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.
One our All-Access Pass holders, Lane Phalen, a board member and PR committee chair for a local humane society called TAILS, recently submitted this question about what you say in an annual report when you are running a deficit:
“TAILS was founded ten years ago and we haven’t done an annual report at all yet. Because we were in the red last year, I had a huge argument with other board members when I said I wanted to do an annual report. They said to do an annual report now would make us look like a sinking ship and people wouldn’t donate. I felt by letting people know that we needed money, it would raise contributions. We have had incredible accomplishments during the past ten years, which is what I wanted to highlight. Can I do an annual report without putting finances in it or down-play them? ”
Here’s what I told Lane:
You have to be honest, but just because you are in the red doesn’t mean you are a sinking ship. There are PLENTY of ways to put a positive spin on it and highlight all of your good work to motivate more donations. It’s all about the attitude in your messaging. Explain why you were in the red (helped more animals than you really could afford to given that donations are down because of the recession, but need is up for the same reasons — or whatever the case may be). Then explain what you are doing to rectify the situation (What changes in decisionmaking have you made? What concrete plans have you made to raise more money or reduce costs?). If you remain upbeat and focused on the results of the organization, and deal honestly with any problems, including red ink, your supporters will respect that and understand.
In my opinion, you are much more likely to be viewed as a sinking ship if you DON’T communicate with your supporters about your work. Hmmm . . . what are those people hiding?
Writing an annual report for the first time? Check out our How to Write a Nonprofit Annual Report on-demand course. It includes our e-book and workbook that will help you write a full-length report, as well as a recording of the one-hour webinar where I explain how to create a great annual report in just four pages. Get the details.
More than half of the 75 Special Summer Passes to our webinar series have been sold. Only 35 15 left! Attend live or watch the recording of every webinar we host from now until August 31, 2009 and get access to our archive of webinar recordings from the last year, all for $75. Use this special link (you won’t find it elsewhere on the website).
What’s Happening This Week . . .
On Tuesday, I’m teaching a webinar called Quickie Annual Reports: Simple Ways to Share Results with Supporters. I’ll go over my suggested 4-page annual report templates and also provide some ideas for online reports that will be more entertaining and engaging than the standard paper in the mail.
On Thursday, I’m teaching Nonprofit Writing Stinks! How to Bring Your Writing Back to Life. If you find yourself writing in jargon and 501(c)(3)-ese or foundation-ese, this webinar is for you! I’ll show you how to hunt down your trouble spots and fix them, so you write like the passionate human being you really are.
After both webinars, I’ll share some of the Q&A on the blog. You can join us for webinars a la carte ($35 each) or get an All-Access Pass (here’s that summer special link again) and attend everything we do this summer.
Ideal for anyone who contributes to a nonprofit website, blog, or email newsletter. Online writing needs to be personal, quick, and relevant to the reader. In this encore of one of our most popular webinars, I’ll share how you can transform your online writing so your web and email content work for you and your supporters.
Are you ready to start fundraising online, but not exactly sure what you need to do to make it work? Hint: A “Donate” button isn’t enough! During this webinar, you’ll learn about all of the key components of a solid online fundraising program.
Ready to kick your online fundraising up a few notches? Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies is our special guest speaker. Alia will show you how to go beyond the basics of donor-friendly websites and engaging email copy by creating a program that wows your donors into giving again and again.
What’s Coming Up in May and June
I also just opened registration for several webinars in May and June, with a few more to come soon.
You can attend all of the webinars we host in a 12-week period for just $97 with your All-Access Pass. Otherwise, a la carte registration is $35 per webinar. That includes everyone in your office who can fit around one computer.
I’m going to NTEN’s NTC this year (that’s the Nonprofit Technology Network’s Nonprofit Technology Conference) in San Francisco in April. It will be my first time, and I can’t wait, because I know I’ll get to meet in person so many of the friends I’ve made online over the last few years.
I’m also excited because, though it may not look like it on the surface, I believe this conference has the potential to become the national event for nonprofit marketing staff at small nonprofits.
Why this technology conference rather than one of the more traditional marketing conferences? Three reasons:
1) Small nonprofits can afford online marketing. Using online tools and social media technology to market your organization is incredibly cheap compared to traditional print marketing. It just makes financial sense to take advantage of the technology and this conference is all about helping you learn how to do that.
