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This blog is all about do-it-yourself nonprofit communications and marketing. I love helping small and medium-sized nonprofits communicate more effectively with their members, donors, volunteers and other supporters, so that together, we can all make the world a better place. I do that as a blogger, trainer, coach and consultant.
I believe that even the smallest nonprofit staffs with the most modest budgets can achieve tremendous results through savvy marketing and communications. I hope this blog and my online marketing training and other resources encourage you to do just that, while helping you grow personally as a nonprofit marketer and communications professional.
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me with your questions and comments. You can also learn more about hiring me as a coach or consultant.
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Posted by Kivi Leroux Miller on Oct 14, 2008 in
Just for Fun,
Online Marketing 
Yes, it’s more fun with graphs, thanks to Katya.
If this made you laugh, you can return a little joy by giving $10 to my fundraiser to fight HIV in the South (Thank you!)
If it didn’t, let’s look at the serious point behind this graph . . . Your website design should focus on your visitors. Making your logo bigger is usually not the best way to improve your visitor experience. Seen any websites with logos that are waaaay too big? Share by leaving a comment.
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Posted by Kivi Leroux Miller on Oct 14, 2008 in
E-Newsletters,
Just for Fun 
I’m having some fun today with graphs, at Katya’s suggestion.
If this made you laugh, you can return a little joy by giving $10 to my fundraiser to fight HIV in the South (Thank you!)
If it didn’t, let’s look at the serious point behind the graph . . . Do you let your board members have too much influence over certain decisions, even when you have better data at your finger tips? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.
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Posted by Kivi Leroux Miller on Oct 13, 2008 in
Copywriting,
Nonprofit Communications Your nonprofit does amazing work everyday. Unfortunately, you sometimes get so wrapped up in your work that you forget how to talk about it in ways that everyone else can understand! Sound familiar?
Here are 10 signs that your writing may have tipped over to the dark side. Tomorrow’s webinar will show you how to bring it back into the warm, happy light.
1. You are cutting and pasting grant application text into your newsletters. This means you are probably using lots of lingo and jargon that people who work in your field get, but the rest of us won’t.
2. You can play Nonprofit Buzzword Bingo with yourself. If you can score a Bingo (or close) by using the words in your newsletter article or on one page of your website, editing that text should shoot to the top of your to-do list.
3. You find yourself skimming your own writing. If you don’t have the patience to actually read what you wrote, what makes you think the rest of us will?
4. Your boss takes forever to get comments back to you. Now this may be your boss’s time management problem, but it could also be because she knows it is going to take forever to review and comment on what you wrote and she just doesn’t want to set aside that much time. Just how many changes are coming back on pieces you write?
5. The article you just wrote could have been written ten years ago. If your writing is completely devoid of any references to here and now, it’s probably boilerplate or too generic, which is usually boring.
6. You aren’t really sure who is on your mailing list. If you don’t know who are writing for, it’s impossible to create great text. You don’t need to know everyone personally, but you need to have a good sense for what the people on your list as a whole care about and expect from you.
7. You refer to yourself as “the association,” the council,” or by your organization’s name. 501(c)(3) organization’s don’t write articles and letters; people who work at them do. Make sure your readers can tell that a real person is the writer. Simply using “we” to refer to your organization and “you” to refer to your reader can help.
8. When reading your writing out loud, you can’t get to the end of most sentences without taking a breath. This is a sure sign you need to shorten your sentences, and probably your paragraphs too.
9. You think asking readers to do something is being too pushy. Let’s assume your supporters are on your mailing list because they actually do support you! Asking people who care about your cause to do something to help is not being pushy; it’s empowering people to contribute in a meaningful way. If you need money, ask them to donate now. If you need volunteers, ask them to sign up for an hour-long shift. Don’t assume that talking vaguely about helping out is going to translate in people’s minds into real action.
10. You try to cover everything, just in case this is the only thing they’ll read. Too much detail can overwhelm readers and too much text can make it impossible for your supporters to skim your writing (which is what most of them want to do). Define the one thing you want people to remember and really focus in on that. Use links to provide all the details and tangential information.
Come review some real examples of nonprofit writing blunders like these and how to fix them on Tuesday (yes, tomorrow). Learn more about the webinar here.
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Posted by Kivi Leroux Miller on Oct 10, 2008 in
Nonprofit Communications 
Below you’ll find a TGIF blogging cocktail of links I think you’ll find helpful and interesting, but first a few quick reminders . . .
Nonprofit Writing Stinks! How to Bring Your Writing Back to Life is next week’s webinar, on Tuesday, October 14 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Here are a few comments from people who took this webinar this summer:
“Lots of concrete advice that can be implemented right away. Examples demonstrate real-world use of these concepts.”
“It was a very good overview of how to write so an audience will pay attention to what you say and understand it.”
“Very interactive, fun, engaging, and informative.”
“Simple tips and easy to implement strategies for making your writing interesting.”
Join us on Tuesday!
________
The Nonprofit Tagline Challenge is still on! Send me your taglines for my safe-sex fundraiser and you could win free webinar passes. Details here.
