Every company should be able to quickly explain why it exists. For us at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, we’ve often talked about things like “helping nonprofits do smart and savvy marketing and fundraising” and “providing training and resources to nonprofit communications pros.”
This year, I realized that our business and philosophy have grown beyond that: what we really want is for nonprofit communications directors and others doing that kind of work to both LEARN the JOB and to also LOVE the JOB.
It’s not enough to provide training. We also want to do whatever we can from afar to help you genuinely enjoy your work, no matter where you are.
Your nonprofit is trying to make important change in the world, in some way, big or small. That’s meaningful. But it can also be stressful, in many different ways. We don’t want that stress to kill your love for the work.
So we are looking for ways to encourage you to have some fun, connect with others who “get it” so you don’t feel isolated, and help prevent your own burnout.
Here are just a few of the ways we have encouraged the LOVE of the field, and will continue to do so . . .
- Encouraging you to take Nonprofit Comm Free Days where you focus on what’s most important to you. We’ll do much more of this in 2015.
- Cosponsoring the #NPCommPix photo challenge on Instagram to see how other nonprofit communicators visually interpret their jobs. We’ll launch a new challenge in January, and Dawn Crawford and I have talked about doing it quarterly.
- Regularly featuring the “real world” work of nonprofit communicators in our Day in the Life series.
- Giving our All-Access Pass Holders access to each other and experts via the private Facebook Group. We’ve asked Tami Ruckman, Leili Khalessi, and Anysa Holder to serve as Group Moderators for 2015 to help build those connections. (The Annual Pass for 2015 just went on sale today for $499 for the full year!)
- Speaking openly about office politics and other sources of conflict that nonprofit communicators often face, via this blog and in our Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.
