"There is a revolution under way . . . It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions, and social structure are changing in

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

08.09.2025

Responsive Multiples: The Donors You Can’t Treat Like Clones - Agitator | DonorVoice

After a first gift, most donors fall into two camps.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

05.09.2025

Meet Your Most Common Donor - Agitator | DonorVoice

If you had to bet in Vegas on what happens after someone makes their first gift to your organization, what odds would you give?

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

03.09.2025

The Mirage of Ask More = Get More - Agitator | DonorVoice

Fundraising has long run on a seductive idea: if you ask, people give. The logic feels airtight. Send an appeal and some money comes in. Send another and

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

02.09.2025

No Heavy Lifting - Agitator | DonorVoice

In deference to our U.S. readers, who are coping with the official end of summer after a long Labor Day weekend, your dutiful Agitator editors are following

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

02.09.2025

When AI Interviews Outperform Humans and What That Means for Fundraising - Agitator | DonorVoice

A large-scale randomized trial in the Philippines compared job applicants interviewed by a disclosed AI voice agent versus a human recruiter. The outcome

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

27.08.2025

The Emotional Architecture of Giving - Agitator | DonorVoice

Show need, make it urgent, and never resolve it because if you show hope, you’ve given them a reason not to give. Nonsense.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

25.08.2025

Grifter’s Guide to Digital Fundraising: Under Review, But Still in Circulation - Agitator | DonorVoice

We’ve been pounding this drum so long our sticks are down to splinters.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

25.08.2025

Bringing Back the Best of the Good Old Days - Agitator | DonorVoice

Forty years ago, when our kids were small, we'd pile into the car and head to the local Chili's in Northern Virginia. Back then, it felt like the friendliest

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

25.08.2025

Monthly Giving: The Lifeline We Keep Ignoring - Agitator | DonorVoice

I’ve been cleaning house. Not the dust and clutter kind, but the harder kind—going through old photos, boxes of files, the decades stacked like cordwood.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

25.08.2025

Why Your Fundraising Test Probably “Won” by Luck & What to Do About It - Agitator | DonorVoice

It’s possible — maybe even likely — that your “winner” in a point-in-time fundraising A/B test didn’t win because of your headline, photo, or copy change. It

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

25.08.2025

Good Stories Beat Good Ideas - Agitator | DonorVoice

The nonprofit sector has almost no barrier to entry and an unforgiving math problem: more organizations every year, fewer donors giving. The easy wins are

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

25.08.2025

Collapsing Conscientiousness? Collapsing Headlines Is More Like It - Agitator | DonorVoice

The Financial Times recently told us that young people’s personalities are “in freefall.” It’s the stuff generational bias dreams are made of. Here are the

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

12.08.2025

Mistaking Obligation for Reciprocity - Agitator | DonorVoice

Imagine two donors.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

08.08.2025

Connection Starts Where Most Segmentation Stops - Agitator | DonorVoice

If we want real connection, we have to stop pretending our generic segmentations are anything but shortcuts. We slice people up by what’s available—age,

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

08.08.2025

Is Your Appeal Too Much, Too Soon? - Agitator | DonorVoice

Researchers ran a simple experiment. Two versions of a fundraising campaign with same photo, same story, same goal. One used the phrase “malignant tumors” in

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

08.08.2025

What Makes a Story Stick? The Psychology Behind Fundraising Narratives - Agitator | DonorVoice

We all want a story that speaks to us, one that fits the inner narrative we're writing, editing, and living every day.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

01.08.2025

Matching Gifts Are So Tired But Here's a Twist - Agitator | DonorVoice

We’re not fans of matching gift offers. They used to be strategic: tied to a big gift or a time-sensitive campaign. Now they’re everywhere, overused and

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

30.07.2025

Ten Years of Hope, Hype, and Heartburn - Agitator | DonorVoice

I’ve been poking around in the Agitator attic lately—blowing dust off ten years of posts, decks, podcasts, conference swag, industry reports and other

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

29.07.2025

A New BEAT at DonorVoice: Rethinking Fundraising Measurement - Agitator | DonorVoice

Hi, I’m Jen. I’m new here, the newest employee at DonorVoice. I’ve been helping mission-driven organizations challenge the status quo for nearly two decades.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

29.07.2025

How to Make People Stop Doing Good Things: Ask for Money - Agitator | DonorVoice

Swedes are world-class recyclers, nearly 90% of bottles and cans get returned. It's a habit and point of civic pride. Then researchers added one small twist

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

29.07.2025

Do You See the Jets Coming? - Agitator | DonorVoice

I’ve been working in fundraising a long, long time.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

29.07.2025

You or We? - Agitator | DonorVoice

Fundraising 101 says to lace copy with you so the donor “feels like the hero.” Nice sentiment until the wrong person reads it and flinches.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

29.07.2025

Your Conference Room Kills Ideas - Agitator | DonorVoice

Nietzsche said, “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” He may have been onto something, even if you’re just trying to come up with a better

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

16.07.2025

You Want Strategy From Your Agency? Look for This. - Agitator | DonorVoice

If you’re a nonprofit leader, you probably say this every time you hire an agency or think about hiring one:

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

14.07.2025

Live Aid Turns 40: Does the World Still Care? - Agitator | DonorVoice

Forty years ago on July 13th, nearly two billion people—one out of every three humans alive—tuned in to a global concert called Live Aid.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

11.07.2025

When Concrete Stories Backfire - Agitator | DonorVoice

Most fundraisers have heard some version of this advice a hundred times: Be concrete, specific, make it tangible, show one child. Speaking of children, I