Please give $10 to help stop the spread of HIV in the rural South. You’ve helped me raise $270 toward the $500 goal. Thank you!
________
Claire Meyerhoff and I will be doing our Magic Keys Radio Show and Podcast on the first and third Fridays of each month now, instead of weekly. Just too much else going on this fall! So join us next week, on October 17.
________
And now those other great links I promised . . .
I love this idea that Common Knowledge is calling Rapid Donor Cultivation — a series of emails that warms new supporters up to the point where they are ready to give. Read about it here.
The Communications Network points you to some good storytelling resources from their latest conference.
Jeff Brooks and Steven Screen are giving out a lot of great, free advice on fundraising via their Fundraising is Beautiful podcast. It’s a great addition to Jeff’s must-read Donor Power Blog.
Katya Andresen is looking for your fun graphs for the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants next week. Make up a funny set of stats and graph them in Excel (or whatever). Check out Katya’s fun graphs on How to Raise Tons of Money and How Not to Have a Retreat.
Britt Bravo asked four nonprofit marketing bloggers (Nancy Schwartz, Katya Andresen, Nedra Weinreich and me) to evaluate the Social Actions home page. See what we said about it here. The major theme of our comments: focus on what your users want, not on the organization.
Wondering how much a good nonprofit website costs? Here is one set of estimates from Idealware.
Nancy Schwartz answered a ton of questions about nonprofit taglines on the Chronicle of Philanthropy chat this week. Nancy will be joining me for a webinar called “Short & Sweet: Boiling Down Your Message So Everyone Gets It” on December 3. Registration page will be up next week, but mark your calendar now if you want some solid tips on writing taglines, email subject lines, headlines, billboard text and other “microcontent” under 10 words.
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OK, it’s not totally free advice - you do have to register for this week’s webinar – Nonprofit Publicity 101: Great PR Ideas that Get Attention – but in addition to some PR Basic Training by yours truly, several registrants will also get free advice from Nonprofit Marketing Guide’s media maven and all-around Big Idea Gal, Claire Meyerhoff, during the webinar.
What will we be covering this week? All kinds of cool ideas to get your organization noticed, whether you are working online or offline, nationwide or in a community setting. You can get a little taste of some of the tips by listening to last Friday’s “Magic Keys Radio” show now available as a podcast.
After going over our tips, we’ll take your questions and we’ll also ask several participants to share their publicity conundrums, so you can see how Claire and I apply the advice to real-world situations.
Get the details and register now.
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Calling all of you wonderfully creative, zany, clever, and even snarky nonprofit communicators!
Now is your chance to put to work what you’ve learned from Nancy Schwartz’s Nonprofit Tagline Report on a real fundraising campaign. And you can go wild because it’s not something your boss has to approve. And there are prizes too — good ones — like free webinar passes and an All-Access Pass to Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com for the Grand Prize Winner.
On September 18, I told you how I’m raising money to buy condoms for the Positive Wellness Alliance (PWA) to give away for free to anyone who needs them, including teens who are too afraid to be seen buying them and folks who just don’t have the money to spare.
I’m a new board member for PWA, which helps people infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS in rural North Carolina. (Did you know the rate of infection is dramatically increasing in the South while falling everywhere else in the U.S.?)
With your help, I’ve raised $220 of my $500 goal. You can help by donating $10 now.
Here’s the challenge: Come up with a good tagline for this fundraiser!
Now, because this fundraiser deals with topics that make some people uncomfortable (sex, and who’s having it with whom), I’m actually putting the tagline challenge entries on the ChipIn page. You’ve been warned — some of them are rather bold, to put it mildly! This is not for the faint of heart. If this is simply not your cup of tea, don’t click over.
If you are up for a little creative, good-natured fun for a great cause, however, enter the contest by emailing me your taglines at kivi@ecoscribe.com with TAGLINE in the subject line. If you don’t want me to post your real name on the ChipIn list of entries, tell me in the email that you want to be anonymous or give me a pen name to use instead.
This is a fundraiser after all, so you can greatly increase the odds that your tagline will win a prize by donating! $10 qualifies as an adequate incentive for me to give your tagline some special consideration! Prizes will be awarded in several categories yet to be named by me.
Let the tagline challenge begin!
More Goodies: Get Kivi's Nonprofit Marketing Tips E-Newsletter (2-3 times per month)
Posted by Kivi Leroux Miller on Oct 3, 2008 in
Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants 
What does it take to be a great leader in the nonprofit sector? You’ll find some thoughtful answers in the current edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, posted Wednesday at Ready, Aim, Inspire.
The roundup includes posts from Jane Arsenault, Jason Dick, Katya Andresen, Heather Carpenter, and Sam Davidson.
The Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is a twice-monthly blog carnival that rounds up some of the best advice, forward thinking, and resources for nonprofits in the blogosphere. Its home base is here at Nonprofit Communications.
Where is it headed next, you ask?
October 15 - Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog
Theme: “Chart Magic” - Share an insightful or absurd visual that sums up something important or amusing about the nonprofit sector. Check here for inspiration, nonprofit consultants!
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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