2) Small nonprofits will feel comfortable at this conference. NTEN is a casual, fun group of mostly supportive, friendly people. I have no doubt that there will be a few speakers who look down their noses at small groups with little technical experience or tiny budgets, but I bet they will be in a very small minority. I’m not sure what the stats are these days, but when I asked NTEN Executive Director Holly Ross a year ago how many of NTEN’s members were techies who managed technology versus communications people who used the technology, she said it was something like half and half. In other words, there is a place for us within this organization and at this conference.
3) It’s where the cool kids in nonprofit marketing will be. I just quickly scanned the registration list, and many of the top bloggers who write about nonprofit communications will be there, including Nancy Schwartz, Maddie Grant, Mark Rovner, Britt Bravo, and Geoff Livingston. And that’s just the early bird registration. Nancy Schwartz is now on the NTEN board, which is another great sign.
I hope you’ll join us in San Francisco - and I hope you’ll help some nonprofits who can’t otherwise afford it by donating to NTEN’s scholarship fund. I just gave $25. Can you donate a few bucks? Click over to the blog to see the fundraising widget.
Most professional writers will tell you that writing really good short articles and profiles is harder than writing long ones, and the same can be true for short annual reports. When you try to condense everything from an annual report that might typically run 12 or 20 pages into just 4 pages of space, it’s a challenge.
At the same time, we are all busy. We all have too much to read as it is. I’m willing to bet that more of your donors will read and remember what you have to say when it comes in a four-page report than when you send them a forty-page tome. It’s worth your effort to boil your report down to the essentials.
Here are five tips for creating a four-page annual report:
1) Focus on three accomplishments. As painful as it may be to cast off all the little wins here and there, focus on the big or most meaningful results. Yes, this means you will leave the work of someone on your staff out. And yes, it means you will leave a board member’s pet project out. But your donors will be much more likely to remember those three accomplishments when they tell their friends about you later. Recognize the other projects in other ways, such as on your website or in your newsletter.
2) Create some cool charts. Instead of printing your financial statements, use some really good pie charts or graphs to tell your financial story visually. Include two or three short sentences about where you get your money and how you spend it, in plain English. Include a short note about how supporters can download your full financials on your website.
3) Use a handful of great images. Rather than shrink a dozen photos down in order to make them all fit, pick the three or four you think really say the most about your work. Write really good captions for them that can stand on their own (remember, lots of people will read your headlines and captions only, then put the report down).
4) Share a few quick stories. You don’t have space for full profiles, but you can quickly share some anecdotes about some of the people you helped and worked with last year, related to those three accomplishments you are highlighting. Stories are great ways to give examples of more esoteric accomplishments and to help put lots of statistics into perspective. Or if you have one really amazing story that says it all, use the space to tell that single story well.
5) Trim back your donor lists. In a four-page report, you simply don’t have space to list hundreds of donors. One solution is to set a minimum donation level and only print names of people who gave more than that amount. Another approach would be to list only the donors who specifically funded the work you are highlighting in your three accomplishments. Or, you can leave the name by name list off entirely and include a more general statement of thanks to all of your supporters.
Want more advice? Register for this Wednesday’s webinar, How to Write a Four-Page Nonprofit Annual Report. When you register for the webinar, you can also sign-up for an optional 15-minute private consultation with me on your annual report. It’s the best way to get your specific questions answered and to see how to apply the lessons in the webinar directly to your situation.
“Oh, no! That’s what our
newsletter looks like to a third
of the people on our mailing list?!?”
Don’t be her.
Preview your e-newsletter in
different email programs.
Those new to the world of e-newsletter publishing are often surprised to learn that their email newsletters can look quite different to someone who is using Outlook versus someone using Gmail or Thunderbird, not to mention what it looks like on a smartphone. That’s because email programs (called email clients) process HTML in different ways.
The only way to be sure that your email newsletter template is working well in all the major clients is to actually view it in all of the different programs.
While some email newsletter service providers make this easier than others, it’s not a standard service. But two companies do offer testing programs that will deliver screen shots of your newsletter in various email programs at reasonable prices, even if you don’t use them to send out your newsletter: Mail Chimp’s Inbox Inspector, powered by ReturnPath, (sign up for a free account, then buy three tests for $29) and Campaign Monitor’s Design and Spam Test (sign up for a free account, then pay $5 per test).
