The Agitator

A new study from the Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Listening Post Project identifies the following as the top “very significant” challenges for nonprofits, as indicated by responding organizations: Charitable fundraising (68% of organizations) Health benefit costs (58%) Government budget ...  Read more

In this Guest Agitator post, Karen Taggart, Director of Nonprofit Services at Care2, discusses the challenge of converting e-subscribers into donors. Says Karen: “It is no secret in direct mail that recency is key to successful fundraising. We all send appeals to donors who have just given ...  Read more

The answer is YES if you're Bob Wilson. Bob, along with Ted Turner, is one of my favorite philanthropists. Both are iconoclasts who never fail to surprise, even when one appreciates the underlying values that drive their giving. Bob, ranked 12th in 2006 on the Chronicle of ...  Read more

Tell us it ain't so! According to Primary Research Group's 2007 Survey of College Marketing Programs, cited here, based upon interviews with 55 American colleges, it appears that college marketers are still at the stone tablet stage. As reported by interactive marketing consultant ...  Read more

Responding to our post, Give Your Donors A Voice, Ayumi Stubbs shares with The Agitator the success of the ASPCA with inviting supporters to submit their own content for ASPCA's website: “Last year we started a simple cat photo contest that we promoted to our weekly newsletter ...  Read more

Months ago an Agitator post applauded the Salvation Army in the face of a New York Times article probing whether the organization was losing its way. Critics questioned whether it was appropriate for the Salvation Army to use proceeds of a $1.5 billion bequest from McDonald's heiress Joan ...  Read more

Last week the Journal of Philanthropy carried the summary of a study by Campbell & Company on bequest giving. And once again I found myself asking why aren’t fundraisers — particularly those good in direct response — falling all over themselves to get in on what the Journal of ...  Read more

By now, most nonprofits publish an e-newsletter of some sort. These range from uninspired re-hashing of print newsletters to original e-pubs that take full advantage of the tools that can make online publications far more dynamic and compelling. For example, commercial marketers increasingly are ...  Read more

A recent review of some of Convio's online benchmarking data reminded me of the importance of true bottomline metrics. Especially in view of results from a recent survey by blogger Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention indicating that barely one-third of nonprofits actually measure the ...  Read more

I just read the results of a client's survey that, among other things, was seeking to identify the issues that respondents regard as “crucial to the well-being of the country.” Out of eighteen issues offered to a constituency that tilted “liberal” on social issues ...  Read more