Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

Nancy Schwartz has just released the list of winners of the 2008 Nonprofit Tagline Award Competition. Watch for her full report on nonprofit taglines, coming in September.

2008 Award Winners

Arts & Culture: Where Actors Find Their Space -NYC Theatre Spaces

This clearinghouse for NYC rehearsal and performance spaces uses a double entendre to go beyond a description of its services and highlight the value of its work.

Civic Benefit: Stand Up for a Child -CASA of Southwest Missouri

CASA’s tagline provokes anger, compassion and a desire to help, in just five words.

Education: Stay Close…Go Far. -East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania

This simple yet distinctive tagline from East Stroudsburg cuts through the clutter. Its straightforward character mirrors that of the school.

Environment & Animals: Helping Preserve the Places You Cherish -LandChoices

LandChoices’ tagline thoroughly communicates the value of its work while evoking one’s most precious memories of walks in the woods, wildflower meadows and childhood camping trips. There’s a real emotional connection here.

Grantmaking: Make the most of your giving. -The Greater Cincinnati Foundation

This clear tagline articulates the value of the foundation for donors considering an alternative way to give.

Health & Sciences: Improving Life, One Breath at a Time -American Lung Association

This unexpected focus on the breath-a core element of life-gets attention, and understanding.

Human Services: When You Can’t Do It Alone -Jewish Family & Children’s Service of Sarasota-Manatee, Inc.

This tagline tells the story succinctly and powerfully: It’s all about getting help when life becomes overwhelming. It makes a strong emotional connection.

International, Foreign Affairs & National Security: Whatever it takes to save a child -U.S. Fund for UNICEF

UNICEF engages hearts and minds with its passionate focus on helping children. Who could turn down a request for a donation?

Jobs & Workforce Development: All Building Starts With a Foundation -Building Future Builders

Voters enjoyed the word play here: It adds depth of understanding without being glib.

Religion & Spiritual Development: Grounded in tradition…Open to the Spirit -Memphis Theological Seminary (MTS)

MTS conveys the two equally important halves of its values and curriculum in a way that makes you think about the connection.

Other

• The Art of Active Aging -EngAGE

EngAGE surprises with the imagery of active aging and the use of the term “art” to describe the way it does its work.

• Because facts matter. -Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP)

This tagline introduces the nature of OCPP’s impact in Oregon and entices the reader or listener to find out more. Its value proposition-the truth-is particularly compelling at a time when facts are frequently disregarded in public debate.

Writing is a really tough chore for a lot of nonprofit staff, which is one reason why I’m teaching a webinar called “Nonprofit Writing Stinks: How to Bring Your Writing Back to Life” on Wednesday of this week. I want to share some fairly easy tricks that I’ve learned over the years that will take some of the mystery out of good nonprofit copywriting.

As part of the webinar, I’ll poke fun at the buzzwords we use in the nonprofit sector. I’ve added a Nonprofit Buzzword Bingo game to Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com as a webinar bonus and you can play along too! I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to using the words in the game, so let it be a fun reminder for all of us, professional writers or not!

You can also add tech terms to the nonprofit buzzwords (select “Nonprofit and Tech Buzzwords” from the drop-down menu), creating an nptech version, and you can customize your cards by adding your own words and deleting others from the list. If you feel certain buzzwords are worthy of permanent listing in the game, feel free to leave a comment on this post and I’ll consider adding them.

Thanks to Lukertech for the script!

Wondering what nonprofit books you should be reading this summer? Skip on over to the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants at Sea Change Strategies for a good list.

Next week the Carnival will be hosted by Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Tech.

Yesterday I wrote about how you can use thank you notes to set yourself apart from the competition, because lots of nonprofits (1) don’t do thank you notes at all, (2) don’t do them very well, or (3) overlook easy opportunities to touch their donors’ hearts.

Here’s another story for you about the power of a personalized note, even if the text of the note isn’t that stellar.

When I receive thank-you notes from charities, they usually get filed immediately in my tax deductions folder. But there’s one note that I’ve left on my desk for months now.

We vacation on Ocracoke in North Carolina’s Outer Banks every year, and this year, I noticed that Ocracoke Island Realty asked people renting houses to contribute to local charities. They would match the donations dollar for dollar. (Word to the wise: If you live near a vacation hot spot, copy this idea immediately!)

So I gave $10 each to a few of the charities, including Ocracoke Child Care. We always see the same wait staff working at two or three places, often in the same day, so I know that child care must be critical for the hard-working people who make my week of vacation such a pleasure. I expected the realty company to acknowledge the donation, but I did not really expect individual thank-you letters from the charities.

