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, speaker, 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.
This month, I’m offering a special deal on our new Pass *Plus*. It includes invitation-only coaching calls with Nancy Schwartz, Sarah Durham, and Gail Perry, plus I’ll buy you a copy of Sarah’s awesome new book, Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications.” Get the details on the Sweetheart Deal here.
Online Outreach on a Budget – Nonprofit Blog Carnival
The first 2010 edition of the Nonprofit Blog Carnival is now online at Issue Lab’s Footnotes and it’s all about doing online outreach on a budget. It connects you to some really great posts, so save a lunch hour this week to read them over. Joanne Fritz at About.com for nonprofits has taken over management of the Carnival from me. Thanks Joanne for doing such a great job with that baby! Next month’s edition will be hosted by Katya Andresen at the Nonprofit Marketing Blog. The theme will be your best and/or worst moments as a nonprofit professional – and what you learned from them. Submit your blog posts here.
A Nonprofit Messaging Crisis
Nancy Schwartz is sharing the results of her recent survey on nonprofit messaging and has concluded that nonprofit communicators are in a state of crisis. See why she feels that way, and get some solid advice from Nancy on what to do about it. Nancy will be sharing her expert advice on messaging with our Pass *Plus* holders on a February 17 conference call.
Great Storytelling about Giving
I *love* this idea from Triangle Gives Back, a project led by the Triangle Community Foundation here in NC. At the foundation’s holiday party, executive director Andrea Bazán passed out envelopes to attendees that contained $10 and a challenge: Match the $10 with at least $10 of your own, give the money to someone you do not know or an organization doing good in the region, and then share the story. Check out the creativity that ensued. I heard about this because one of the attendees at the party works with my husband at the Conservation Trust for NC. We collected change to add to the $10 to send a kid to camp.
Affordable National Press Releases
PR Newswire is offering Web News Releases to nonprofits for just $69. This is a great way to get your news into the big national news engines like Yahoo! News and Google News, via PR Newswire. Through my partnership with PR Newswire, your nonprofit can also get a 12- month membership at no charge. Details here.
More Marketing Mixed Links
Think donations to your group will suffer because everyone’s giving to Haiti? Katya says think again.
On the Power of Twitter: Got a Gripe? Send a Tweet. I saw this work myself not too long ago when I tweeted that I was having a hard time getting a certain nonprofit to call me back about a quote in my book. Within two minutes, the phone rang, with quote approval from said nonprofit.
Only 5% of websites have a Facebook or Twitter link, reports Care2. Sounds like we need some social media integration! (The recording of our webinar on integrating your website, email newsletter and social media sites is available in the Recording Archive for All-Access Pass holders).
That’s all for now. I’m off to Toledo this afternoon to teach “Low-Budget, Real-World Nonprofit Marketing: Picking the Right Strategies and Telling the Right Stories” for the Toledo Community Foundation. Enjoy the links, and let me know if you learned something new by leaving a comment.
Here’s some great information — a tasty cocktail of mixed links — that I’ve saved to share with you . . .
Fundraising
I was one of 10 guest speaker’s in Gail Perry’s 2009 Year-End Fundraising Strategy Telesummit. It’s full of advice on what you can be doing right now to make sure that you raise as much money as possible in the next 8 weeks. While it’s focused on year-end giving, most of the advice will apply well beyond December. Well worth the $125 for the complete package of recordings and transcripts.
End-of-year fundraising was also the topic for last month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival, hosted by Joanne Fritz at About.com. Joanne will be taking over management of the Carnival from me in January.
Idealware has published a nice case study on friend-to-friend fundraising, showing how pre-school staff raised money from friends online rather than hosting yet another fundraising event.
Nancy Schwartz has updated her already amazing advice on getting and using testimonials from your supporters in your marketing. This is really, really good stuff that every nonprofit should be doing. Read parts one and two.
The Sarasota Community Foundation is running a storytelling contest for local nonprofits. I love this idea, because it emphasizes the importance of telling your story and gives nonprofits a little incentive to share ($500 cash prize). The foundation, and the nonprofit community as a whole, also get all kinds of wonderful stories to use when raising money and support in the coming year. I’m honored to be the contest judge!
Studio Orange Design, Subtle Technology and Tiffany Manning Photography will be donating a full year of design and marketing services to one nonprofit organization, located anywhere in the United States, valued up to $75,000. Apply here by January 15.
Nonprofit Marketing Training
Just this morning I opened registration for five new webinars/calls . . . here is the Nonprofit Marketing Guide training schedule for the rest of the year:
America’s Giving Challenge is back on. In addition to the big prize, they are also awarding daily prizes, so rallying all of your supporters to give on one particular today could be fruitful. What counts is the number of donors, not the total amount raised. That means small gifts ($10 min) are just as meaningful as big gifts. It’s all being run through Facebook Causes this year, wrapping up November 6. Katya Andresen shares some great tips on doing it right.
Jeff Brooks, formerly of Donor Power Blog, is now blogging at Future Fundraising Now. Jeff is one of my favorite bloggers and when he left one job for another, the old employer insisted on keeping ownership of what always appeared to be a personal blog, at least to me. Weird. Anyway, change your blogrolls and your subscriptions to keep up with Jeff’s witty take on fundraising today.
Join me for this writing workshop via webinar, where we’ll explore how to make your writing more powerful by using emotions, both positive and negative.
Learn how to listen to online conversations about your organization and the issues you care about using free and affordable tools. Great for market research, finding new supporters, developing your expertise and more.
The weekly webinar series schedule for the rest of the year is almost complete and I’ll be opening registration for webinars in October – December later this week.
