The Agitator

Here’s a brief article at Engage: Boomers that once again reminds us as marketers/fundraisers to think carefully about our audience and put ourselves in their shoes. Brent Bouchez, principal in a firm that focuses on messaging to the 50+ universe, cites a Stanford Graduate School of Business ...  Read more

A few days ago we posted on telephone solicitation, the neglected stepchild of fundraising. The post generated some comments like I’d like to give more exposure to. First, from Adrian Salmon, writing about the experience of Save the Children UK: They printed full-page colour advertisements ...  Read more

I’d like to pull together strands from two recent Agitator posts. Spectators or Fans dealt with the challenge of moving individuals a nonprofit might engage from being relatively passive observers to becoming active advocates. Then we reported on two extremely helpful online fundraising ...  Read more

What … Did you say telemarketing?!! Do fundraisers still do that? How rare it is to see someone promoting telemarketing for fundraising. Too bad. And here’s why, as Jose van Herpt of Canada’s FLA Group puts it: “Choosing not to use the phone because you just don’t like ...  Read more

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

I’m seeing more and more marketing articles these days that emphasize relationship building and seriously engaging “best” customers. Here’s an example from Seth Godin, where he discusses Fans, participants and spectators: “Likes, friendlies and hits are all ...  Read more

Yesterday I reminisced about the “old days” when a small handful of “big brand” media delivered the news that fueled the fire in the belly of donors to many causes. Through their coverage, those same media — NY Times, PBS, CNN, NPR — also provided the credibility ...  Read more

My nonprofit fundraising and communications experience has been grounded primarily in the world of advocacy organizations, as opposed to mainstream charities focused on health research, education and the like. And more narrowly still, advocacy of the center-liberal persuasion. For groups like ...  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

The Harris Poll released some data recently on use of social media to criticize or compliment brands. They found that one-third of US adults use social media to air their feelings, positive or negative, about a company, brand or product. Within that group the percentage of complainers and ...  Read more