Nonprofit Communications

If you were starting from scratch, how would you spend an annual budget of just $1,000 to market your nonprofit online?

Let’s say you have a computer with the basic Microsoft Office package and you have a high-speed Internet connection. But that’s it.

Here’s how I would spend the money. Let me know how you would spend it by leaving a comment (if you are reading this via email or in a reader, click on the title to go to the blog).

$150 — to register a domain name and pay for decent web hosting for a year, with a dedicated IP.

You can get cheaper hosting, but these days it’s worth a little extra to get a “business” package with your own dedicated IP address so you aren’t sharing one with a spammer site. I personally use GoDaddy and Apollo Hosting, but there are certainly plenty of other reliable companies out there. See “A Few Good Web Hosting Providers” by Idealware.

Install Wordpress or some other open-source content management system/blogging software. See “A Few Good Tools to Manage Content on Simple Sites” by Idealware. (Yes, Idealware is my go-to site for tech recommendations.)

$300 — to pay a web designer to customize a free/cheap Wordpress template for your website/blog and a free e-newsletter template.

A little professional design help can go a long way in making free templates look like they were designed just for your organization. The templates I use for both this blog and NonprofitMarketingGuide.com were purchased from TemplateMonster and customized. Your email newsletter provider (who you’ll hire in just a second) will also provide lots of free templates that your designer can spiff up.

$300 — to get an annual plan with an email marketing service.

This lets you send out regular e-newsletters and timely e-blasts. $300 will let you email a list of around 2,500, so you have plenty of room to grow from zero. They will also give you the code to put an email newsletter sign-up box on your website. Your web designer can help you insert the code if you can’t figure it out. I email to lists mostly out of my shopping cart system, but I also use iContact. Here is another Idealware article: A Few Good Email Newsletter Tools.

$200 — to buy a decent point-and-shoot digital camera.

Great photos of real people working with your organization on its mission are incredibly valuable. Use photos on your website, in your email newsletters, and on your social networking sites (those are free). Your camera will come with basic photo editing software.

$50 — to spend on a little training.

Figure out where your biggest skill gap is and fill it with either an affordable webinar or a how-to book. Skills to work on include writing for the web (see 4/24/08 webinar), email newsletters (see 3/30/08 webinar), HMTL/PHP (so you can trouble-shoot your site and newsletters), basic digital photography and photo editing (so you can work with your images), as well as nonprofit marketing in general (start with “Robin Hood Marketing“).

Spare Change — spend on stock photography credits.

If you are under-budget anywhere, spend a few bucks buying credits for stock photography to fill in where you don’t have good photos of your own. I love istockphoto.

That’s it! How would you spend the $1K?

P.S. I’m teaching a webinar on April 2 on online marketing basics for nonprofits.

. . . if they don’t see themselves in them.

I just read this interesting article by Tom Neveril called “Consumers Ignore Ads that Don’t Tell Their Stories” in Advertising Age. The first part of the article talks about some market research for a new beverage targeted at surfers and then analyzes what happened with Tide to Go’s MyTalkingStain campaign. The SuperBowl commercial was ripe for spoofs, so Tide set up a site where people could submit their own spoofs — stories about their own talking stains, putting themselves into the narrative. People liked the commercial because they could imagine a stain on their own clothes talking.

The bottom line is that people don’t really care about the rational claims they hear in ads, or about stories about other people not like them (or people they admire or can otherwise relate to). If they can’t connect in some personal way, they ignore it.

Can your supporters relate to the stories you are telling? They don’t have to be in the same situation as the person you are telling the story about, but can your donors share an emotion with that person? Is there some common human experience they can latch on to? Can they see themselves helping that person through your organization?

The second part of the article has some helpful how-tos that nonprofits can use to conduct ethnographic research (listening to people talk in their own environments, where the stories will flow from them much more naturally) and then use those stories in your marketing.

– Trigger memories through senses

– Know how to identify a good story (protagonist - antagonist conflict)

– Add an element of surprise

– Focus on the markers of a good story

Want to learn more about telling your nonprofit’s stories? Check out the webinar I’m hosting on May 14.

By Guest Blogger Claire Voyant

If you’re a later baby boomer, maybe you remember “The Archies” singing their animated hearts out during the Saturday morning cartoons.

“Sugar, Sugar . . . ah, honey, honey. You are my candy girl . . . ”

Now that you’re a grown-up, working in the wonderful world of nonprofits, you may be singing that song quite a bit. Only it’s this version:

“Sugar, Sugar . . . ah, MONEY MONEY.”

That’s ironic, isn’t it? The very term, “non-profit” conjures up an image of NO MONEY, little money, or at least, not thinking about turning a profit. What’s that old saying, “Money is the root of all evil?”

But the joke is, “The LACK of money is the root of all evil” – and we know, the lack of money is no laughing matter when you’re trying to run a nonprofit. Money really matters. Every penny, every nickel, every thin dime must be spent wisely.

In Kivi’s survey of upcoming webinars (do it now if you haven’t already), one topic focuses on getting the most out of your communications consultant. When I saw this, I wanted to grab my tambourine and sing, “ . . . you are my candy girl!”

Spread the word, Kivi, and help save those dimes. I know that one message will be, “quantity does not equal quality” and another will be “learn how to identify billable busywork.”

Spreading your message is extremely important, and it doesn’t have to break the bank if you know what you need – and what you don’t. You may only need a sprinkle of sugar and a dab of honey to sweeten your communications. The more you know about the sugar and the honey – the more you’ll get out off your candy girl (or guy.)