Nonprofit Taglines
Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention has culled down 1,700 nonprofit taglines to the 60 best of the year and now she needs you to vote on the very best. She asks you to rank them as good, better, and excellent. Take a minute after you go through the list to see if you can spot trends in your own rankings. I certainly did when I tried it. I seemed to like best the ones that either emphasized both the “how” and the “why” and those that were clever while still clear and meaningful.
Nonprofit Blog Carnival
Nancy is also hosting the next edition of the Nonprofit Blog Carnival and she wants to know what tops your to-do list for the last quarter of the year. Write a blog post about it and share it with Nancy by September 25, and maybe you’ll see yourself in the Carnival. Learn more about participating.
Facebook Fans
Missed today’s webinar on 10 Ways to Engage Your Facebook Fans? No worries. Get the All-Access Pass and you can watch the recording and download the handouts starting tomorrow (and of course, you can attend the next 12 weeks of webinars too!)
The Case Foundation is providing all kinds of training and resources on using social media as part of their Gear Up for Giving campaign, in anticipation of another America’s Giving Challenge.
This article validates what many of us have known for years. Our most creative thinking comes when we are in the shower, sleeping, driving, and otherwise not actually working on work. Give your brain a break if you really want to reach a breakthrough.
I need your advice on a question about this blog, which I’ve posted at the end, but first the good stuff . . .
Heather Carpenter at Nonprofit Leadership 601 has posted the current edition of the Nonprofit Blog Carnival on nonprofit leadership issues. Check it out for posts on how nonprofit organizations are dealing with change, turning around their organizations, and more. The next edition of the Nonprofit Blog Carnival will be hosted by A Small Change. If you are interested in having your blog posts included in the Carnival, join our contributors’ email list for reminders about deadlines, etc.
Here are some other links I recently found interesting, insightful or otherwise helpful. I think you’ll enjoy them too . . .
And now this question I’m wrestling with. I receive many requests from various people, companies, and nonprofits to pass on information to you on this blog. I ignore most of them because they aren’t related in any way to nonprofit communications programs. But sometimes I get requests that do have a marketing angle. Here are two examples.
The CTK Foundation Philanthropic Fund is running a project called the Heart and Soul Grant Award Program. Nonprofits submit a 4-8 line poem that represents the “heart and soul” of their mission. The winner will get $10,000 and have their poem put to song by Los Lonely Boys. GreatNonprofits is running Youth Thrive Awards. Youth-focused nonprofits with the most positive reviews in their category will be announced as winners and receive media coverage and promotion on GuideStar.
Do you want to hear about these types of contests and similar opportunities from me? I’ve leaned against posting most of them, but what matters most is what YOU want. Leave a comment on the blog and let me know if you want me to pass this kind of stuff on to you or not.
Here’s a tasty mix of links that I think you’ll find interesting or helpful as you build support for your good cause . . . Happy Friday!
The next edition of the Nonprofit Blog Carnival (founded by yours truly) is coming up and the theme is nonprofit technology. Here’s how to submit your blog post (deadline today!). I’ll send you the link when the Carnival is posted next week.
Nancy Schwartz has opened up nominations for the 2009 Tagline Awards. A strong tagline does double-duty, extending your organization’s name and mission, while delivering a focused, memorable and repeatable message to your base. Enter your tagline and Nancy will send you a free copy of the fully updated 2009 Nonprofit Tagline Report later this year. It’s the only complete guide to building your org’s brand in 8 words or less — filled with how-tos, don’t-dos and models. You can now follow Nancy’s tagline award news on Twitter at @orgtaglines.
Katya Andresen provides a nice summary of the report written by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine on the lessons learned about fundraising through social media from the Giving Challenge that the Case Foundation sponsored with Parade Magazine last year. I’m adding the full report to my reading pile.
Katya has also had some great posts lately on how nonprofits can tell better stories. Check out this and this.
The Cone Nonprofit Power Brand 100 is the first public ranking in the United States to value nonprofit organizations by more than financial standing alone. Which nonprofit brands top the list? YMCA, Salvation Army, and United Way are the top three.
New to the nonprofit tech world? Heather Carpenter has created a great all-in-one-place intro to the field (and challenged me to do the same for nonprofit marketing! I’m working on it.)
So you are checking your web analytics, right? But not sure what the heck to do with them? FutureNow offers you some action steps. This is written for a commercial site, but nonprofits can still learn from these suggestions.
In the Cool Tools Department, we have KnowEm, which lets you check the availability of a username on 120 popular social media sites. Once you set up your presence on a few sites, you’ll see the merits of using the same username.
Posted by Kivi Leroux Miller on Apr 3, 2009 in Mixed Links
Here are some items I’ve bookmarked to share with you.
Shannon, a new director of communications at a nonprofit, has decided to blog the first 100 days of his new job, using “The First 100 Days in Your New Nonprofit Marketing Job” e-book I released in January as a guide. Naturally, I think this is extremely cool and encourage others to do the same! I’ll add Shannon’s experiences and others I hear about to the e-book next time I revise it.
There’s new research on who leaves bequests to charity in their wills (this was especially interesting since we just did a webinar on starting a planned giving program). Bottom line according to this research: go after people without kids.
Web useability guru Jakob Nielsen has released some research showing how bad nonprofit websites negatively affect online donations. Donors said they wanted to know the organization’s mission, goals, objectives, and work and also how it uses donations and contributions. Nielsen also points out some “donation killers.”
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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.
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Looking for the 
With freezing rain falling and snow on the ground here in North Carolina, it’s time for some hot mixed links!
I need your advice on a question about this blog, which I’ve posted at the end, but first the good stuff . . .