It’s well worth paying for the test services every now and then, especially when you make changes to your layout.
If you simply can’t pay, you can do it yourself, but the hassle factor is high. Start by getting free accounts at services like Gmail and Yahoo and installing multiple email programs on your computer (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird). Beg friends with various ISPs (e.g. AOL, Roadrunner, Comcast) to do screen captures for you. Then run your own tests.
The goal isn’t necessarily to make your newsletter look exactly the same in every program. It’s to make sure that your newsletter is readable in every program and that there aren’t any wacky design shifts that are so distracting that the reader instantly hits delete.
To Run the Test: Set up a free account. Go to Create a Campaign > Inbox Inspector Test. You’ll copy and paste your HTML, and add some other campaign details. Then you’ll pay $29 for 3 tests (nonprofits may get a better deal - I don’t know.). Within one minute, the results started to come in, but they changed after a few minutes, so I’d give it at least 15 minutes before even looking at it.
Campaign Monitor’s Design and Spam Test
To Run the Test: Set up a free account. This email service specializes in serving designers who manage e-newsletters for multiple clients. Just pretend you are your own client. Click on the client name, then create a new campaign (you have to have the campaign ready to go before clicking on the “Run a Design and Spam Test” button). Instead of cutting and pasting your HTML, you have to upload the HTML file. When I got to the section about the mailing list, I stopped and clicked on Design and Spam Testing, and it asked for a $5 payment. Speed was about the same - some results quickly, but not worth looking at until about 15 minutes later.
If you are using another email newsletter provider rather than creating your own HTML, simply login to your account, open a newsletter, go the HTML tab and copy the code. Paste it into a plain text program like Notepad. Then you can copy/paste into these services.
The Results and Pros/Cons of Each System
Plain Text Versions: Both systems convert your HTML to plain text versions for you, although Campaign Monitor’s looked much cleaner than MailChimp’s. Campaign Monitor also showed me the recommended line length on the plain text message, which is nice, so you can add hard-returns if you want.
Spam Filter: My newsletter passed all of the Spam Filter tests in both systems, although there were some non-lethal warnings. For example, apparently the McAfee Security Center spam filter considers these words somewhat spammish: source, way, focus, print, pass, accounts, really, others. It would be crazy to worry about such common words, so I’m not going to. Campaign Monitor said McAfee identified 25 words like this as warnings, where MailChimp said McAfee found 30 words. I guess they must be using different versions of McAfee in their testing.
MailChimp tested against eight different spam filters. Campaign Monitor tested against the same ones, plus the Norton 2008 spam filter, but after several hours, the Norton results aren’t available, so that’s a wash.
Content Assessment
MailChimp analyzes your HTML for you and suggests code fixes. I ran the “clean up HMTL” tool in Dreamweaver before running the tests, but MailChimp still found a few code errors. Fortunately nothing serious — just leaving the # sign off of some of the color codes. My heart did skip a beat when it said it found 47 content errors, however. Turns out they were all spelling errors, which weren’t really mistakes (it didn’t like my name, the way I hyphenated All-Acess Pass, etc.). Campaign Monitor doesn’t offer this service.
Email Client Screen Shots
This is what I really cared about.
MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector
Campaign Monitor’s Design and Spam Test
After about an hour, only half of the screen shots were back in both services, but by that point, they both produced some of the biggies, like Outlook, Gmail, Comcast, and AOL. I had simplified my design quite a bit, although I still use a table with two columns, so I wanted to make sure the text wasn’t flowing or overlapping in any strange ways. Fortunately, everything looked reasonably good across the various platforms, although neither one was able to come up with a screen shot from Yahoo! Mail today.
The screenshots did remind me to set all image borders to zero so a blue box doesn’t appear around them when a link is attached. The blue blox showed up in AOL and Comcast, but not Gmail and Earthlink. I’d rather not have it anywhere, so it’s worth adding the border setting in.
Overall, I like Campaign Monitor’s screen shots better.They let you toggle images on and off when those email clients offer that option to readers, so you get a clear picture of exactly what people are seeing. MailChimp lets you see the same thing, but in a less convenient way - you have to open the preview of images on and the preview of images off. Campaign Monitor also groups the screen shots by web-based email clients, desktop email clients, and mobile clients, which I found much easier to scan, where MailChimp groups them all together. MailChimp does show several clients used in Europe, if that matters to you, that Campaign Monitor doesn’t.
