Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

You realize that it is time to publish your newsletter or that your website hasn’t been updated in months, and the dread sweeps over you. “What are we going to write about this time?” you wonder.

You can take much of the anxiety out of the publishing process by creating an editorial calendar for each of your publications. You can use them for newsletters, websites, blogs and anything else that you publish regularly. An editorial calendar can also help you stay focused on your audience and your goals for the publication. As an editorial project manager for several clients and for my own publications, I simply can’t live without this tool.

It’s easy to create an editorial calendar. Create a table in a Word or Excel document. Across the top of the first row, list your newsletter publication dates. For websites, if you wanted to shoot for monthly updates, list each month. For a more frequent publication schedule (e.g. for blogs), you could list each week.

In the first column, list the categories of articles you include in each edition of your newsletter. For a website, you could list the various sections. For your blog, you can list the main categories or tags that you use.

Then start filling in the grid with a few notes on the article topics.

Here is a sample editorial calendar for a local animal shelter newsletter. I’ve only listed two issues here, but I would normally try to work on four to five issues at a time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In Every Issue: Pets Available for Adoption, In-Kind Donations Wish List, List of Donors Since Last Issue

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You don’t need all the details worked out in advance. Notice for example how I list TBD - to be decided - in the Adoption Profile section. This would give me the flexibility to pick which family I wanted to highlight when I started to write the newsletter, while reminding me that I needed to alternate between a dog and cat adoption.

Some sections of your newsletter may be repeated with some quick and easy updates that don’t require much research or writing, so you can list those at the bottom of the chart as I have with the “In Every Issue” heading.

Charting your articles like this will also help you see where shifts are needed. For example, I can see that the Spring issue is currently “dog” heavy. I might decide to switch the order of the Adoption Profile or the Donor Profile to make it more balanced. This kind of juggling is much easier to do with an editorial calendar in front of you.

ALT tags are the bits of text that you can attach to images on webpages and in email messages and e-newsletters. As I explained yesterday, using the ALT tag is essential when including images in email campaigns and e-newsletters, because if the people reading your email have image blocking turned on, they won’t see the image, but they will likely see the ALT text. ALT tags are also needed by visually impaired people who rely on screen readers.

ALT stands for alternative — this text will be shown as an alternative to showing the image itself. Many people advocate that you simply describe what is in the photo, especially for ALT tags on websites. But ALT tags can also be used as marketing text, and this approach makes sense for email where you are most likely trying to encourage some type of action on the reader’s part.

Here are a few tips for your email ALT tags.

1) Always use them! You don’t need them on decorative items like bullets, but use them on all photographs and artwork of significance.

2) Keep them short, but not too short. Don’t use “Logo” when you can use “Smith Community Library Logo.” Shoot for three to seven words.

3) Use words that are meaningful to your readers. Treat writing your ALT tags like you do headlines and captions. Use keywords that will grab your readers’ attention. Don’t say “Kittens at the shelter” when you can say “Kittens ready to be adopted today at the shelter.”

4) Encourage readers to turn images on. Your newsletter will look much better and be more effective if people see the images you placed there. You can use the ALT tag to encourage them to turn on the images. For example, ALT tags like “Turn on images to see why Jim is smiling” or “Turn on images to see what your donations purchased last month” give the reader an incentive. A tag like this on every image would be annoying, but using them sparingly may convince some of your readers to take that extra step to see your images.

Last week I received an invitation to a fundraiser from a local American Red Cross chapter, and it really turned me off. Here is what part of the invitation said verbatim (except for the italics I added).

Fine Art Auction

The Auction will showcase 5 artists, and we will have a live auction with a variety of mediums: paintings, mosaics, hand made jewelry, pottery, wood turning, Photography and much, much more. Hors d’ oeuvres and cash wine bar.

Contact: a phone number, $25.00 adm.

Saturday March 17, 2007
6 pm - 10 pm limited reservations

The event location and address

I realize that as a professional writer and editor, I notice bad writing more than most people, but the sloppy style of this invitation is a real problem for me as a potential donor. If they can’t go through the trouble of producing a well-written invitation for what is supposed to be their major fundraiser, how careless would they be with my contribution?

So what’s wrong here? Lots.

–5 artists should be five artists. No matter what style guide you use, none of them recommend that you use a numeral in this case.

–Five artists are showcased, but there are more than five art forms. I suspect that more than five artists are donating to the silent auction, and I’d like to know whether that’s correct or not. If it is, what does it mean to be “showcased”?

–Inconsistent capitalization. Why is Auction capitalized and live auction not? Why is Photography capitalized, but the other art forms not? None of these words should be capitalized in my opinion, but it should be all or none.

–Hand made should be handmade. Look it up in the dictionary.

–They almost got bonus points for spelling hors d’oeuvres correctly, which is butchered all the time, but they put a space after the d’ where it doesn’t belong.

–A name or organization should be listed with the phone number. Am I calling the Red Cross or the place that is hosting?

