Sherry Kirschenbaum

After the 10 Changes to Make in 2012 webinar, I received an email from Sherry Kirschenbaum about how her organization uses an editorial calendar to organize ideas for their newsletter and media pitches. I was so impressed with how Sherry was connecting such a diverse number of those “special months” to her organization’s mission and programs, that I asked her to show us how she does it. For more writing inspiration, be sure to sign up for our free monthly Writing Prompts email.  ~Kivi

Guest Post by Sherry Kirschenbaum, Media Manager at United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ

During her most recent (very excellent) webinar 10 Changes to Make in 2012, Kivi spoke about editorial calendars as a tool in media outreach. As senior writer/media manager at United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ (also known as UJC MetroWest), I am using the “mother” of all calendars, Chase’s Calendar of Events, to drive content for our monthly e-newsletter.

Some background: UJC MetroWest (which encompasses Essex, Morris, Sussex and northern Union counties in New Jersey) has been doing a monthly e-newsletter for the last several years. When I came on 15 months ago, the Chief Marketing Officer asked me to start thinking about a revamp to freshen things up.

Having successfully used editorial calendars in the past for both internal and external communications, I decided, among other changes, to look at Chase’s Calendar to see if there were enough commemorations throughout the year that dovetailed with our mission:

United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ stands at the center of a network of 24 partner agencies that support families in crisis; job search strategies for the unemployed; services for seniors, people of all ages with disabilities, and women in abusive relationships; Israel advocacy; formal and informal Jewish education; and experiences to ensure our Jewish future.

I occasionally needed to get a little creative, but in general, it has been a bonanza of ideas. It has also helped me to easily identify the most qualified person (in house or at one of our partner agencies) to write a 500-600 word piece that I am responsible for editing. An added bonus: our partner agencies really appreciate the opportunity to get free publicity.

The editorial calendar for the column, titled “Monthly Matters,” basically looks like this:

2011

October: National Financial Planning Month/National Disabilities Month. The executive director of Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, the planned giving and endowment arm of UJC MetroWest, wrote an article about the long-term personal and financial impact of endowments.

November: National Long-Term Care Awareness Month/Family Care Givers Month. An article on eldercare mobility by our director of Eldercare Services ultimately resulted in a mention in an Associated Press article.

December: Spiritual Literacy. I turned to the director of Health and Healing at JCC MetroWest, a partner agency. Ultimately, however, an article on the mind/body connection was deferred.

2012

January: National Mentoring Month. The director of our Young Leadership Division wrote an article on youngish adult leaders mentoring young leaders.

February: Youth Leadership Month and Jewish Disabilities Awareness Month. This month we will have two articles, one focusing on the impact of our teen leadership programs and the other speaking to I AM ABLE, a brand-new advertising campaign in the local Jewish newspaper.

March: National Social Work Month. This article will be written by a social worker at Jewish Family Service of MetroWest, a partner agency. Content still undecided, although we are leaning towards the ongoing stress on middle-class families caused by economic downturn. (The recession may officially be over, but many people in MetroWest would say otherwise.)

April: Autism Awareness Month. A piece by a parent of a child with autism whose life has literally been transformed as a result of UJC MetroWest programs and services. This piece will also be pitched to secular and Jewish media outlets.

May: Jewish-American Heritage Month. The director of the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest, a partner agency, will focus her piece on the history and accomplishments of Jews in the MetroWest area, going back to the early 1900s.

June: National Camping Month. The coordinator of our One Happy Camper initiative will address the benefits of Jewish camping in Jewish identity formation.

In regard to my media manager hat, breaking the year down like this is very helpful in determining pitches for the media. For example, I am also using the article about the “I am ABLE” campaign as part of a pitch to Jewish media regarding Jewish Disabilities Awareness Month; the piece about stress on the middle class due to the economy will be pitched to local secular media outlets.

Sherry S. Kirschenbaum is senior writer/media manager at United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ. She can be reached at (973) 929-3084 or skirschenbaum@ujcnj.org.

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Can you help me answer this question?

“My name is Matt Silva, and I work for a nonprofit based in San Francisco called EARN. At EARN, we give low-income working families the power to create prosperity for generations. I’m a member of EARN’s first-ever communications team, and we’re thinking strategically about what roles and functions we’ll need to fill for the coming year.

I was wondering if you’d be willing to share any insights or resources into how best to setup a communications team at a nonprofit. We love the best practices you’ve shared, and are now looking for information related to the actual positions a nonprofit communications team should fill, and what each of those roles should be doing.

Right now, we’re two full-time people with a half-time Director (she shares her time with Development). I think what we’re finding is that, like most organizations, PR, branding, marketing, and online engagement (including social media) will all be important functions for us. Perhaps a better way to frame my question is this: what skill sets do you think a two- to three-person team should have?

Any help would be much appreciated.”

Great question, Matt, and one I know a lot of you have opinions about! Here’s my take . . .

Naturally, the actual structure of a communications team is going to vary based not only on the needs and goals of the organization, but on what actual team members are good at and what they themselves enjoy doing.