Rob Blizard

A good friend of mine, Rob Blizard, has written an interesting article (pdf) for the Planned Giving Today newsletter on the effectiveness of online tactics like web pages and email in marketing planned giving to nonprofit donors. If you aren’t hip to the development lingo, planned giving refers to gifts often associated with estate or retirement planning, like leaving a nonprofit in your will or establishing a charitable gift annuity or charitable trusts.

The article includes lots of interesting examples where online marketing is working and where it’s not. Could this be a mismatch of tactics and audience, since most people who are interested in making planned gifts are much older than the typical online donor? Or is it just a case of early adoption, where those nonprofits who are testing online marketing for planned giving now will be the first to see it payoff later as the Baby Boomers age?

Read the article for Rob’s take and then let us know what you think by leaving a comment. (If you are reading this through an email subscription, just click on over to the blog to leave a comment.)

Rob is currently the director of gift planning for Mount Vernon and previously worked for the Humane Society of the United States. In addition to your comments on the article, you can also leave questions for Rob here too.

“Do we really have to include the letter from the executive director/CEO/president in our newsletter?”

“Do we really have to include an executive message in our annual report?”

Nonprofit staff ask me these questions with the same look on their faces that a child has when she asks, “Do I really have to eat this broccoli?”

That’s because they are equally bland and mushy, and while everything else on the plate (or pages) may be great, you’d rather just pretend that overcooked broccoli (or letters) didn’t exist.

Here’s my order of preference for solving this problem:

(1) Drop it. No one will miss it.

This is definitely true in a newsletter. I think you can argue the case that an annual report is better with a personal message from the director, but only if it’s good. In my “How to Write a Four-Page Annual Report” webinar on Thursday, I’ll recommend either dropping it entirely or cutting it back to less than a third of a page. It’s just not that important compared to some other annual report must-haves.

(2) If you must keep it, move it.

When these letters are really bad, nonprofits seem to always make it worse by putting them on the cover of the newsletter. Move it to less valuable real estate (like the lower half of an interior page). After all, the Op-Ed page in a newspaper is in the middle, not on the cover. For an annual report, it really does need to be near the front. It doesn’t need to take up a whole page, however.

(3) If at all possible, give it a serious makeover.

The letter should serve a purpose other than executive director ego stroking. You should treat it just like any other article in your newsletter. What’s the message? Why do the readers care? How does the letter make your supporters feel good about themselves and your organization? The contents of the letter should be debated just like the rest of the editorial calendar. For annual reports, either use the letter as a personalized executive summary or as an extra helping of thanks to your supporters with a brief preview of good things to come.

I used some early results from my survey on webinar topics to fill out the Nonprofit Marketing Guide weekly webinar series through early May. (Haven’t taken the survey yet? Do it now. It’s fast, I promise.)

Here is the complete schedule, with an asterisk by those just added:

March 13 - How to Write a 4-Page Nonprofit Annual Report - A Crash Course Webinar

March 20 - Converting Your Print Newsletter into an Email Newsletter

*April 3 - Online Marketing Basics for Nonprofits: From Email to Social Media

April 10 - Branding for Nonprofits: What Is It and Should You Do It? - Teleseminar

*April 17 - How to Write a Press Release Reporters Will Love

April 24 - Online Writing: Dos and Don’ts of Writing for the Web and Email

*May 1 - What Do Baby Boomer Donors Want from Your Nonprofit?

*May 14 - Nonprofit Storytelling: How to Write Your Nonprofit’s Best Stories

All of these webinars are $35, with the exception of the conference-call only teleseminar on branding on April 10, which is just $20. Your registration covers as many people from your organization as you can fit around one speaker phone and computer monitor.

See several you’d like to attend? Get the All-Access Pass and attend any webinar/teleseminar we host for 12 weeks for just $97!

The Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants for this week is now up at Solidariti. You’ll find some great posts on marketing, technology, fundraising, and more. Priscilla says she received more great entries than she could include (we keep the Carnival to seven posts to increase the likelihood that you’ll have time to read them all). Thanks to everyone for submitting your best post week after week!

On March 17, the Carnival travels to Sam Davidson’s Blog. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day and the very “green” shamrocks that accompany related celebrations, the Carnival is looking for posts that relate the nonprofit world to anything “green.” This can be the environment, money, or even how to train new hires (those “green” to the sector). So, as long as your post is related to a “green” topic in any form, you’ve got a shot at being included in this week’s Carnival!

I recently asked this question in a different way on the Nonprofit section of LinkedIn Answers. The sum advice from all the responses was this:

Keep it short.

Focus on accomplishments.

Thank your supporters.

My annual reports e-book tells you everything you need to know to write a traditional nonprofit annual report, whether it’s 8 pages or 20. But it doesn’t help you figure out a way to keep it really short and tight.

That’s why I am hosting a webinar next Thursday (March 13, 2008, 3:00 pm ET) called How to Write a Four-Page Nonprofit Annual Report. I’ll explain exactly how to go about highlighting your accomplishments and thanking your supporters all in an easy-to-read and easy-to-produce four-page format that any nonprofit can pull off.

And yes, for everyone who has ever asked me for a template and have been disappointed when I said, “I don’t do templates” — I’ll give you a template. Everyone registered for the webinar will get two pdfs that block out what can go where. They won’t be filled with text or photos or charts — that’s your job. But they will give you a headstart on figuring out how much you need to write about what and where to put it.

Get the webinar details and register.

What’s your take on how long a nonprofit annual report should be? Leave a comment and share your perspective as either a donor or a nonprofit or both.

P.S. Have you told me which webinar topics you prefer for this summer? Take the short survey now. I’m going to keep bugging you dear blog readers with this reminder until I have at least 100 responses. Right now, I’ve got 40. Thank you!