The typewritten part of the note I received from Ocracoke Child Care is about as short as you can get, something close to “Thanks for the donation. We really appreciate it. This letter is your receipt.” Not much more than that and certainly not remarkable.

But the letter is still on my desk because of what fills up all the white space left under that short official note — this drawing:

I have little kids and therefore more of this kind of stuff around my house than you can possibly imagine. But this grabbed me nonetheless. Why?

In part, because it was so unexpected, but primarily because even though I have no idea what these people actually look like, I can see the center director Amanda, who signed the letter, sitting down at one of those little tables and asking Yoselyn to grab a crayon and draw this picture for me. I can see her asking the little girl what this is (as it might not be quite obvious to the untrained eye) and adding the title and signature to this masterpiece. They took a little extra time to personalize this letter in a way that only an agency that works with little kids can, and I only sent them $10! But you can bet they’ll get more out of me next time we reserve a house.

Now, of course, kid artwork isn’t going to be appropriate for everyone. But every nonprofit can come up with some kind of equivalent way to personalize their thank you notes and make a much more direct, human connection between the donation and the standard thank-you letter in reply.

Here are a few more goodies for you about thank you notes from some notable voices:

From Jeff Brooks: 40 Thank You Notes = One Grateful Donor

From Katya Andresen: Thank Three Times for Each Ask

From Sandy Rees: Ten Ways to Energize Your Thank You Letters

I’ll talk more about thank you notes during next week’s webinar on nonprofit writing. Tell me about some of your favorite thank you notes by leaving a comment.

Photo by JosephH on Flickr

After many years of living in the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington DC, my husband and I moved back to his hometown of Lexington, North Carolina in 2001. Living in a small town in rural county has given me an entirely new appreciation for the complexities involved in nonprofit management, fundraising, and marketing.

We have all of the various nonprofit agencies that you’d expect to find in any town, from hospice and the free clinic to the humane society and Girl Scouts. But we only have about 20,000 people in the city limits proper and 160,000 in the whole county. That equates to about 8,000 households in Lexington and about 20% of the city’s population lives below the poverty line. The local economy has been crushed by the outsourcing of textile and furniture manufacturing overseas. In other words, the services of all of these nonprofit agencies are desperately needed, but they are all competing against each other for slices of an already thin and crumbling pie.

How can a nonprofit stand out under these circumstances?

I met with one of our local nonprofits, Davidson Medical Ministries Clinic, last week to talk generally about nonprofit marketing as they consider investing more resources in this area. We discussed this and that, but what I really wanted to impress upon them is that nailing the basics is going to be far more effective in this environment than any newfangled approach.

Take the very simple, but much overlooked thank you note, for example. The first step is to actually do them. I made a batch of donations in the last month as part of my What I Got When I Gave experiment and have yet to receive a thank you note for the majority of the donations.

The thank-you notes I have received from the clinic have been professional and personalized - no big problem there. But I suggested that they could step it up a bit by including a note from or even a snapshot of a person who is receiving care at the clinic (with their permission, obviously). That kind of thank-you would more directly connect me with why I’m giving them money in the first place.

This made sense to them immediately. Sandy, the executive director, had her own memorable experience with a heart-felt and specific thank-you note. She shared a story with me about how even though she was exasperated from a long busy day, she decided to work a little harder and later to bend a few rules to more quickly process paperwork so they could provide care for a man who came in one day with a young family. While his wife and children were covered by Medicaid, he wasn’t, and with no health insurance at all, his diabetes went untreated for so long that he was at serious risk for even more devastating medical problems.

While his family waited for his new prescriptions to be filled at the clinic’s pharmacy, his small son asked Sandy for a piece of paper and a pencil. She assumed he was just bored and wanted to draw. But a few minutes later, that young boy came back with a picture he had drawn for Sandy of his family that said “Thank you for helping my daddy.” Sandy had to excuse herself so she could go cry in her office.

Thank you notes matter. A lot. Spend time on them. Even if you only customize 10 thank-you notes a week with more personal messages, stories or photos, that’s 10 more happy donors who’ll be likely to do even more for you next time you ask.

P.S. Thank you notes will be one of the topics covered in next week’s webinar, Nonprofit Writing Stinks! How to Bring Your Writing Back to Life.

This week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is up at Solidariti. Thanks to Priscilla for hosting while all of America took a long weekend for Independence Day!

And now it’s off to the beach . . . Next week’s host, Mark Rovner at Sea Change Strategies, wants to know what summer reads you recommend for nonprofit marketers and fundraisers. What belongs in the beach bag this year (assuming you might read more than a trashy novel)? Blog about it and submit your permalink here by Saturday night.