The Agitator

The catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico has intensified the never-ending debate over just how close non-profits should get to corporate benefactors whose behavior is sometimes the antithesis of everything the non-profit seems to stand for. Although The Nature Conservancy has never hidden the fact ...  Read more

Here’s a decent review from ClickZ of how online media were used for political and issue campaigning in 2009. The comment I found most interesting is the "gap" one expert noted between Obama presidential campaign’s pathbreaking online campaigning in 2008 and the feeble use of ...  Read more

The health care debate has been raging online, not just on Capitol Hill, as this article from ClickZ reports. An entire arsenal of online advocacy tactics have been unleashed, including: Search ads Online videos Facebook presence Online fundraising Petition sign-ups Animated display ads Online ...  Read more

OK, summer is over, you’ve had a week to get back into work mode, and so The Agitator is ready to offer some heavy lifting this week. We’ve been saving up some important stuff on social media. First up is a new report from the Pew internet Project, called The Internet & Civic ...  Read more

If you’re in the biz of targeting online ads for member acquisition, fundraising or issue persuasion, here are two articles that illustrate the data-driven capabilities that exist. The first deals mainly with the Republican Party’s use of voter registration data to help target GOTV ads ...  Read more

Chuck Pruitt of A.B Data thinks the dire predictions of the death of direct mail are groundless. And he’s angry they seem to get such credence (though certainly that’s not the case in the annals of The Agitator … just Search our site using "direct mail’!) ...  Read more

Happy to hand the megaphone today to Guest Agitator Janice Christensen, for her thoughts on the powerful mobilizing — and through that, fundraising — role of Twitter. Janice is the former Director of Campaigns of Amnesty International USA, a board member of the Torture Abolition and ...  Read more

Here from Pew Research is — for my money — the definitive report on the role of the internet in last year’s election. Below are some topline findings from Pew’s report, but you should treat this as "must read" if you are serious about engaging folks online around ...  Read more

Two reports were issued amidst the pre-election buzz that deserve the attention of nonprofit communicators, especially those working in advocacy organizations. The first study, from Pew Research Center, shows that the internet now surpasses all media except television as a preferred source for ...  Read more

If you’re not spendng most of the Thanksgiving holiday traveling, here’s some food for thought over your quiet moments. Something to worry about longer term than making your 2008 fundraising targets! Pew Research has released its detailed analysis of voters under age-30, based on exit ...  Read more