The Agitator

Over at Tactical Philanthropy Sean Stannard-Stockton relates a conversation in which a major foundation grantmaker told him it was a primary value of the foundation to not harm grantees. The context was Sean asking whether philanthropists should speak out about nonprofits they considered to be ...  Read more

William F. Buckley, Jr., the intellectual father of modern American conservatism, died at age 82 at his desk yesterday.  His 50 books and seven tons of other writings now residing in the archives at his beloved Yale University don’t even begin to do him justice when it comes to ...  Read more

I have a message for the readers of The Agitator: Don’t waste your time by going to the SOFII Website.  Stay away from it.  Don’t say any good things about it. And please let me quickly tell you why I’m sharing this negative reaction about SOFII. It’s because ...  Read more

RelevantView, a provider of web-based market research solutions, has conducted an interesting study of visitor reactions to the websites of current presidential candidates. Specifically, they were looking at how well the sites communicated the candidates’ positions on key issues ...  Read more

If you follow American politics and the tactics of the presidential campaigns on and off the web, you’re aware of ways they savage each other.  But, have you really thought about how these same tactics can be easily and effectively used against your organization? Are you really ...  Read more

George Bernard Shaw sure had it right when it comes to our trade. So much great, tried and true creative and campaign stuff out there, but so, so difficult to lay your hands on it. Until now! Enter SOFII, a new and wondrous web-based attic of fundraising creative and ‘how to’ wisdom ...  Read more

E-commerce merchants continue to train American consumers to buy online … and ultimately, to give. That’s my conclusion from the latest Pew Internet Project report on online shopping. Two-thirds of online users have purchased a product online, such as books, music or ...  Read more

Fallout from the dramatic and disturbing undercover video of the gross abuse of sick cows in a meat processing plant in California continued to capture the attention of the national and international tv networks and newspapers this week. The video, shot by an undercover agent for the Humane ...  Read more

That’s how many online videos were watched in the US in December, making it the biggest viewing month since measurements began, according to the latest figures from comScore. One in three views occurred in a Google site (3.2 billion on YouTube). The next closest competitors, Fox ...  Read more

Here’s a subtle example of the "forces" aligning to diminish the future viability of direct mail. Seth Godin writes here about "Profligate." He makes the point that consumers increasingly will be offended by wasteful packaging. It will affect their purchase ...  Read more