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.
Register now - 249 people already have! It’s free, but you must pre-register.
Even if you can’t join us live, go ahead and register and you’ll get the links to the recordings 48 hours after the live event.
Here’s what we will cover:
Why an editorial calendar is the lithium for your content creation mania (you’ll get sample templates for several different kinds of editorial calendars)
Where to get ideas for new content (you’ll be surprised how much you have once you know where to look)
Setting realistic goals for yourself and prioritizing which content to create first
Using technology to speed up your content creation and distribution (and watching for tech pitfalls that can slow you down)
How to recycle what you create into different formats - and for different audiences
Ways to organize everything so you can find it and reuse it later
How to recruit other people to generate content for you (and how to be a kind but decisive editor when they do)
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.
Three teams made up of consultants from four different agencies (Beaconfire Consulting, Forum One Communications, Free Range Studios, and Firefly Partners) got together on a Sunday for a strategy and design competition. Their challenge was to remake the online presence of Youth Speaks, a nonprofit presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs. They were all given the same information and amount of time to develop their programs.
Each team, comprised of 3-4 of the consulting firm frienemies, then presented their online strategy and home page redesigns for the first time at the conference. Take a few minutes to check out the slides to see what they came up with. You’ll see how some very creative firms go about a project like this, how they define online goals, set priorities and timelines, and use a blend of tactics.
loving team 2’s real focus, storytelling, bringing in rural areas, building fan base for artists
loving team 2’s thanks for attending email the day after event to get people to go online to share their impressions.
team 3’s emphasis on artist’s own pages that they can really customize is nice touch.
think I like team 3’s home page the best, but team 2’s strategy the best.
What made this session so good?
The Open Sharing. How often do we get to see four leading firms talk openly about how they would approach a real project, in quite a bit of detail? Uh, never. This one session saved Youth Speaks thousands and thousands of dollars, but it also let all of us learn about ways to approach these kinds of projects too. I admit that I feared that the firms wouldn’t want to give too much away and the proposals would be lightweight, but instead they were really packed with substance. Kudos to the four firms for really sharing their best ideas!
The Collaborative Spirit. This could have easily been set up as a firm-against-firm competition. But by blending the teams, it removed the real-world winners and losers element, and made it much more fun and less pressure-filled (at least it felt that way as someone in the audience - not sure how it felt to be on a team!)
No Right Answer. While there was certainly overlap between the three approaches, this session proves that there is no one right way to do online marketing - so don’t believe anyone who tries to convince you otherwise. Yes, when in doubt, follow the conventional wisdom or best practices, but don’t be afraid to try something new or to put your own twist on it. Although the intention was for the audience to vote on the winner, people were apparently having trouble getting a signal in the Hilton basement, so they did a “Make Noise” vote instead and called it a tie. More proof that there is no “right way.”
I would love to see more collaborative makeovers like this in the nonprofit marketing world. It doesn’t have to take on the whole Iron Chef theme. You may recall that Britt Bravo asked Nancy Schwartz, Katya Andresen, Nedra Weinreich, and me to review the Social Actions home page back in October. Here’s what we all said.
That wasn’t structured as a competition, but the outcome was similar - lots of concrete ideas that a real nonprofit can sort through and use, while also letting others learn from the analysis and strategies as well.
By the way, it was fabulous hanging out with Nancy, Katya, and Britt at the conference. (Photo of Britt and me by Nancy Schwartz. Photo of Nancy, Katya, and me by Nice Waiter at Foreign Cinema).
I’m already mulling over ways to pull them into some kind of Iron Chef / Extreme Makeover Something or Another for next year’s conference (Mark your calendars for NTC 2010 in Atlanta, April 8-10). Your ideas for a session? Or something we could do sooner online? Leave a comment.
I’m attending the Nonprofit Technology Conference Sunday-Tuesday (April 26-28, 2009) and will be live blogging throughout the event. That means that you can see my notes live as I type them in and you can communicate with me in real-time as I do it. You can send in questions, comments, etc.and I can respond live.
The problem? NTEN has a ridiculous number of sessions going on at one time (18 during the first breakout session slot Monday morning). With so much to choose from, I have a feeling I am going to be doing a bunch of session hopping. But I’d love your help in prioritizing which sessions you are most interested in me covering.
I’m only giving you the session titles — if you really want to know what the sessions are about, check out the agenda. But going on titles alone is fine.
Here is my live blogging page on NTEN’s site and I will also add the viewer here on this blog during the conference, so you can read and participate at either site.
If you are attending the conference, please be sure to introduce yourself! Nancy Schwartz and I are hosting a meet-and-greet for communications types on Sunday at 1:30 and I’ll be around until late morning Tuesday.
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 turned 40 this week and as part of the ongoing celebration, I am raising $500 for Positive Wellness Alliance through my online network.
I want to give a BIG THANKS to those who have contributed so far:
Via the Facebook Birthday Cause App for a total of $345:
Alnisa Allgood
Nancy Schwartz
Jono Smith
Ginette Isenberg
Holly Ross
Rachel Wood-Pena
Katya Andresen
Sherri Wood
Bob Muller
“Thomas”
Jay Hall
Joanne Goodwin Granese
Sam Beck
Via the Chip-In I created for attendees of today’s webinar to raise the remaining $155:
Rebecca Ruby
Kathleen Pequeno
Johanna Goldberg
Linda Saffell
Lee Carty
Erik Molvar
Robert Sanford
Elenor Hodges
You are all AMAZING. Thank you!
