The Agitator

Every year we give a plug to Nancy Schwartz’ nonprofit tagline competition. Gets hundreds of entries … might top 1,000 this year. Sometimes The Agitator even agrees on the winners! Here’s the place to enter this year. And there are more categories, so you can enter taglines for ...  Read more

Back in November 2007 we ran a post titled, Snorting Oxytocin, with this lead … “Attention major gift fundraisers!! Next time you’re about to pop the question to a prospect (the fundraising ask, that is), squirt a dose of oxytocin up their nose. You might get two-and-a half ...  Read more

Last week was long and surreal. Deep Horizon vomiting even more into The Gulf of Mexico…the U.S. and U.K. World Cup teams seemingly cheated out of goals…a three-day-long tennis match at the very proper strawberries-and-cream Wimbledon. Enough! So, on this Monday morning it’s time to kick it ...  Read more

The Agitator is often asked to endorse specific fundraising campaigns, and our policy is to respectfully decline. There are simply too many, we haven’t the resources to evaluate conscientiously, and who are we to pick and choose anyway?! It’s bad enough that we bombard you daily with ...  Read more

I was intrigued by this discussion in Online Spin of “impulse” versus “considered” purchases in the consumer space. The author discusses this distinction in the context of what — and how much — an online pitch, ad or offer can accomplish in those two different ...  Read more

We’ve talked about word-of-mouth (WOM) as the top driver of today’s consumer decisions. Here’s a report from Online Media Daily on an interesting Yahoo study that has attempted to drill into WOM behavior. It notes that 76% of all WOM still occurs face-to-face … however ...  Read more

We often write about the importance of storytelling as the path into donors’ heads and hearts. Here, courtesy of fundraiser Fraser Green, is one more exclamation mark on the point! Says Fraser: “The ‘magic moment,‘ as I call it, is when the audience stops being an ...  Read more

If your data indicates that most of your small gift income still comes from direct mail, and you think most of your donors are over fifty years old, but you sense more and more online interaction with your donors is happening (and more is possible), then whose online practices might you pay special ...  Read more

A few days ago, I posted some advice regarding creating online videos deserving of viral success. Here are two examples of such videos. The first comes from Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and deals with the Gulf oil spill. I think you’ll find this video moving … but I’ll let ...  Read more

Friday’s  Fundraising Day in New York was terrific.  Attendance up from last year and lots of enthusiasm and, even more importantly,  plenty of optimism. After a simply wonderful luncheon speech (and there aren’t many of those at these sorts of events) by Geoffrey Canada, head of The Harlem ...  Read more