The Agitator

On Tuesday Tom alerted us to Convio’s Benchmark Report on Online Fundraising for 2009. Today Blackbaud is out with another new Index –The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving. This fundraising index reports revenue trends on a monthly basis for 1,787 nonprofits representing $399 million in 12 ...  Read more

Having just watched The Netherlands eliminate Uruguay (justice being served IMHO), I moved on to reading fundraiser Mal Warwick’s latest newsletter. In particular, an article by Tom Ahern titled We don’t care what our donors think of us caught my eye. Tom talks about a recent ...  Read more

Consumer Reports publishes a series of monthly indices on consumer’s economic well-being … all based on survey research. The latest report is not a source of much optimism that consumers are feeling better about their financial prospects or might be more inclined to spend (or donate) ...  Read more

Imagine yourself an investor being only able to follow the Dow-Jones Index on an annual or quarterly basis.  Not very helpful in today’s economic roller coaster. Well, fundraisers currently face much the same problem because, until now, virtually all publicly available information used to ...  Read more

“Let me listen to your brain.” That’s the refrain of this catchy video from NeuroFocus, a company that specializes in measuring brain reactions to various stimuli (e.g. words, images, TV commercials, logos, etc) to gain marketing insights. What they claim to measure is ...  Read more

Last week in my Promise Me post, I urged nonprofit fundraisers to connect your "asks" as much as possible to specific goals. Then commit to your donor/prospect that your organization will break its back to achieve those goals, and report regularly on your progress toward them. Then I ...  Read more

Rapidata, the UK’s leading processor of direct-debit charitable and commercial transactions, has just released a massive study of monthly giving in the UK, with a special focus on 2008 to 2009 comparisons. To put this in context, 37% of donors in the UK are monthly givers, and such giving ...  Read more

For five centuries, from the Phoenicians to the global exploration of the 15th century Spaniards the conventional wisdom of navigation rested on the belief that the Earth was flat. Venture farther than the known oceans and you would fall off the edge of the Earth into the mouths of dragons, the ...  Read more

In the direct mail channel, the thoughtless, non-strategic practice of tossing as many appeals and acquisition pieces as an organization can afford — regardless of long-term result — is referred to as "burn and churn." I’ve railed about that in earlier posts. For those ...  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