But here’s the thing. I am still $85 short of my $500 goal. That’s just 17 $5 donations - or just about 1% of the subscribers to this blog. Make a $5 donation right now and you will not only be placed on my “Coolest-Hottest Friends” list, but even better, I will send you the links to the recording of today’s webinar “Forget the General Public! How to Define and Research Your Target Audience” — even if you didn’t register for it.
Why This Cause?
I serve on the PWA board and believe deeply in the cause, which is stopping the spread of HIV in our rural (and very conservative) part of North Carolina and providing assistance to those already infected with and affected by the disease. The stigma associated with HIV is difficult enough as it is, but it’s even more challenging in the South. In fact, HIV infections are on the rise in these parts, even as they decline elsewhere in the U.S. PWA is doing great work in helping young people and others at risk learn how to protect themselves in a culture that doesn’t want to talk about or even acknowledge the existence of the disease and how it is spread. By contributing to this cause, you are truly a very cool and a very hot friend of mine.
Keeping up with all the great nonprofit marketing and fundraising blogs is tough. So here’s one more tool to help you find the information you need: Nonprofit Marketing Zone.
I’m working with Katya Andresen and Nancy Schwartz (bloggers I hope you are already reading) and Tony Karrer (the guy behind the technology that makes the site work) to organize the best content from blogs, news sources and other web sites all around nonprofit marketing and fundraising. The goal is to create a place where it’s easy to find current and highly relevant content. And perhaps to stimulate new connections.
You can get a sense of the power of the site by visiting it and clicking a keyword on the left. For example, if you click on Social Media, you find not only the most recent blog posts but the best ones, according to social signals across the network such as:
I hope you’ll check out Nonprofit Marketing Zone and make it a site you come back to often. Let us know what you think about this new service - we only want to do it if you find it helpful!
David Simpson, the chairman of GoldMail, called a few weeks ago asking me to check out his new service. Like most bloggers with more than 10 subscribers, I get a lot of requests like this, most of which I ignore. But this, my nonprofit friends, is one cool tool that I think a lot of you could use to do some amazing marketing.
GoldMail calls itself “voice over visual messaging” - sort of a combination of voicemail and email. It allows you to record your voice over a series of slides that you create within GoldMail using whatever you have available - photos, screenshots, PowerPoint slides, PDFs, etc. You end up with a nice multimedia message that you can link to in an email or embed in your website or blog. You typically need software like Camtasia Studio or PowerPoint plugins like PointeCast, which are much more expensive and have fairly steep learning curves, to produce something like this.
GoldMail lets you create a simple but effective version of the same thing, without requiring a lot of time, money, or technical know-how. After watching a few quick how-to’s, you can create a message in minutes. And it’s only $9.99 per month. It’s perfect for quick, on-the-fly messages, but can also be used for more polished presentations too. You can record up to 10 minutes, but the most effective uses will be much shorter than that, I think.
I used GoldMail today to create a 3-minute tour of the Nonprofit Marketing Guide All-Access Pass. I’ve embedded the file below and I’ll also be sending out the link to it in an email message to my Nonprofit Marketing Tips subscribers. Hit play to see what GoldMail produces, and to go behind-the-scenes with the All-Access Pass:
(Don’t see the viewer or want to see a bigger, full-screen version? Click here instead.)
Here are three creative ways your nonprofit could use GoldMail:
1) Personalized Thank-you Message. Grab a few photos (or even just one really good one!) that show the results that your donor helped bring about. Record a one-minute thank-you message over those slides, using the donor’s name and referring to their gift specifically, and then email the link to them. “Jack, I wanted you to see for yourself what your $200 has made possible . . . take a look at these photos . . . . isn’t this wonderful? Thank you so much, Jack, for making such a difference . . . “ You can also add in pre-recorded sounds, like your clients saying thank-you in their own voices.
2) Weekly Updates to Members, Boards, Committees, Etc. Do you have a core group of people who need regular updates on your activities? Record a weekly GoldMail message for them with the week’s highlights. It’s show and tell!
3) Event Invitations. Spice up your invitation by talking about all the great things you have planned for this year over fun photos from last year’s event.
I hear some of you asking, but isn’t video so much better? Probably. But video is waaaaay harder to pull off than this. This is easy. And yes, I have Camtasia Studio, and I’ve still put off making the “All-Access Pass Tour” above for months, because there are just too many settings in Camtasia to deal with. For me, too many options is just as bad as too few. I’ll say it again: this was easy.
Two quick tips from my experience today:
- Get your slides in the right order and practice a few times before you actually record. The ability to edit your audio recording is pretty limited and if you decide to move slides around, you have to start the audio recording over from scratch. Make sure you have all the slides you want, and you have them in the right order, before you record the audio.
- Turn up your microphone volume within your control panel. Even though I do webinars all the time with my headset and the audio is just fine, it was way too low on my first GoldMail recordings. Crank it up a bit on your computer before you record.
David Simpson says the San Franciso Zoo used GoldMail to create a message about new zoo babies and the email to donors with the GoldMail message outperformed the standard email message by 650%. You can’t argue with those kinds of results. David is interested in exploring how other nonprofits can use GoldMail. How might you use this kind of service? Leave a comment with your ideas.
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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 
Nearly 400 people voted on the topic for our next Nonprofit Marketing Guide free webinar, and 61% of you picked “Content Creation Strategies: Making the Most of Your Writing, Photos, and More.” So that’s what we are offering on July 23 at 1:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. PT).
