The Agitator

If you are trying to figure out Millennials (the 18-29 year old generation), here from Pew Research is the study you’ve been waiting for. The Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change looks at Millennials across all dimensions — lifestyle, technology use, social and political ...  Read more

Yesterday’s Agitator post raised the issue of combining direct mail and online video for fundraising purposes. And a few readers shared their experiences via Comments. Check them out. Then, coincidentally, today arrives this article from nonprofit marketing consultant Nancy Schwartz ...  Read more

The NY Times had an interesting article yesterday on how Tufts University was inviting applicants for admission to submit YouTube videos as part of their applications. Great idea! While enterprising students have been sending videos with their applications for some time at their own initiative, it ...  Read more

As noted in Philanthropy Journal, the Council for Aid to Education reports that charitable giving to colleges and universities declined by 12% in 2009, to $28 billion. This was the steepest decline ever recorded. Over the last ten years, higher ed giving has averaged 4% per year growth. Also at ...  Read more

Here is the 2009 Digital Media Review from comScore, which specializes in measuring the digital world (registration required). All the factoids you need on who’s using what (in the U.S.) to put your digital efforts into perspective. A few things that struck me … Reflecting the ...  Read more

Ethan Boldt at Inside Direct Mail reports these U.S. direct mail stats from the DMA’s new 2010 Statistical Fact Book: Direct mail accounts for 52% of all mail (over half of all mail has been direct mail since 2007). Households receive 24.7 pieces of mail per week (down from a high of 26.2 a ...  Read more

How much research does your nonprofit undertake to inform your fundraising strategy and messaging? Probably too little. Either for lack of resources, or because you just don’t believe in it. Take a look at this Wall Street Journal article, The Emotional Quotient of Soup Shopping, if you ...  Read more

The Boomer Project recently compiled some studies on the attitudes and outlook of the Boomer generation … you know, the ones you’re counting on for all that money in your fundraising plan. Unfortunately, the data suggest that Boomers aren’t in a very upbeat state of mind. The ...  Read more

Lots of very constructive responses to our question of last week: Are Annual Reports Dinosaurs? And it looks like we have a hung jury! One group leans toward more timely and frequent donor communication, including in lieu of "saving it up" for the annual report. Another group says ...  Read more

As I outlined this “Where” segment of The Agitator’s Who-What-Why-When-Where series, I began by concentrating mostly on the proper selection or integration of  fundraising channels –online, offline, mail, email, phone, tv, print. The “Where” to send the ...  Read more