  In our last potpourri update, I shared research that showed that two spaces after a period leads to greater cognitive fluency than one space.  Now, I’m back on the grammar soapbox, with the recent ruling that an Oxford comma was necessary to prevent a $10 million lawsuit.  No comma = losing $10 million.

I’m not actually super-rigid about Oxford commas or two periods: you do you.  (Although, as you can see at right, the Oxford comma contingent is generally pretty certain about themselves).

But it is a reminder that sometimes your brand book and style guides can be most useful if you are camping and run out of toilet paper.  AP, Chicago, Struck, White, or Bob: if it aids in people understanding you and giving more, it’s good.  If it detracts from those, it’s bad.

Hope you enjoyed the speed round.  What did we miss that we should have covered?

Nick