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

09.07.2025

The Behavioral Science of Helping People Far Away

literal distance + pyschological distance is hard to overcome for fundraising. Behavioral Science can help

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

06.07.2025

If You Can’t Hire Another Fundraiser, Check This Out - Agitator | DonorVoice

Imagine this:

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

04.07.2025

The True Spirit of the 4th of July - Agitator | DonorVoice

Imagine this:

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

02.07.2025

Save the Pie for Dessert - Agitator | DonorVoice

It’s July 2nd, which means 85% of your American colleagues are “working remotely,” which in practice means their laptops are open while they argue about who

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

30.06.2025

Stop Dangling the Baby Seal. The Science Against Half-Told Stories - Agitator | DonorVoice

I came across a 'best-practice' guide for storytelling whose main recommendation is to write what they dub, Incomplete Stories. This is garbage advice.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

27.06.2025

The Cigar Box Checkout: Why Your Donation Page May Be Killing Your Campaigns - Agitator | DonorVoice

Imagine this:

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

25.06.2025

Your Appeal Outline: Thoughtful Strategy or Random Spasm? - Agitator | DonorVoice

Did you actually plan the outline of your fundraising appeal—or just let it happen to you? We’ve been diagramming appeal structures lately, not to make art

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

23.06.2025

Is Your Personalization = N/A? - Agitator | DonorVoice

Three spec sheets, we'll let you guess which one is ours. The more relevant guess for fundraising, which of these is more likely to match the person reading

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

20.06.2025

The Donor Newsletter Is Dead. Long Live The Donor Newsletter. - Agitator | DonorVoice

Tom Ahern’s newsletter just landed in my inbox again.

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

18.06.2025

When Everything Is Volume, Nothing Is Value - Agitator | DonorVoice

Economics has long been called the dismal science. Behavioral Economics was the rebellion, a corrective to the fantasy of rational actors making perfectly

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits

13.06.2025

Donor Trust 2025: The Alarming Data-and What Fundraisers Should Do Now - Agitator | DonorVoice

Once again, the data is in—and once again, too many in our sector are whistling past the graveyard.

home›The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits›Startups

The Agitator | Fundraising, Direct Marketing and Advocacy Strategies for Nonprofits - Startups

Your Appeal Calendar vs. Human Time - Agitator | DonorVoice

Snake Oil, Plain Tofu, and the Broken Compass of Fundraising - Agitator | DonorVoice

Gen Z to Save the Day - Agitator | DonorVoice

Responsive Multiples: The Donors You Can’t Treat Like Clones - Agitator | DonorVoice

Meet Your Most Common Donor - Agitator | DonorVoice

The Mirage of Ask More = Get More - Agitator | DonorVoice

No Heavy Lifting - Agitator | DonorVoice

When AI Interviews Outperform Humans and What That Means for Fundraising - Agitator | DonorVoice

The Emotional Architecture of Giving - Agitator | DonorVoice

Grifter’s Guide to Digital Fundraising: Under Review, But Still in Circulation - Agitator | DonorVoice

Bringing Back the Best of the Good Old Days - Agitator | DonorVoice

Monthly Giving: The Lifeline We Keep Ignoring - Agitator | DonorVoice

Why Your Fundraising Test Probably “Won” by Luck & What to Do About It - Agitator | DonorVoice

Good Stories Beat Good Ideas - Agitator | DonorVoice

Collapsing Conscientiousness? Collapsing Headlines Is More Like It - Agitator | DonorVoice

Mistaking Obligation for Reciprocity - Agitator | DonorVoice

Connection Starts Where Most Segmentation Stops - Agitator | DonorVoice

Is Your Appeal Too Much, Too Soon? - Agitator | DonorVoice

What Makes a Story Stick? The Psychology Behind Fundraising Narratives - Agitator | DonorVoice

Matching Gifts Are So Tired But Here's a Twist - Agitator | DonorVoice

Ten Years of Hope, Hype, and Heartburn - Agitator | DonorVoice

A New BEAT at DonorVoice: Rethinking Fundraising Measurement - Agitator | DonorVoice

How to Make People Stop Doing Good Things: Ask for Money - Agitator | DonorVoice

Do You See the Jets Coming? - Agitator | DonorVoice

You or We? - Agitator | DonorVoice

Your Conference Room Kills Ideas - Agitator | DonorVoice

You Want Strategy From Your Agency? Look for This. - Agitator | DonorVoice

Live Aid Turns 40: Does the World Still Care? - Agitator | DonorVoice

When Concrete Stories Backfire - Agitator | DonorVoice

The Behavioral Science of Helping People Far Away

If You Can’t Hire Another Fundraiser, Check This Out - Agitator | DonorVoice

The True Spirit of the 4th of July - Agitator | DonorVoice

Save the Pie for Dessert - Agitator | DonorVoice

Stop Dangling the Baby Seal. The Science Against Half-Told Stories - Agitator | DonorVoice

The Cigar Box Checkout: Why Your Donation Page May Be Killing Your Campaigns - Agitator | DonorVoice

Your Appeal Outline: Thoughtful Strategy or Random Spasm? - Agitator | DonorVoice

Is Your Personalization = N/A? - Agitator | DonorVoice

The Donor Newsletter Is Dead. Long Live The Donor Newsletter. - Agitator | DonorVoice

When Everything Is Volume, Nothing Is Value - Agitator | DonorVoice

Donor Trust 2025: The Alarming Data-and What Fundraisers Should Do Now - Agitator | DonorVoice

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