The Agitator

I’ve been pre-occupied with Facebook lately, in part because its demographics are changing so rapidly. Here’s the current profile, as reported by MediaPost.com: "Facebook is aging fast. The number of U.S. users over 35 has doubled in just the last 60 days, according to new data ...  Read more

Last week, talking about FaceBook’s cave-in (as some pundits see it) to two million of its users, I raised the issue of when should nonprofits listen to their donors. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but Jeff Brooks over at donor-centric Donor Power Blog would probably say ...  Read more

So, you go do this fancy survey of your donors and they say: 1) Scrap the newsletter, and 2) by the way, we don’t understand why you’re spending 80% of "our" money on program X … cut it in half. Do you listen to your donors (i.e., customers) and do what they say? If ...  Read more

We were going to write a shameless plug for direct fundraising maven Mal Warwick’s new book, but then we got this promotional message from Mal himself. He does a better job than we could. Just click here for his nifty presentation. Oh, the book. It’s called Fundraising When Money Is ...  Read more

Yesterday I wrote a post, Too Important for Techies, saying that online fundraising was in the wrong hands … techies. It stirred up quite a commotion, as you can see by reading the comments following the post. Including my DonorTrends colleague, Ryann Miller, who offers these thoughts. Sort ...  Read more

A recent study by Blackbaud’s Target Marketing on online fundraising (Roger commented here) noted that many donors who make their first gift online wind up making their subsequent gifts, if any, via direct mail. Agitator reader Dave Raley has a theory about this. I reproduce his comment ...  Read more

Last Wednesday the headline in a New York Times story proclaimed “Study Shows First-Time Online Donors Do Not Return.” Sort of a ‘dog bites man” headline since, truth be told, neither do first-time direct mail donors. That aside, Stephanie Strom’s NYT piece is worth ...  Read more

The morning’s mail brought this from a loyal Agitator subscriber: “Team Agitator – I am doing some research for a client about how response rates on acquisition are impacted by packages that ask prospects to take an action in addition to giving a gift. E.g. signing or ...  Read more

So, you want to grow your organization. Who do you listen to for insight into how to expand your audience — your current best donors, or some new audience that you believe represents your growth opportunity? And how do you listen? Here’s an article, via Social Media Insider, with some ...  Read more

For the first time since records began in 1945, spending on commercial direct mail has declined. So says a white paper from the Winterberry Group, a strategic consulting firm to direct marketers, as reported here by the Center for Media Research. The report says spending on direct mail fell 3% in ...  Read more