Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

My recent presentation on “Message & Media: Marketing for Small Community-Based Nonprofits” is featured on the homepage of Slideshare.net today. It’s the same presentation that I shared with you in a post on Monday.

I’ve been meaning to talk a little bit about the value of Slideshare to nonprofit communicators, so this is a good chance to return the love.

Just like LinkedIn Answers, Slideshare.net has become a really good source of current thinking on various issues, including nonprofit marketing and especially social media. While you certainly can’t get a speaker’s complete message from her slides alone, you can usually get the gist of it, allowing you to follow up with the speaker directly if you want more detail on her point of view. And Slideshare does allow you to add audio to your slides, although I haven’t done that yet.

When I’m researching something new, whether for a client, a blog post, or a webinar, I’ve added a search on Slideshare to my must-check list. Googling is usually the first thing I do, but I quickly move on to other favorite sources now like Slideshare. I highly recommend that you do the same when doing online research for your nonprofit.

The presentations posted by Beth Kanter (queen of all that is social media for nonprofits) and Jonathon Coleman (Nature Conservancy social media genius) alone are worth your time. Beth has also blogged about how nonprofits can use Slideshare for advocacy so I won’t repeat her points here - go read them on her blog.

Are you using Slideshare in any capacity? Share what you are doing with it and your Slideshare link by leaving a comment. You can find all of my presentations at slideshare.net/kivilm.

I taught a marketing workshop on “message and media” for our local United Way agencies here in Davidson County, North Carolina about a week ago (the slides are below). Since I had an op-ed column due for our local paper the same day, and no real topic in mind, I decided to ask the nonprofits in the room to tell me what was different or challenging about summer for them.

I said I would use the stories they told me in the column and set up a fundraising page at change.org to see if we could raise a few bucks online for them at the same time (online fundraising is practically non-existent among our local nonprofits, so that part alone was going to be an interesting experiment).

Here are just a few of the stories they told me:

– The domestic violence shelter sees an increase in family stays in summer because as the temperatures rise, so do tempers.

–Special Olympics offers sports programs all year long, but there’s a widespread misperception that their Spring and Fall Games are the only events they do, leaving them short of volunteers for summer sports.

–Our local free clinic director says about 40% of their patients need transportation assistance, and due in part to high gas prices, they are seeing many more appointment cancellations. While gas prices go up every summer, this year is especially hard and people who rely on friends and neighbors for a ride are getting turned down much more often, leading to the cancellations.

Here is the column I wrote. And here is the change.org page I set up. We’ve raised over $500 so far.

But here’s the take-home lesson for you: Look at how summer changes your work and pitch the story to your local media. Trust me, they are tired of the same ol’ baby/dog-in-hot-car, working-outside-in-the-heat summer stories. Give them something fresh to tie to the hot temps and I bet they’ll go for it.

Your donors may not even be aware of these challenges. While I had a hunch that I’d get some good stories out of our local nonprofits, some of them truly surprised me. Why not send an email appeal to your supporters asking for help with a particular summer challenge? Or write a personal letter to your biggest donors letting them know how critical their ongoing support is all year long, but especially during the summer months. Who knows, maybe you can use it as an angle to get some people to sign up for monthly giving plans.

Here are the slides I promised . . . this is one version of my Nonprofit Marketing 101 talks. I’ll be giving another version during this Wednesday’s webinar on “How to Write a Quick and Dirty Marketing Strategy.”

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This week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is now up at Social Butterfly, where the theme is cha-cha chaaanges. You’ll find some posts from some regulars and some newer voices too. Check it out. Next week the Carnival will be hosted by the Get Fully Funded Blog.

Speaking of changes, starting in August, this Carnival will shift to a twice-monthly instead of weekly format, publishing on the 1st and 15th of the month (or the closest business day). The extra week per edition will give hosts a little more time to find the posts they really want to highlight and will also give bloggers more time to respond to any special themes the hosts are promoting. This does mean, however, that the number of hosting slots will be cut in half. If you are interested in hosting in August - December 2008, be sure to look for my call for hosts in July or subscribe to the contributors’ email list.

Every time you launch a new campaign or implement a new program, I am sure you give yourself ample time to sit down and think through the very best marketing strategies and communications tactics. I have no doubt that you have ample funding to do market research, to hire the most creative talent, to always follow best practices, to test your marketing, and to launch your campaigns with great fanfare.

YEAH, RIGHT!