What’s Missing
It would be really nice if these services included screen shots of what your email looks like in different web-based email programs in different web browsers. That’s where you can see some real differences.
Look at the these three screen captures of my newsletter in my Gmail inbox viewed in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. Though I prefer Firefox as a user, my newsletter looks the worst in this browser. The text at the top is wrapping oddly so that my name and organization are below the logo instead of beside it like in the others. Firefox and Chrome both remove padding within the table, so the columns butt up against each other, where Explorer keeps the nice white space. Chrome doesn’t include the ALT text on the images in the sidebar, so those are just blank boxes, while the others give you some of the text.
None of these differences are earth-shattering for this particular newsletter, but they could make a real difference depending on your layout and how important your pictures are.
In Mozilla Firefox 3.0.5
In Windows Internet Explorer 7
In Google Chrome 1.0.154.36
My Bottom-Line Recommendation
I prefer Campaign Monitor’s service, and it’s the more affordable option too (always a nice result!). If you really want that extra code check or send lots of email to Europe, then I’d take another look at MailChimp. In addition, be sure to preview the HTML file in different web browsers to make sure there aren’t any differences you can’t tolerate. If you pasted your code into Notepad, just open the browser and go to File, then Open to view your HTML - it doesn’t need to be online to be previewed.
P.S. Get more email newsletter tips during tomorrow’s webinar on E-Newsletter Essentials (1/7/09).
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.
Here’s a quick update on what I’ve been working on the last week or so . . .
Online Marketing Workshops
I’m being asked to speak a lot lately on various elements of online marketing for nonprofits. Last week, I presented two workshops to museums, historical sites, and other arts organizations in Charlotte, NC. The first workshop addressed nonprofit websites and email marketing in general. The second dealt more specifically with how to raise money through email, with an introduction to social media at the end.
If your association or foundation is interested in having me present some version of these workshops to your members or grantees, email me or give me a call at 336-499-5816 and we can talk about it.
How to Write a Nonprofit Annual Report - E-Course Now Online
I spent much of today putting the new on-demand annual reports e-course online. It’s ready for you! When you enroll, you’ll get a copy of my 50+ page e-book, “How to Write a Nonprofit Annual Report,” a workbook with exercises to help you write your report sections, and access to a recorded webinar and handouts that explain how to create a slimmed-down four-page annual report. This course is $60 a la carte, or free with your All-Access Pass.
If you missed my online chat at the Chronicle of Philanthropy on annual reports, check it out now for lots of free advice. I also recently completed an interview with one of the leading companies producing video annual reports and will share those tips with you soon.
Whether that’s your writing style or not, if you have trouble getting started or knowing what’s effective, check out the webinar description and join us on Thursday if it sounds interesting to you. I’ll not only talk about those pesky lead paragraphs, but what should follow them too. And yes, this webinar is also included in the All-Access Pass.
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Questions Answered
I'll gladly answer your questions (or try to anyway), but I prefer to do so in a public way, so others can benefit from our conversation and join in with their thoughts too. Here are the best ways to ask your questions and get free advice.
Live Office Hours on Fridays - Most Fridays, when I'm not on the road, you can either call in your question to Magic Keys Radio or chat with me live on this blog's homepage. Check the calendar for details.
See Your Q&A on the Blog - I'll post your question and my reply on this blog and/or in my e-newsletter when you submit your question at Ask Kivi.com.
For Webinar Participants Only - Ask a question in advance of the live webinar and see what others are curious about too (coming soon!)
Email Me Directly - Last resort for general questions, and probably the slowest, because I'm putting priority on answering questions in the places above first. Here's the contact form.
For questions about webinars, coaching or consulting, please feel free to email me or to call me at 336-499-5816 anytime and I'll get back to you promptly.
Magic Keys Radio/Podcast
A couple of times per month, Kivi Leroux Miller and Claire Meyerhoff host a live Internet radio show and podcast.
Looking for the 
One our All-Access Pass holders, Lane Phalen, a board member and PR committee chair for a local humane society called TAILS, recently submitted this question about what you say in an annual report when you are running a deficit:
