Nonprofit Communications

When Emily at the Nonprofit Blog Exchange assigned the Camp ASCCA blog to me as part of this summer’s Nonprofit Blog Exchange Virtual Event, I was excited because I had already included it as a good example of how nonprofits can use blogs in my Blogging for Nonprofits course. This assignment from Emily gave me a good reason to revisit the blog and see what’s new.

Here are few things that I love about this blog, which is about the Alabama Special Camp for Children and Adults with disabilities:

–Tons of personal stories about campers, counselors and others who participate in the programs.

–Tons of video inserted into the blog posts.

–Very well integrated with other social networking sites, including Facebook and Flickr.

–The blog’s main page functions like a website home page in that it has lots of permanent links to the pages and information people want, like applications to attend the camp. It’s a good example of how to use a blog to effectively replace your typical nonprofit website, rather than just throwing the blog on to an existing static html site as an afterthought.

–It looks like the blog has undergone a nice redesign since I last visited and it looks much more streamlined.

The only thing that I think might be missing is a bit more personal information about the staff who are posting. I assume they want the blog to be about the campers and counselors, not about the full-time staff, but I’d welcome a little something more about the staff who post regularly.

Kudos to Camp ASCCA!

I have launched a new online directory for nonprofits at www.500GoodCauses.com. It’s a “word cloud” directory made famous in the past few weeks by Joel Comm and his 500Words.com site. I’ve taken Joel’s software and am using it for good causes!

It works like this: Each of the 500 words or phrases on the site are unique. Only one nonprofit can claim each word, and when they do, it links to their website (or any page they choose), and it’s theirs for the next 2 1/2 years. It’s yet another tool for search engine optimization. I’ll also be buying search engine ads to draw traffic to the directory. Site visitors can’t help but click on the words out of curiosity, so it should lead to some interesting new visitors for the nonprofits who participate.

The fee to claim a word varies based on the formatting you select (size, bold, colors, etc). If you don’t see a word you want, you can make one up for a slightly higher fee. Through Monday, July 10, the prices are all half-off, which means you can claim your word for as little as $25. And the best part . . . I’ll be donating 1/3 of the gross revenues from the directory to randomly selected nonprofits that have claimed words, or had words claimed on their behalf.

Nonprofits, claim your word now, and everyone else, claim a word for your favorite good cause!

I get this question all the time from clients who are trying to update their publications. I am nowhere close to a font expert and will usually scan one of the online font directories looking for something close. Those days are over, as I just learned about a cool feature at www.myfonts.com. Click on “What the Font” and you can upload an image of a word. As a test, I tried it with a client’s logo where I knew the font. It didn’t return the correct font, but two of the three choices it did return were so close that I couldn’t tell the difference. And it only took about two minutes. Much better than endless scanning of font directories!

Another font ID site is www.identifont.com. I’m less crazy about this site, but if you don’t have an image you can upload, it could work. It asks you a series of questions about the font you are trying to identify. It asks about the way specific letters look, so you need a good sample of text to make it work. I tried it with the same client’s logo, which contains only three letters, and gave up after answering about 30 questions, because it kept asking me about letters I didn’t have in front of me.

I decided to stop writing grant applications for clients a few years ago because I simply don’t enjoy that kind of writing. To cut down my reading pile (in paper and online), I stopped paying close attention to magazines, websites, etc. related to fundraising. But I’ve decided to move one fundraising blog on to the must-read list.

I am a huge fan of Jeff Brooks’ Donor Power Blog. Why? Because it’s all about focusing on your audience, which I must say 100 times during my various nonprofit writing workshops. While Jeff focuses on donors as the audience, practically everything I’ve read on his blog can also be applied to other groups that nonprofits must communicate with effectively.

Even if development work isn’t in your job description, if you are responsible for communicating with members, clients, partners, volunteers, elected officials, or your board, you’ll learn something from Donor Power Blog. You’ll also be entertained. Jeff’s recent posts on the group dynamic (How Bad Ideas Get Started and How to Stop Them, Fundraising’s Death by Committee) are so dead-on, I immediately started laughing as I pictured in my head all the various people I’ve dealt with over the years who fit his descriptions.

I’ve been surprised by the number of nonprofits I’ve talked to who don’t realize that their IRS Form 990 is online for the world to see at GuideStar. This website is incredibly important for any nonprofit seeking funds from foundations or other savvy donors. I know some foundation officers who say they check GuideStar before they even read a nonprofit’s grant application and if the report isn’t good, the application goes straight to the recycle bin.

GuideStar offers nonprofits a great (and free) opportunity to supplement their 990s. They call it a GIF — Guidestar Information Form. It lets nonprofits add text about their mission, programs, and accomplishments to the report that the site generates. Failing to provide GuideStar with this information is a big mistake.

For a small fee ($10), nonprofits can also post PDFs of their annual reports, brochures, etc. This is another wonderful way to reach potential donors, many of whom will go to GuideStar before going to an organization’s website.

If you want to learn how to produce a top-notch email newsletter or ezine, my favorite site, far and above all others, is Ezine-Tips.com. The site isn’t for nonprofits specifically, but many of the lessons shared there can be applied easily to the nonprofit sector. The site covers everything from design and formatting to content creation and list management.

Here are three of my favorite articles, just from the last month or so, with good lessons that apply to the nonprofit sector:

Ezine Content Sources To Help Make Choosing Your Next Email Newsletter Topic a Breeeeeze!

Ezine Readers - Do Your Email Newsletter Members Pay Attention?

How Do I Make Any Money With An Email Newsletter?

Use the search engine on the site to go deep into the archives. If you are new to email newsletter publishing and you’ve got a question, I bet Chris Knight has covered it.