OK, here’s the real world. You have what is supposed to be a major fundraiser next week and you are just now thinking about a press release. You received a little grant for a new program that you think will really help your community, but it doesn’t include a line item to market the program to the people who need it. Your board is sick of that other group down the street getting all the attention and they expect you to do something about it.

NOW WHAT?

Take a deep breath. Grab a sheet of paper (or a napkin) and a pen (type if you want, but I personally find sketching these out much easier). We are going to do a “back of the napkin, quick and dirty” marketing strategy. I’ll explain this concept in much more detail with real examples during the “How to Write a Quick and Dirty Marketing Strategy” webinar on Wednesday, June 11, 2008. Details here.

1) What are you trying to accomplish? What’s the goal?

Trying to get a certain number of people to an event? Need to let a particular group of people know about a new program? What do you want to happen and whom do you need to engage to make it happen?

2) Why should they care? What’s in it for them?

Yes, this is important to you, but why should it be important to these people you want to communicate with? What do they get out of it? How are they going to be better off as a result of listening to you and acting on what you say?

3) What’s the easiest, most direct way to get information to them?

What are they already reading? Where are they already going? Who are they already talking to? Take the answers to #2, draft some marketing copy, and get it out there.

Yes, this is a really oversimplified, bare bones approach to nonprofit marketing. But if you can quickly work through these three questions before you start throwing pixels and print out there, you’ll be much better off.

Join us on Wednesday and you’ll see how this works in the real world and what other questions you should ask if you have a little more time.

I’ve made a few changes to the schedule for the Nonprofit Marketing Guide weekly webinar series.

This week’s webinar, “Easy and Effective Ways to Grow Your Email List” had to be postponed. The new date is Thursday, June 19 at 2:00 p.m. Thought you missed it? No worries, you still have plenty of time to register.

“How to Create Nonprofit Messages That Motivate,” originally scheduled for June 19, has been canceled. The guest speaker ended up having a scheduling conflict.

So, here’s the quick list of the next four webinars.

June 11 - How to Write a Quick and Dirty Marketing Strategy
June 19 - Easy and Effective Ways to Build Your Email List
June 25 - Must-Have Features for Nonprofit Websites
July 16 - Nonprofit Writing Stinks! How to Bring Your Writing Back to Life

I’ll be adding more topics to fill out the summer and early fall schedule within the next week or so.

Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention wants your votes on the best nonprofit taglines for her first-ever Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards. The tagline finalists you’ll see in the poll have been carefully culled from the more than 1,050 taglines submitted to the recent Getting Attention Tagline Survey. While they may all be good, let’s decide together whose is the best.

Vote today or by Friday, June 20 at the latest.

P.S. Please spread the word to your office mates — the more votes, the more accurate the results.

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide weekly webinar series is back after a break with “Easy and Effective Ways to Build Your Email List” on Thursday, June 19, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern (11:00 a.m. Pacific). Registration is just $35. Get the details.

I’ll be covering the latest strategies for keeping your email list healthy and growing. The good news is that most of them really are easy and effective.

If you can’t make the webinar or just want a taste of its contents, here’s a new article from Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com on building your email list.

12 Easy Ways to Build Your Nonprofit’s Email List

List churn — the drops in your list size as people change email addresses without telling you or unsubscribe from your list — is inevitable. Many nonprofits lose 20-30% of their lists each year to this natural turn-over. How can you combat the churn and keep your list growing? Here are a dozen tactics you can use to keep your email list growing.

1. Send a regular e-newsletter to your list. Even if it is simply a short update that you send once a month, get in the habit of regularly sending mail to your list. An active list is much more likely to grow.

2. Include a simple sign-up box on your website, ideally on every page, but on your homepage at a minimum.

3. Make changing an address very easy. Ideally, subscribers to your newsletter can update their own email addresses with just a few clicks. The harder you make it, the less likely they are to do it and the more likely they are to drop off your list permanently.

4. Encourage readers to forward your e-newsletter to friends and be sure to include a link to your sign-up form in each edition so those friends can sign up directly.

5. When people register for your events, tell them they will receive your e-newsletter too.

Read the rest of the article for remaining tips.

This week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is now available over at Fundraising Breakthroughs. You’ll find some YouTube, some campaigns, and some solid tips, all with great ideas and lessons on online fundraising for small and medium-sized nonprofits.
Next week the Carnival will be hosted by SocialButterfly.