Join us for some Mixed Links

Happy Friday! Let’s celebrate with a round of Mixed Links.

If you want to help the residents of Oklahoma who were affected by the tornado earlier this week, Network for Good has made it easy to donate to nonprofits who are helping in the disaster relief.

If you hadn’t heard Katya Andresen is leaving Network for Good after eight years. You can also read my tribute from earlier this week.

Marc Pitman, in a post that backs up a lot of what Tom Ahern said in our donor newsletter e-clinic, talks about how using statistics in fundraising doesn’t work.

Does your nonprofit enrich the lives of its volunteers? VolunteerMatch encourages you to find out what your volunteers have learned from their time with you.

Tumblr has been in the news the past week with its buy-out by Yahoo! Find out more about Tumblr and if it’s something you should consider to boost your nonprofit’s brand online.

If Tumblr isn’t your thing, then try these Five Steps to Getting Noticed on LinkedIn.

Does your organization use A/B testing for things like website design or email subject lines? Even if you think it’s not necessary, you should check out the site Which Test Won? and see if your gut instinct matches reality.

Which causes do most nonprofits serve? GuideStar answers which cause areas have the most nonprofits working in them and which have the fewest in this infographic.

Nonprofit Training

Kerri Karvetski is doing a free webinar at CharityHowTo.com on how to build your email list on June 11th.

Special Webinar:

June 6: Marketing Bequests: The Delicate Art of Asking for That Final Gift.  Learn how to tactfully ask for bequests from your current donors with fundraising expert, Tom Ahern. Registration for this webinar is $75. (Free for All-Access Pass Holders)

For All-Access Pass Holders:

May 28: Taming Your Communications Calendar Six Months at a Time

June 4: Writing Short: How to Write Subject Lines, Tweets, Headlines, Facebook Updates and More

June 5: Feedback and Fine-Tuning Session: Twitter

June 11 and 18: How To Do Your Own Nonprofit Communications Audit

We are taking Monday off for Memorial Day here in the U.S. See you Tuesday, and have a great weekend!

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Tara Collins

Tara Collins

Our 200+ Nonprofit Marketing Guide All-Access Pass Holders, along with all of you reading this blog, represent the great diversity in the world of nonprofit communications. To help you see that you aren’t alone in your challenges and that you really are part of a wonderful community of passionate, creative professionals, we are introducing you to one of our All-Access Pass Holders including what they are working on right now.

Meet All-Access Pass Holder Tara Collins of Watershed Agriculture Council 

What does the Watershed Agriculture Council do?

We’re celebrating our 20th year protecting the NYC watershed region and the drinking water quality of a reservoir system that serves over nine million New Yorkers. As a NYS land trust, the Council also holds conservation easements on over 23,000 acres of farmland, all with the voluntary support of over 1,000 private landowners.

What is your job, Tara?

As Communications Director, I do a little bit of everything: from the annual report, a monthly magazine column “Fresh From the Catskills” and our websites to a biweekly radio show “Watershed Wake-up Call”, blogging, social media and events. There are never enough hours in the day, and I could always use more time for strategy, planning and analysis.

What’s one thing you are working on right now with your communications?

We’re working with a third-party marketing firm, Burnett Group, to conduct a brand reconciliation of our buy local campaign and various organizational programs. As part of that 12-week process, we’re developing a formal messaging platform to get everyone to sing off the same sheet music and 12-month strategy that includes a content calendar and posting schedule.

How are you applying what you are learning with your All-Access Pass to your work for the watershed?

I’ve been a Pass Holder for six years, and this professional development outlet gives me resources, training and knowledge in one, easily accessible place. As a result of following webinars, reading archive materials and checking in with the Facebook group, I’ve gained confidence in making high-impact recommendations, like hiring a third-party marketing firm to formalize strategy. The All-Access Pass provides me with knowledge of what can go into a communications plan and how to do it, but more importantly, the Pass experience gives me a marketing perspective on what prioritize for my organization’s success, even with limited staff capacity. I’ll renew my Pass long after I leave my current organization because I need to keep up with ever-changing technology, and the information I get here, I can use everywhere.

Join Tara on our webinars and get other special benefits as an All-Access Pass Holder.

 

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How to Involve Staff in Nonprofit Branding

May 22, 2013

Earlier this month Haila Yates shared how her organization created audience personas to make better marketing decisions. Part of that process included getting the staff involved. Today, we are publishing another piece by Haila where she talks about how she got her organization’s staff involved with deciding on their messaging platform and other aspects of [...]

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I Love You, Katya Andresen

May 20, 2013

If you are a complete nonprofit marketing geek, you may have heard that Katya Andresen is leaving the nonprofit world, moving on as the COO of Network for Good to become the CEO of ePals, a global community of K-12 classrooms. If not, I’m sorry to break the news to you. If you read this [...]

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Mixed Links for Nonprofit Marketers

May 17, 2013

Happy Friday from hot Texas! Would you like to join us for some Mixed Links? If you are having trouble getting your supporters to talk to others about your organization, Nancy Schwartz has some ideas on what you can do to Make It Easy to Spread the Word. How do you track engagement? NTEN shares [...]

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How Often Should Your Nonprofit Send Email to Your List?

May 16, 2013

I recently presented a webinar for GuideStar called Taming Your Communications Calendar Six Months a Time. It was sold out, so I couldn’t get to all of the questions. Guidestar asked me to do a couple of follow-up blog posts answering two questions that tended to pop up most frequently. One was “How often should we [...]

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IT Staff, Marketing and Leadership #13ntc

May 15, 2013

We met Imtiaz Haiyoom by accident our first night at the Nonprofit Technology Conference (#13NTC) in Minneapolis a few weeks ago. He was sitting approximately where we wanted to host a little meet and greet, so we basically commandeered his table and forced him join us. He got a free drink out of the ordeal, but I think [...]

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Ready to Schedule Your Nonprofit Comm Free Day? #npcommfreeday

May 14, 2013

A couple of weeks ago, we asked on Facebook and Twitter what you would do if you had a whole free day to yourself at work, no meetings and no interruptions. The top answer by far was some version of cleaning your office and getting your files organized. Seems nonprofit communicators are ready for some [...]

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Seven Easy Ways to Repurpose Your Content

May 13, 2013

I recently presented a webinar for GuideStar called Taming Your Communications Calendar Six Months a Time (which I am now teaching for CharityHowTo). Due to the large number of people who attended, I just couldn’t answer everyone’s questions live. Guidestar asked me to do a couple of follow-up blog posts answering two questions that tended [...]

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Mixed Links for Nonprofit Marketers

May 10, 2013

It’s finally starting to feel a little more like spring here in NC. Let’s celebrate with some Mixed Links! I’ve reopened the application process for our Nonprofit Marketing Guide Mentoring Program for communications directors and executive directors who do it all. The new six-month session begins July 1 and we have 10 slots open. We’ve already [...]

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Making It Skimmable Is Not Dumbing It Down

May 9, 2013

I presented a webinar on email newsletter strategy for CharityHowTo last week, and one of the key messages was to make the email itself very skimmable, with links to your website where the bulk of the content would be. In the email itself, you can include short teaser content. This is especially important for newsletters that [...]

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Raise More Money for Your Organization: Two Tactics

May 8, 2013

It costs much less to keep the donors you have than it does to acquire new ones, plain and simple. Of course, knowing that and implementing a fundraising program built on it are two different things. Between our 2013 Nonprofit Communications Trends report and the recent email newsletter survey I conducted, nonprofit communicators still think [...]

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