The Agitator

I’ve been thinking about this video ad from Medicins Sans Frontieres, which has stirred up quite a bit of controversy on the Chronicle’s Give & Take blog and elsewhere. Here are my observations. First, a piece of advertising needs to be assessed against its objectives. If the ...  Read more

Writer and occasional fundraising consultant Ken Burnett has been struggling lately with Twitter. In this blog post, reproduced below with permission, he vents his frustrations and offers a solution. I thought you might enjoy his tribulations. Or as Ken asks:     Is it time for ...  Read more

Here’s the latest report on online video use from Pew Internet Project. As the charts below indicate, 62% of U.S. online adults have watched online video. Amongst those with broadband access, that figure is 69%, with nearly one-in-four watching in any given day. Online video watching ...  Read more

Yesterday I suggested that competition amongst nonprofits for the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of donors might become more fierce; that this would be good for the causes served; and this trend would force more attention to communicating the core defferentiating qualities of competing groups. In ...  Read more

We welcome a Guest Agitator today, copywriter Lisa Sargent (www.lisasargent.com). Lisa has a bone to pick with nonprofits who try to write effective fundraising copy — themselves or through consultants — without an explicit creative brief to provide the essential guidance. She’s ...  Read more

Need some out-of-the-box fundraising advice? It’s summertime … you must have some interns lying about … ask them! As reported by Forbes, Morgan Stanley’s media research department recently asked one of its 15-year-old interns to write a paper describing his ...  Read more

The UK-based Management Centre recently scored 57 nonprofits on their ability to innovate … a seven step process as conceptualized by the Centre: Ideation — idea generation Integration — cross-pollination of ideas Information — external scanning & sourcing Selection ...  Read more

Effective marketing begins with knowing your audience … whether it’s choosing mailing lists or appropriate media for your message, or crafting the message itself. Without a very clear understanding of the person, customer, or donor you are trying to reach, speak to and elicit a ...  Read more

C’mon, you really wanted to correct that headline, didn’t ya?  And it’s just that schoolmarm tendency in folks that makes for so much bad direct response fundraising copy. That’s the conclusion I draw from a fascinating dissertation by Frank C. Dickerson, Ph.D. as ...  Read more

In Online Spin, Joe Marchese of socialvibes offers this good advice regarding the kind of advertising that will work in online social media. As he sees it, the requirements are: Interaction — but more than a simple click-through to a landing page or micro-site; Customization — let ...  Read more