Mixed Links - Good Stuff for Nonprofit Marketers

It’s only Wednesday, but the bod says it feels like Friday, so let’s have a little Mixed Links Happy Hour, shall we?

The Nonprofit CEO’s Manifesto by Sasha Dichter is making the rounds. Read it if you haven’t yet, in its original form or on Seth Godin’s blog. It’s a nice B-12 shot for those of you who are feeling sluggish about fundraising given the economic realities right now.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the Manifesto on the importance of storytelling:  ”People think that storytelling is a gift, not a skill.  Learning how to do this – to be an effective storyteller, to consistently connect with different people from different walks of life and convince them to see the world as you do and walk with you to a better future – is hard, but it’s a skill like any other.  It’s true that some people are born with it.  But it still can be learned and practiced, and if your nonprofit is going to succeed, you’d better have more than one or two people who can pull this off.”

I teach nonprofit storytelling webinars and workshops, so I couldn’t agree more. If you are ready to start learning how to tell good stories, check out my nonprofit storytelling course you can start right this minute.

Mike Newton-Ward at the Social Marketing Panaroma Blog has an interesting post on the first few chapters of the book Buyology: Truth and Lies about Why We Buy, which looks at how buying stimulates various parts of the brain. I’m looking forward to more posts from Mike and others on how the research in this book can apply to marketing good causes.

Speaking of how our brains work, I love this list on Donor Power Blog, riffing on CopyBlogger, about understanding some fundamentals of human nature and how people make decisions. Though written about selling, the parallels to fundraising and motivating supporters to help you in other ways are pretty clear.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has Google-mapped its annual Philanthropy 400 ranking of the nation’s largest fundraising charities. I would have guessed that the map would be very heavily weighted toward the coasts, and there are some vast swaths of the country with very little on the map, but overall, it’s a more even distribution than I would have guessed.

What are the characteristics of effective nonprofit communications? The Communication Network has some thoughts on that based on a survey and offers you a self-assessment tool as well.

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Private Webinars for Your Association or Foundation

Photo by raptortheangel on Flickr

I did two private webinars today, both on online marketing basics for nonprofits. This morning’s webinar was hosted by the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies and this afternoon’s was hosted by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.

This morning, the group was gathered in person at a conference and they used webinar technology to bring me in virtually. This afternoon, we used the same webinar technology I use every week for the Nonprofit Marketing Guide webinar series with participants logging in from across the United States. It was a cost-effective way to get training to members of an association in one case and to a foundation’s local advocacy partners and grantees in the other.

I’m available to give just about any of the webinars I teach through Nonprofit Marketing Guide as private webinars for your members, grantees, or partners and can customize the examples and talking points to be relevant to your cause or concerns. Give me a call at 336-499-5816 or send me an email to begin discussing how we can work together to provide some high-quality, affordable training for your groups.

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What Type of Blog Should Your Nonprofit Write?

This Wednesday’s Webinar: Blogging for Nonprofits: Tips, Traps and Tales October 29, 2008 1:00 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific) Get the details and register

Let’s assume for a minute that your nonprofit should write a blog in the first place (more on that question some other time). What kind of blog should you write?

You’ll find different categories of blogs, including a color-coded version and even a debate over whether we should categorize blogs at all.

I certainly think you can mix and match blog types, and I bet most  successful blogs do. But I also think that it’s helpful to have one primary direction in mind and to categorize nonprofit blogs based on what your organization hopes to achieve by blogging and how you want your nonprofit to be perceived by your blog’s readers.

Your blog must be part of a larger communications strategy, and thinking of your blog in terms of your marketing goals will help ensure that integration. Take a look at these six goals and the kind of blog you would write as a result.

If you want to be known as a go-to source on a particular topic  . . .

Write a news blog where you summarize and analyze the latest reports and commentary mostly from other sources, but also from your own organization. This kind of blog will include lots of links to other websites and blogs, with a great system of categories and tags to keep everything organized. These blogs are a mix of “reviewers” and “pointers.” This kind of blog is also a great way to combat your own information overload and to organize all the public stuff that your organization wants to keep track of. If you are big into social bookmarking (e.g. Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon), this is your kind of blog.

If you want to be known as the “voice” on your issue . . .

Write an advocacy blog where you regularly explain situations that need changing and help us explore why your approaches are the best ways to bring about those changes.  These nonprofit blogs help bring readers along by educating them on the issues, explaining the various options and positions out there (e.g. what works and what doesn’t) and helping us “see the light.” These blogs can range from policy wonk to zealous champion, but are very issue-oriented. They are mostly “producers” with some “reviewer” and “pointer” thrown in here and there.

