The Agitator

Fundraising and advocacy strategies. Trends, tips ... with an edge

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Lessons from Haiti Giving

Mar 11, 2010 9:00pm

Network for Good, which itself processed $5.3 million in Haiti donations, offers some good observations about the experience. In their article, each of the following points is examined: Major charities represented, but smaller organizations raised significant funds More places to give online during a crisis creates big range in average gift size. Social media...

The Smallest Of Cues

Mar 10, 2010 9:00pm

Responding to our Boomers Reinventing 50 post, Sarah Spengler commented: "Tom – interesting that you should talk about AARP and their advertizing campaign: I just received some materials from them, having joined. very recently. Among their offerings are discounts on motorcycle insurance of all things. THAT told me I was in...

Boomers Reinventing 50

Mar 9, 2010 9:00pm

Two interesting articles about Boomers came my way in the last couple of days. Maybe some insights here for fundraising messages. The first, from Brandweek, discusses the new advertising campaign of AARP. It’s hard to imagine any outfit with a bigger stake in understanding Boomers and their aspirations. AARP does a...

Top Ten Brands

Mar 8, 2010 9:00pm

I love lists like this. Here are the top ten brands of 2009 according to Millward Brown, a leading market research firm. Millward Brown uses an index based upon trust and recommendation to build its list. Find anything to quarrel with here? Who hasn’t bought a book on Amazon … then another …...

Secret Millionaire In Your File

Mar 7, 2010 9:00pm

Over the weekend Tom sent me a link to an ABC News piece entitled “Secret Donor”. Diane Sawyer sets forth an absolutely charming and moving story about a Lake Forest College alumna named Grace Groner who died in January at age 100 and left the college $7 million. According to Lake...

Report On Mobile Giving

Mar 4, 2010 9:00pm

Convio, Edge Research, and Sea Change Strategies have prepared this report on mobile giving, probing specifically into the mobile giving generated by the Haiti earthquake. The data reflects a survey of 1500 members of an online panel, screened as current charitable donors. The report notes that up to 12 January 2010...

Spray And Pray

Mar 3, 2010 9:00pm

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 interested in keeping their "bad practices" lexicon...

Checklist Heaven

Mar 2, 2010 9:00pm

Direct marketing guru Denny Hatch was so enthralled with The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande that he updated his own direct marketer’s checklist. Denny’s checklist is 58 items long, so it’s pretty comprehensive. For example, here’s #2: Does your copy contain some or all of the 13 most powerful and evocative...

Social Media And Event Fundraising

Mar 1, 2010 9:00pm

Here is a "must read" report from Blackbaud and Charity Dynamics: Making Event Participants More Successful with Social Media Tools. The two firms looked at 1750 events with nearly one million participants to answer these questions: Do integrated Facebook® tools help make event participants more successful online fundraisers? Is Twitter® an effective fundraising...

A Reminder About Offer Testing

Mar 1, 2010 2:38am

Here’s a brief article from the McKinsey Quarterly on "behavioral economics" … or why people make certain spending decisions and how they approach them. Each of the four principles/examples given relates to how a product is presented or priced in a retail context: 1. Make a product’s cost less painful. 2. Harness the...