The Agitator

The annual migration in our trade is underway.  The Association of Fundraising Professionals opened its annual conference yesterday in San Diego.  Consultants wooing clients, printers, envelope salespeople, new media application service providers … all there wooing ...  Read more

Yesterday’s NY Times included an important article on the news habits of young Americans. Here’s the bottomline for us aging Boomers, and any communicator in a nonprofit … Voices of authority — in the sense of informed, seasoned media intermediaries who help us discovery ...  Read more

Then this is the place to be … Global Philanthropy Forum, April 9-11, Redwood City, CA A match-up of human rights activists from around the world with "elders" of philanthropy and cause advocacy. One of the elders … keynoter Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Roger & Tom ...  Read more

The Wall Street Journal recently chronicled the ascendancy of small gift fundraising in the campaigns of Obama and Clinton. Everybody knows about the Obama online $$ phenom: about 90% of the $55 million he raised in February came from donors giving $100 or less … the vast preponderance ...  Read more

If you job requires actually understanding the effectiveness of your nonprofit’s website, then here is a blog and a book on web analytics for you! Both are authored by Avinash Kaushik. He’s the guy Google sends out to tell their REALLY BIG customers (not you and me) how their websites ...  Read more

Barack Obama’s speech on race in America — "A More Perfect Union" – has been viewed online on Youtube more than 3 million times as I write (and many more times elsewhere online). A tribute to the spontaneous popularity of what he had to say? To a great extent ...  Read more

If the answer is Yes, that’s cool. Maybe. So long as the preponderance of people you want to … Interest in your cause or charity Educate Raise money from Activate, etc. … are 25 or thereabouts. However, for most nonprofits, I suspect the "target" demographic is ...  Read more

Todd Cohen at Philanthropy Journal has assembled a great special report on planned giving tools and techniques. Check it out. Tom SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Planned Giving: Tools & Strategies", url: "http://www.theagitator.net/dont-miss-these-posts/planned-giving-tools-strategies/" }) ...  Read more

Does your nonprofit rely upon volunteers? If so, how do you celebrate them? Below is an example of the online video approach of the American Red Cross. Most nonprofits don’t have the resources to produce slick videos with celebrity volunteers. But a simple video, shot with a ...  Read more

We’ve heard plenty about liberal media controlling the hearts and minds of America. Here’s a great online service, Media Matters, for those more worried about conservative media bias. Around since 2004, Media Matters documents and analyzes "conservative ...  Read more