If you want to be known as a resource, problem solver, or technical assistance provider . . .

Build a toolbox blog that’s heavy on how to’s, lists, case studies, interviews, and success stories. Show people how to solve their own problems, how to effect change for your cause, and where to go for more help and ideas. Give advice that empowers people to help you change the world.

If you want donors to better understand the need for and impact of your organization . . .

Create a storytelling blog where you share lots of anecdotes about the people you are helping, the partners you work with, the volunteers and donors who help you, and the staff  and board who keep everything moving forward. I also sometimes call this the “insider” blog because much of the storytelling is about what happens behind the scenes, including the little victories and struggles along the way that may not be press release worthy, but still shed light on the realities of your work. Through stories, you are really letting donors see the world through your eyes and giving them an insider’s perspective.

If you want to build confidence in and support for your organization’s decisionmaking, leadership, and approaches . . .

Write a CEO/Executive Director blog, where the top executive for the organization writes about the nonprofit’s work, with a personal flair, in his or her own voice. This can be equally effective for large institutions that need to put a human face back on their work and for small or new organizations that need to build up trust and credibility with funders and partners. These blogs are also good venues for talking about the big picture and strategic decisionmaking. They don’t have to be written by the CEO per se, but are typically written by someone with significant authority within the organization.

If you want to capture your staff’s passion for their work without having an “official blog” . . .

Encourage staff to write professional life blogs. These blogs are technically personal blogs, but the content includes lots of information about the staff member’s work life and profession. They can be hosted on personal domains or on organizational domains, depending on the mix and just how much influence the organization will have over the content. These blogs are often focused on one particular niche within the larger field that a nonprofit works in. Sometimes they can go with the person when they leave the nonprofit and other times they stay with the position itself.

I can hear the screaming now . . . WHERE ARE THE EXAMPLES? I am leaving off examples on purpose for now, because I want to see if these categories ring true for you without placing specific visions in your mind. Do the nonprofit blogs you write and read fit these categories? Which nonprofit blogs fit into which categories? Which don’t? Please leave a comment and let me know what you think and what examples you’d suggest for the various categories. I’ll do a follow-up post where I refine these categories based on your comments and add links to example blogs I’m thinking of.

Learn more during this week’s webinar, Blogging for Nonprofits: Tips, Traps, and Tales on Wednesday.

Tags: nptech, wearemedia
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Cranking Up Your Email Marketing for Fall Fundraising

Photo by Darwin Bell on Flickr

Earlier this week, I was the guest speaker for Network for Good’s Nonprofit 911 series and the topic was how to launch a successful email marketing campaign or e-newsletter. I explained what I would do if I were plucked out of my office and dropped into a small nonprofit and told to launch a new email marketing program from scratch. 

Here are the six basic steps I covered during the call:

1. Get an email newsletter service provider.

2. Get your current mailing list into shape.

3. Make is really easy for people to join your list and manage their own subscriptions.

4. Create an editorial calendar a few months at a time.

5. Write and design your email messages, always with your readers in mind.

6. Measure the results and track over time. 

Why so much emphasis on the list and process? For as much as I write about constructing good e-newsletters, the reality is that your bottom-line success depends largely on the size and quality of your list. Great content is a must (it will help you build and maintain your list), but the list itself is really key.

You can read my full list of talking points from the call and an abbreviated article that summarizes them. You can also listen to the recording now (mp3). It’s about an hour long.

Thanks to Rebecca, Jono, and Katya at Network for Good for having me!

P.S. If you need some help with your email campaigns or e-newsletters, I’m teaching the Email and Web Writing Webinar on November 12 and the Easy and Effective Ways to Build Your Email List webinar on December 9.

Tags: e-newsletter, email newsletter
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Who’s Your Target Audience? Please Not the General Public!

Who is Your Nonprofit’s Target Audience? Figure it out during Thursday’s webinar: Forget the General Public! How to Define and Reach Your Target Audience Photo by practicalowl on Flickr

We chant it together in my in-person nonprofit marketing trainings: “There is no such thing as the general public. There is no such thing as the general public.”

If you are spending time and money trying to reach the general public with your nonprofit’s message, you are wasting it. All of it. OK, maybe just 95% of it. But don’t you want to do better than 5% success?