–What is with $25.00 adm.? I assume this means that admission is $25, but why abbreviate it to adm.? $25.00 per person would be so much better.

–The date. They need a comma between Saturday and March. Saturday, March 17, 2007.

–The time and reservations. First, these should be on two separate lines, but more importantly, what does “limited reservations” mean? Can I only come if I RSVP? If so, by when do I need to RSVP? Or does this mean that a limited number of tables can be reserved while the rest are first-come, first-served that night? The invitation should be explicit about that.

A poorly photocopied insert with sponsor logos was tucked inside. You can tell that they put four or six on one page and cut them out. You can also tell that they held too many sheets at once when wielding the scissors, because one edge is all frayed, the cut is crooked, and the sponsor logos are off to one side and lopsided. Don’t get me started on the graphic design of the invitation.

And here’s another issue: March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day. It seems like that would be worth mentioning in some way. I can think of several possible taglines revolving around “luck” that would have worked for this.

Typos happen to the best of us (I missed two bad ones myself last week). Honest mistakes slip by from time to time. I hate the Grammar Gestapo too and am not trying to join them with this post. If I’d spotted only one or two problems, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But an invitation like this, with so many problems in so little space, is just pitiful.

I’m sure many people would defend the person who produced it with the refrain that all leaders of small organizations sing from time to time: “I’m one person. I can only do so much. I can’t be good at everything. Cut me some slack!” I hear ya, sister. But that only takes you so far.

If you aren’t good at writing or design, find a volunteer or board member who can do it for you. Or take an extra fifteen minutes to do it right yourself. Or hire a freelancer. When it counts, like on your major fundraising event materials, you need to get it right. Present yourself as an amateur and you are an amateur. I give money to professionals.

P.S. If all this looks too familiar, check out my two “Writing for the Real World” e-courses, “Making Your Writing Correct” and “Making Your Writing Clear and Concise.” They are designed for busy professionals who need a writing refresher. Registration is $99 and you can start the course any day you like.

I recently read an interview with Jack Hart, the managing editor of The Oregonian and author of “A Writer’s Coach: An Editor’s Guide to Words that Work.” He talked primarily about the writing process, but he also mentioned several qualities of good writing:

-It’s tight, with clean syntax.
-It’s forceful.
-It’s colorful, with lively verbs and descriptive elements that put you in the scene.
-It’s rhythmic, with a pleasing cadence.

So what does this mean for nonprofit communicators who want to produce excellent writing for newsletters, websites and more? Let’s look at each of these four points, in order.

1) Be straightforward and keep it short.

Lots of nonprofit writing suffers from “warm-up disease.” Don’t start with paragraphs of background information, or even worse, long descriptions of the process that led up to your project or whatever it is you are writing about. Get right to the point and tell us what we need to know.

Lean toward shorter sentences and paragraphs than you may be used to writing. Many of us were taught to write by instructors who demanded a certain word count. Unfortunately, that teaches us to provide unnecessary background, to drag out our points, to add a whole lot of extra details, and to repeat ourselves — none of which helps create tight, clean writing.

2) Find the right balance of emotion and facts.

Good nonprofit writing takes advantage of the emotions that naturally come with many of the topics that the sector tackles, while incorporating factual information that supports the need for action or change. In other words, good nonprofit writing speaks to both the heart and the head. Grab my attention with a moving story, then convince me that I can do something about it with some great stats. That’s forceful writing.

3) Think of yourself as a story teller.

Lots of nonprofit writing is in black and white, and it needs to be in color. I’m not talking about the color of the ink on the page or the pixels on the screen. Remember in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door after the tornado drops her house? The movie is black and white until that point, and turns into glorious color as she opens the door. That’s the kind of transformation you should shoot for. An easy first step is to replace as many generic words in your writing as you can with specific ones.

4) Write conversationally, but with purpose.

I read out loud nearly everything I write for nonprofit clients, looking for a certain tone and balance in the way the words flow. It’s easier to achieve that cadence if you write more like you talk. But that doesn’t mean you can ramble on. Know where you are headed, what points you need to make, what reactions you want to provoke, and bring your reader along in a comfortable conversation.

Great writing takes hard work, even for the most experienced professionals. Not everything that comes out of your office needs to sparkle and shine. But for pieces that demand excellence, give yourself the time to work over your drafts with these points in mind.

Including personal profiles in your newsletter is great way to tell an important story about your organization, while also recognizing the contributions of a single person. I write a lot of donor profiles, for example, that tell nice stories about the individuals and acknowledge their generosity, while highlighting the organization’s accomplishments — i.e. “Jane Donor made The Nonprofit the sole beneficiary of her estate because we did Some Great Thing.”

Here are five tips for writing a better personal profile:

1) Ask open-ended questions. Whether you interview the person on email, over the phone, or in person, ask lots of open-ended questions that are impossible to answer in one or two words. You want to generate answers that you can work with and build a story around.

