Ruby Writes Back to Jack!

Last year, the Agents were thrilled to work with our partner in crime, Agent Kimberly Mackenzie at Ontario Nature on a campaign about ‘bird strikes’ in Toronto – migrating birds getting killed into office buildings. Our approach was to have “Ruby” the Hummingbird write to donors, and include a map of her journey. A few [...]

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Guest Post: Twitter can do your organization more harm than good

The Agents are pumped to have a guest post for you from our colleague/fellow agitator/total Agent of Good Emma Lewzey with a Special Ops briefing on some undercover work she just completed on Twitter. Enjoy! And you rule Emma! I came to Twitter last year with a fairly singled minded mission – to learn the [...]

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Dear Donors

The best blog posts are the ones you don’t need to write yourself. They are even better when they are written by someone who you admire and look to as a gut check and reminder that what you do every day, you are doing right. Today’s post comes via Tom Ahern – and if you [...]

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Ten things we’ve learned from being Agents of Good

Our great pal and uber-passionate fundraiser, Josh Bowman who works along side the great folks at Second Harvest in Toronto has the market covered in Top Ten lists on his blog. This month he has been posting Top Ten lists from some of other favourite friends, bloggers and colleagues and we are honoured to be [...]

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I just got a call…

I just got a call. And here you are reading my blog about it. You’re going to hear my venting. But if you can hang on through the rage, you’ll also hopefully think about how you talk to your donors/communities of supporters. Phone rings. Me: “hello?” Pause. Clicking. Some kind of murmuring. Me: “hello!?” Murmur [...]

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Das Mail

So I recently bought a new car. A VW Golf Wagon. Just the right balance of race car (6-speed turbo diesel engine) and mom car (room for my 2 kids and our shaggy dog). I came home to this in my mailbox. Wrapped in that old-school brown paper, hand-taped. A stamp from “Wolfsburg, Deutschland” on [...]

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What do you have on YOUR wall?

I would say -oh -like 95% of charities (or at least the offices I have been to) have posters from their events, awards they have won, pictures of this and that. But, I’m curious… What do you have on your wall? I saw this tweet last week: @ActionAidUK: This inspirational piece of art in our [...]

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#afpcongress: By the hashtags, scribbles, photos and vids

Here are the highlights from our scribbled notes and tweets from Congress. We heartily encourage all fundraisers to check out the #afpcongress hashtag to review the highlights from all tweeps in attendance. Scribbles: Wendy Mesley: “Trust is not being given to institutions but to individuals.” Sean Triner (@seantriner) on “witnessing”. This is brilliant. Sean insists [...]

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Are we innovative?

Innovation is a funny thing. Everyone says they want to be but are afraid to do so when they get the chance. As someone who is creative, I see opportunities to be innovative all the time but have had clients who swear they want it – and then at the last minute chicken out. As [...]

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Why logos cost more than $25

I actually wrote this post well over a year ago – but it seems as timely as ever. If I’m asked to design a direct mail piece, I often know the rough total cost and how long it will take me because I’ve been doing it for a long time. But I also know the [...]

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