I’ll show you how to define, research, and yes, target, the people who matter most to your organization’s success during this week’s webinar:

Forget the General Public! How to Define and Reach Your Target Audience

Thursday, October 23, 2008
1:00-2:00 pm Eastern (10:00-11:00 am Pacific)

$35 per connection (everyone squeezing around the speakerphone and computer monitor is fine with me)

I’ll walk you through several examples and give you plenty of tips and resources during the webinar, but if you can’t make it, here is a quick-and-dirty approach that’s far better than going for the “general public.”

Think about the change you are trying to bring about through your work. Then visualize someone taking an action that helps you bring about that change. What does that person in your mind’s eye look like? Where are they? Who are they with?

Now try to think about demographic characteristics that could help define who this person is, such as gender, age, ethnicity, income level, education, employment, hobbies, family status, religion, affiliations, and geographic location. Where would this person get information? How would she spend her free time? How would he spend his disposable income?

Now think about some of the values that would be important to this person. Values can include everything from time, money, sleep and convenience to adventure, power, status, fun, and more. Add those values to your demographic description.

Next, you need to match your message (what you are trying to communicate and the action you want someone to take) to those values. The way you describe volunteer opportunities to a 17-year-old girl will be quite different from how you describe them to a 65-year-old man. They are different demographically and they value different things. Your messages should be customized accordingly.

Learn more about how to make this work for your nonprofit during Thursday’s webinar. Register now to reserve your spot!

More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)

What I Learned about Nonprofits at the NC Conference

I was at the annual conference of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits late last week. Here are a few things I learned there.

1. Nonprofits are very excited about Web 2.0, but also completely freaked out by the idea of people saying bad things about them online.

I tweeted (used Twitter) from the conference, along with a handful of other people. Check out our coverage of the conference. Several people who had never heard of Twitter were fascinated by the idea, but also alarmed at the prospect that someone might actually tweet that a speaker was boring. While they know that everyone would say the same thing to each other in person, or in private text messages or email later, or in the conference evaluation survey, the thought of it going out live in real time in a more public forum really bothered several people.

I heard a similar fear about blogging. The questions were not about how best to use the tool to market a nonprofit’s activities or mission (which is what I’ll be talking about during next week’s webinar on nonprofit blogging), but more like “What if someone says something really awful about us in the comments?” and “What if someone puts something mean about our blog on their own blog?”

2. Nonprofits are very concerned about copyright and privacy issues.

Several speakers suggested using Flickr for group photo sharing and to easily integrate rotating photography into a nonprofit website. In just about every case, again, the first question was not about how to use the tool most effectively, but rather “Won’t we need model releases from everyone in every photo?” and “Won’t people steal our photos?”

3. Nonprofits find the array of Web 2.0 options overwhelming - before they’ve even tried to use them.

Even though people were genuinely excited about the potential they saw for using the tools in their own organizations, especially after seeing some great examples of what others were doing from Katya Andresen, Angela Connor and John Kenyon, that excitement quickly turned into anxiety about trying to figure out what would work best for their particular situations.

What this tells me is that it isn’t enough for trainers like me to talk about the benefits and how-to’s of Web 2.0; we also need to address the very practical and real fears that come with this major shift in how nonprofits relate to their supporters online.

And here is something I was reminded about . . . It is SO GREAT to meet people face-to-face who you have only known online previously, and to catch up with great friends you don’t get to see often enough. Two cases in point:

- Meeting Leandra Ganko and Elizabeth Turnbull in person

Leandra, a web designer, connected with me through a mutual contact on LinkedIn several months ago and Elizabeth, a fundraising specialist, has been reading my blog for awhile. They have worked on nonprofit projects together here in North Carolina and I was on their “must meet at the conference” list. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them both in person and I hope I can find a project for the three of us to work on together in the coming year.

- Catching up Katya Andresen and Claire Meyerhoff

Katya is not only one of my favorite bloggers and an inspiration to all of us in nonprofit marketing, but she’s also a great friend. And even though media maven Claire Meyerhoff lives in NC and we email constantly, I don’t get to see her in person nearly enough either. Here we are getting ready to watch the presidential debate together the night before the conference got started.

While I’m certainly a huge advocate of online training, by all means, get to a conference when you can. There’s nothing like spending time with people face to face!

More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)

Nonprofit Charts & Graphs at the Carnival

Katya Andresen at Nonprofit Marketing Blog was last week’s host for the Carnival of Nonprofit Consulants, and she challenged us all to come up with some charts that illuminate various points about working in the nonprofit sector. Check out her roundup of charts and graphs for some good laughs and insights too!