2) Ask enough questions to generate more material than you need. For a 500-word profile, I’ll ask 7-10 questions and if the person is replying over email, I’ll ask them to shoot for 50-100 words per answer. That will usually give me enough background, facts, and quotes to pull together a good first draft, after adding in the organizational info.

3) Don’t use everything you get. I rarely use everything a profile subject says or writes, because half of it ends up being irrelevant to the particular story angle. Use the details and quotes that support the story you are telling about this person and the connection to your organization.

4) Keep the biographical stats to a minimum. A profile isn’t a biography. Include enough personal details so we can get a general sense of who this person is, but don’t let it drag out into a whole life story. Let us know if we are reading about a man or woman (if the name doesn’t give it away), give us clues about the person’s age if you don’t say it outright, and be clear about their connection to the organization (volunteer, donor, client, etc.).

5) Include several quotes. Let the profile subject talk about how great your organization is and the wonderful work you are doing in his or her own words. They’ll mean a lot more coming from the person than if you said them yourself. I always ask donors, for example, “Why did you first get involved with The Nonprofit?” and “Why do you continue to support the work they are doing now?” Both questions usually produce a great quote to include in a profile.

There is no such thing as the “general public” in nonprofit communications, and especially in fundraising. From the core of your message to how you deliver it, your communications need to target specific people or at least specific groups of people. But if developing a targeted communications plan is a new concept for you, knowing where to start can be daunting.

Philanthropy Journal has just published a special report on fundraising that will push you in the right direction. Generalizations will only take you so far, but if you are lost, this report will definitely help you find a clear path.

Here are a few points from the report, based on the age of donors:

• Members of the generation born before World War II are civic-minded, see philanthropy as an obligation, and find an organization’s leadership to be important.
• Baby Boomers may not be major donors to begin with, but they want to to be courted personally and treated like they are. They also are not loyal, so retaining them as donors can be tough.
• “Generation X,” or people born from 1965 to 1980, prefer to donate to organizations that they’ve had operational experience with, so getting them involved in other ways is important. They also don’t have as much disposable income as other groups, because they are the group most likely to have school-aged children at home.
• Generation Y, or people born between 1980 and 1996, are, like the pre-World War II generation, civic-minded and want to change the world. They are also the most tech-savvy group, so cultivating online champions who can advocate on your behalf via blogs, social networking sites, etc. is key.

Nonprofits have great stories to tell — and telling them well is what brings in more support, whether it be cash, volunteers, new partners or political help. But writing up all of those stories and formatting them for publication can be time-consuming. To save yourself some time while still gaining all the benefits of good storytelling, follow these tips for recycling one great story for many different purposes.

1) Get All of the Story Details Down in Writing

Let’s use a personal profile/case study as an example. Say you invest a few hours of time in interviewing a client of your organization’s services, as well as the staff and/or volunteers who provided those services, about their experiences, the challenges they faced, what they did about them, and the results their work produced. Type up your notes, including all of the details, direct quotes, etc.

2) Write the First Article to Meet Your Most Pressing Deadline

Now, from those notes, draft your first article for whatever venue needs it first. Is your newsletter deadline coming up? Do you have a big grant application or foundation report due? Are you working on your annual report? Pick the first place you’ll use the story and write the article for that publication.

3) Decide Where to Recycle the Story

Now review all of the different places that this story could also be used and pick a handful to work on. Here is a partial list of places you could recycle your story.

* Your website

* Your print newsletter

* Your email newsletter

* Grant applications

* Grant reports

* Board reports

* Press releases

* Press kits

* Brochures

* Direct fundraising appeal letters

* Advocacy appeal letters

* Annual report

4) Make a Few Changes So the Story Appears Fresh

Take the first version of the story that you wrote, review your original notes, and edit the story to fit the new uses you picked in Step #3. Use one or more of these techniques to freshen up that same story for each new place you plan to use it.

Change the angle. If you emphasized one particular part of the story, emphasize a new one now. If you told the story from the client’s perspective, tell it from the volunteer’s perspective this time.

Change the person. If you wrote the story in third person (”He did this . . .”), change the story to a first-person account (”I did this . . .”). You’ll need to ensure that the person telling the story approves the new version told from his point of view.

Make it shorter. Cut out some of the extra details and focus in on just one key point or message.

Make it longer. Add in some additional material from your original notes.

Rewrite the lead paragraph. Start the story in a different way.

Turn it into a how-to. What did your organization or the participants in the story learn? Turn those lessons into a how-to article for others.

Make the most of your best stories by recycling them and you’ll get more marketing material with less effort.

“Writing Tips” is a free monthly e-newsletter I publish that’s full of . . . you guessed it . . . writing tips. It contains free advice to help you write better at work and covers grammar, writing style, how to write various types of publications, and more.

Here is the table of contents for this issue:

• Starting Sentences: What’s OK and What’s Not
• How-To: Writing Your Elevator Speech
• Do You Live in Arkansas?
• E-Courses Start Monday
• Two Free Newsletters for Nonprofits

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