The Agitator

Back in March we defended American Idol, the “cheesy” (many say) pop talent show, for tackling extreme poverty. Philanthropy purists and cultural highbrows sniffed at the notion that a crass entertainment program and its grubby corporate sponsors might aspire to do good. Today ...  Read more

Many nonprofit fundraisers and communicators are getting deeper into exploring the potential of online social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Here are two timely studies that look more closely at visitors/users of these sites and their potential value. Serious online marketers should ...  Read more

I see that Nick Allen of Donordigital has merged with David Fenton of Fenton Communications. These guys “get” the necessity and efficacy of integrating online and offline advocacy and fundraising strategies. Nick has always been a new media pioneer. I met him in the early 80's ...  Read more

Minutes, hours passed. Finally, damn near a day after the tragedy of Virginia Tech's massacre, the Brady Campaign, the voice of America's hand gun control movement, at last weighed in. All of which raises questions: Do they get it? Why so late? We can only imagine the internal debate ...  Read more

Attention nonprofit marketers! Still looking for your viral marketing home run? Marketing Sherpa offers a great report on online viral marketing, based on a survey of nearly 3,000 marketers. You'll see what tactics your commercial brethren have found most effective, what they pay for ...  Read more

Competitors?! That's a nasty word in nonprofitland. We're all one big happy family, aren't we? Our boards want us to cooperate with other groups in our field. Our major donors urge us to collaborate, even while investing in us as “the best.” By nature we tend to be ...  Read more

Here's how a 73-year-old nonprofit brand, Easter Seals, keeps itself fresh and successful in the mail … Testing, testing, and more testing. This review from Inside Direct Mail of the current control package used by Easter Seals for prospecting describes the careful testing that yields ...  Read more

Nonprofit fundraisers seeking to raise money online will need to master a blossoming art called “behavioral targeting” (BT). In a nutshell BT involves tracking netizens as they browse the web (that's their online “behavior”), using the electronic cookies they ...  Read more

There's a lot of buzz already about the online fundraising success of the presidential contenders, with Obama, Clinton, Edwards and Romney leading the pack so far. The buzz treats “online fundraising” as something independent of and a world apart from “traditional” ...  Read more

Pew Research Center wouldn't put it so harshly. But the verdict appears to be YES! Nonprofit fundraisers and communicators be aware of these findings as you craft cause-oriented appeals and messages. Don't aim too high! Pew has just released a study indicating that most Americans cannot ...  Read more