The Agitator

To close out a week featuring online social networks, here’s a Washington Post report on the fundraising results from Causes, the personal donating application on Facebook and MySpace. Launched a year ago, Causes has generated $2.5 million in donations to about 20,000 nonprofits. There are ...  Read more

Sorry, but I’m on a social networking roll this week. Some interesting articles and sites to ponder as you chart a course for your nonprofit … Is there a future in setting up your own proprietary social network … indeed, will the prospects of Facebook and MySpace fade as folks ...  Read more

Yesterday we wrote about the impact online social media will have on the pursuit of public interest goals. And we noted that for most nonprofits, most of whose constituencies still tilt toward Boomers and older (at least in terms of active donors), this new media wave is still out there on the ...  Read more

Joe Marchese, president of socialvibe, has written this great overview of the contribution social media are beginning to make in the cause world. He observes: "Because of social media, not only can people in need, be they class room teachers or farmers in the third world, publish their ...  Read more

I just came across this study conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value of customer "Advocates" in the retail setting. For this consumer study, "Advocates" were defined as meeting three criteria: they recommend their retailer to their friends and family; they would ...  Read more

I’ll say it flat out … this, from the New York Times magazine, is one of the most fascinating marketing articles I’ve ever read. It’s about a company that buys "dead" brands … the intellectual property left from products no longer made, like Brim coffee ...  Read more

Seth Godin, in his usual effortless way, raises a point that’s so obvious, but still makes you think. Talking about rising fuel and other "transaction" costs of air travel, he observes that if you’re going to get on a plane these days and travel to a distant conference or ...  Read more

We don’t frequently pitch conferences and panel discussions, but here’s one sponsored by Convio that features some folks who we think really know what they’re talking about. It’s at the National Press Club in Washington this week (May 21 at 9:30am EDT), and available via ...  Read more

Guest Agitator Nick Allen of Donordigital shares some online research generated with Amnesty International. The project tried to isolate variables that significantly improved the fundraising conversion effectiveness of website "donate" pages. Here’s Nick’s summary of key ...  Read more

Yesterday we wrote about the difficulty, during natural disaster calamities, for donors to assess which relief charities might put their donation to work most effectively. From Matthew Sherrington, now at EveryChild in London (and formerly at Greenpeace USA) here is a very informative description ...  Read more