Here’s what’s coming up for the next two editions. Remember, if you’d like to submit a blog post to the carnival host, simply email your permalink to npc.carnival@yahoo.com or use the form at BlogCarnival.com.

November 3 - Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Tech

Theme: ”Is your work changing because of the economy? How? What adjustments are you making?”

November 17 - Social Butterfly

Theme: “Give thanks! Tell us which tools, resources, mentors have aided you or what you are thankful for.”

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Video Annual Reports: Tips for Nonprofits Who Want to Try It

Photo by the_toe_stubber on Flickr

Some might argue that annual reports are dead, but I say that they are simply undergoing a transformation, much like the rest of the publications that nonprofits use for advocacy, education, and fundraising. All print publications, including annual reports, are being reevaluated as online and multimedia tools become much more affordable and easy to use, and rightly so.

I’ll be talking about how annual reports are evolving this Friday morning at the annual conference of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits. One shift I’ll mention is the use of video to tell the story of your past year.

Only a handful of nonprofits are producing video annual reports right now, so to get some solid guidance, I recently interviewed Timothy Carey, Senior Vice President for Digital Media, with ICR, Inc. ICR pioneered the video annual report format for publicly-traded corporations and helped petition the SEC to allow the format. ICR has produced video annual reports for companies like McCormick & Schmick’s and Kenneth Cole Productions.

While not all lessons from the corporate world translate well into the nonprofit sector, Tim’s advice on video annual reports definitely does.

Kivi: Explain why video works better than print for annual reports.

Tim: Video is a more compelling way to tell a story, because it connects more emotionally. We all get so much in the mail now, so the value of print is diminished. Since we are overloaded with it, statistics show that people are more willing to watch a short video than to read a long document. We’ve tracked it and we know that 4-5 minutes of video is the sweet spot. That’s where we see people dropping off in longer videos.

Kivi: The nonprofit bottom line is about much more than financial success. What should nonprofits focus on in their video annual reports?

Tim: Nonprofits should really hone in on what they are trying to accomplish, what they are trying to do, what makes them special. The message will be different for each nonprofit. You can’t take a cookie-cutter approach. Nonprofits are all chasing fewer dollars, so the emotional connection that you can make with video can really help. You can also weave in simple graphical treatments of how nonprofits are spending their money, weaving in the financial reporting that you find in all annual reports.

Kivi: Let’s talk about production - how do you go about creating a video annual report?

Tim: We shoot all the videos we do documentary style — the pace is pretty quick, but it still allows viewers to connect. It’s an effective style that really works right now. We typically don’t do formal interviews with people on a blue screen. Instead we shoot a conversation that might take six minutes and then we edit it down to one minute that we actually use. While it’s documentary style, we don’t shove the microphone in people’s faces. It’s a more relaxed, natural conversation. Many companies do have existing video, and we sort through what’s usable and what’s not. That helps us determine what and where we need to shoot. We try to shoot all in one day.

Kivi: Who should be in the video?

Tim: You have to leverage the emotional connection. If a nonprofit is helping people, then show on video how those people were helped. You can do vignettes or interviews. Ask employees why they work there to get at some of those emotional connections. In some organizations, the president or CEO [or executive director] may not be the best person on film, especially if they are not particularly comfortable being interviewed or filmed. It’s often better to have someone else tell the story. Or if you do need to use that person, film in documentary style where you ask the person to talk about the past year. You film longer than you’ll need to get the person talking and then weave the good parts into your story later. You can prep people with questions ahead of time and in some cases, we may rehearse. You only need a couple of great highlights out of several minutes of filming.

Kivi: What other words of wisdom do you have for nonprofits considering video annual reports?

Tim: Beware of too many chefs in the kitchen. The video will be too long, and not as focused as it needs to be. Individuals will be more connected to their specific projects and will lose the bigger picture. You’ll end up with too many minutes on less critical elements. That’s the piece we provide - we help clients be decisive about the storyline, the draft of who should say what, and managing the production process. When you are too close to it, you can’t see the big picture sometimes.

Thanks, Tim, for sharing these great tips! I’ll be writing more about alternatives to print annual reports in the coming weeks and months. Do you have an example you’d like to share or a question? Leave a comment below.

Still planning on doing a printed annual report this year? Check out my on-demand e-course, How to Write a Nonprofit Annual Report, and our November 6 webinar, How to Write a Four-Page Annual Report. Get both and lots, lots more when you subscribe to the Nonprofit Marketing Guide All-Access Pass.

Tags: annual report, video
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