The Agitator

Yesterday The Agitator asked how donors might be sizing up their financial situation these days, given that some surveys indicate increasing optimism about the economy. Is the glass half-empty, or half-full? Here’s an article from the Washington Post that looks more anecdotally at the ...  Read more

Recent surveys on consumer confidence and expectations about the economy will separate optimistic fundraisers from the pessimists. Typical of what I’m seeing is this survey released last week by Harris Interactive. It reports that only 24% of Americans see their own household’s ...  Read more

If your nonprofit is raising much money online, you’re probably doing it via "old-fashioned" email campaigns, not social media (yet). And if that’s true, here’s a blog you might want to follow … The Retail Email Blog Written by Chad White at email marketing firm ...  Read more

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

Here are the stats on direct mail volumes from the latest USPS Household Diary Study (2008). As reported by the Center for Media Research, key factoids include: U.S. Households received 148.6 billion mail pieces in 2008, of which 63% was advertising. Income, education and age of head of ...  Read more

I don’t know what set him off, but marketing maven Seth Godin recently posted an article titled Magic beans, TV and the web. Here’s the kernel: "On the web, there are countless marketers just standing around waiting for someone to hand them the magic beans. And that’s the ...  Read more

Judging from the number of "Out of Office" bouncebacks we’re getting this week, I’m assuming that lots of folks are "at the beach." That means they’re missing Steve MacLaughlin’s (of Blackbaud) Netwits webinars this week. One a day, with these topics ...  Read more

In case you headed to the beach early last Friday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a financial conference that the economy — U.S. and globally — is on the verge of growing again. As reported here in the NY TImes, despite his upbeat tone, he did say the recovery would be ...  Read more

Earlier this week we featured a somewhat grumpy "take" on Twitter from Ken Burnett of SOFII. Ken diplomatically pointed out to me that one Laurie Pringle, senior manager of philanthropy at ALS Canada, has commented on his original article, presenting a passionately contrary point of ...  Read more

Here are two recent articles from Marketing Daily describing the current state of play of cause marketing in the U.S. In the first, sponsorship giant IEG projects that $1.55 billion will be spent on cause marketing in 2009. IEG cites survey data saying that 41% believe companies should increase ...  Read more