Start as you mean to go on

You’ve got your sleeves rolled up – you’re ready for your fall fundraising. You and roughly 161,000 other charities and non-profits in Canada. And you – and 161,000 other compelling, inspiring causes are also seeking new donors for your movement. Today, a few friendly reminders from your Agents of Good about donor acquisition that puts [...]

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10 Ways to Keep Your Donors at the Heart of it All

You’re entering the busiest time of year in fundraising. Which means, so is everyone else. Everyone is bombarding your donors with their messages, their missions and their important news… In other words, you need to be different, better and more important to your donor than everyone else to ensure you get heard. With that in [...]

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Lang Chngs. <3 & actn r 4 evah

By the time we met…the times had already changed – Arcade Fire, We Used To Wait My daughter Sadie spent a few precious minutes (as long as she ever sits still) on the lap of her great grandfather recently. They shared their love of the natural world looking at the bright orange Oriole and the [...]

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Dear Ms. Nit-Picker…

(Please note: all similarity to you or your cause is purely coincidental.) Dear Ms. Nit-Picker, This is an open letter to charity staff members who edit fundraising appeals. With special focus on those of you who aren’t direct response fundraisers or have a clue about fundraising strategy. Just like with my Dear Mr. Fancypants blog, [...]

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My friend Barack

Barack Obama is my friend. On Facebook. Me and 21 million (almost 22 million) of his closest friends received this post in our feed this week: Rather than setting a goal of millions of dollars for this campaign’s first big deadline on Thursday, we’re setting a goal of 450,000 grassroots donors. So far, 404,954 people [...]

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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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Holy Beep!

Holy Beep! Successful projects rock. And while it does feel a bit like beeping our own horn, when we celebrate our success here at Agents of Good, it is all the more awesome because in our work, it also means that the world is a little bit of a better place. And in the case [...]

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Adventures in Election Direct Mail

I wasn’t sure if I was going to blog about the election. Because the content sucks. I watched the debate. Boring, entitled white guy backpedals and blames the other guy. I follow the candidates on Twitter. Broadcast, broadcast, broadcast. But now the election is coming into my mailbox. You’re on my turf now. I could [...]

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Show and Share Day

“MUMMY! I love Show and Share Day!” – Mason, bouncing at my bedside, 5:55AM My energetic 6 year-old loves Show and Share in his kindergarten class. You bring a toy, and take turns showing the other kids how your toy works and why you love it, and then everyone shares the toys for an hour [...]

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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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