Here’s one way to approach your questions. I’ve listed what I consider to be three essential skills/roles for a marketing team for long-term, sustainable success.

I’m not talking about tactical skills/roles (who can best engage supporters on Facebook, who writes the best newsletter headlines), but rather what you as a team need to accomplish.

As you noted, everyone on the team will be responsible for all of these at some basic level, but I believe that each of these items is so important that they demand someone to be assigned as the “lead” staff person. How you mix and match these into specific job descriptions depends on the actual people involved.

Continuously Learning about Your Supporters

Someone should be responsible for actively seeking and capturing information about your target audiences and then regularly sharing the trends with the team. This is absolutely essential to getting your messages right and picking the right communications channels.

This can include everything from what we often call “listening” in social media, to doing surveys and focus groups throughout the year, to making sure that your databases are set up to easily segment your mailing lists, to watching analytics on your website, email marketing, Facebook, etc.

While another team member may be closer to Facebook Insights on a daily basis, for example, the lead for this particular role would be the person who looks for the trends over time, and compares those to data from other sources. Because this person will be putting different pieces of the puzzle together, he or she may also be the best one to identify ways to tap into your social capital (e.g. who are your biggest fans, and how can you better tap into their networks).

Ensuring Your Messaging is Both Consistent and Responsive

While you should decide as a team what your key messages and calls to action are during any given period (e.g. over a campaign or story arc of a few weeks or months), it’s helpful to have someone tasked with keeping the team “on message” but — and equally importantly — watching for good times to redirect your messaging so that you can highly responsive to breaking news or hot conversations in your space.

It’s a delicate balancing act: Communicating consistently over time so that your core messages and calls to action get through, but being flexible enough to respond to what’s happening around you (including newsjacking, which I’ll talk about in a later post). It’s too easy for individuals to stray off message, and to miss real-time opportunities to connect to what people are already talking about, which is why I think it’s best to give someone this responsibility directly.

Managing the Content Creation and Delivery Process

Everyone on the team will be creating content, and probably delivering the content too (posting to Twitter, setting up bulk email messages, giving in-person presentations). But one person needs to be responsible for the bird’s eye view of the process and the editorial calendar to ensure that the what, when, who, where, how and why of communications makes sense to the people on the receiving end.

Are your supporters or clients getting the right messages at the right times in the right places over weeks and months? Communications teams often get so caught up (and head down) in producing and sending out all the stuff on the day’s or week’s to-do list that they fail to see how it all fits together over time. Providing that focus — and helping other team members adjust as needed — should be someone’s specific responsibility.

These three roles are highly interrelated, which is why I think it’s good to distribute them among different staff. It will force more strategic conversations to take place regularly, as you are feeding each other information and holding each other accountable.

What Do You Think?

What do you think of Matt’s question and my answer? I’m also happy to create a more specific tactical list of job responsibilities if that would be helpful. But I do believe these roles are incredibly important and often overlooked. Failure to address these responsibilities leads to overworked, and under-performing, teams.

Please add your voice to the comments . . . if you reading this in your inbox or feed reader, click over to the blog to participate in the conversation.

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When I sat in a room of public relations officers for colleges and universities and suggested that, in certain situations, they might want to let their students know about events happening on a rival campus across town, they all looked at me like I was a complete idiot.

When I suggested to a Girl Scout troop that they might want to mention other leadership and community service activities targeting school-age girls in their city on their own Facebook page, there was an uncomfortable silence on the phone, followed by throat clearing and a quick change of subject.

Why on earth, they were both thinking, would a nonprofit want to promote what another nonprofit — one competing for participants and funding — is doing? Why would we ever want to “send our people” elsewhere, is how others have phrased it.

Here’s why: Because people will come to know and love you as a trusted source who understands them and their needs, and who puts them first, rather than as a self-absorbed and selfish organization living in some imaginary bubble world where you are the only nonprofit working in your field and the only one talking to “your people.”

OK, that’s a little harsh, but some of you need a wake-up call.

This idea of knowing your target audience so well that you are able to sift through all the information, resources, and events out there produced by other nonprofits (and businesses for that matter), and recommend the best of it to your participants and supporters is, I believe, an essential part of your role as a professional marketer today. When you do that sorting, sifting, and sharing, it’s called “curating content” in today’s marketing language.

When you do it well, people love you for it, because you save them time and effort. You lead them places they would have never gone themselves, and they are grateful for the passport.

It also subtly lets people know that you are so confident in your own work, and in your position within your field or community, that you have no qualms about highlighting the good work of others.

Of course, you don’t want to spend all of your time sending your supporters elsewhere. But measured doses of promoting other people’s stuff is very, very good for you for the reasons I’ve mentioned above, and many others (like it saves you time, because you don’t have to create all the content yourself).

I’m including a section on how to go about curating content in my new e-book to be released next week called “The Nonprofit Content Marketing Cookbook: Your Guide to Creating and Curating Content that Educates, Motivates, and Inspires.” Pre-order now and you can save 33%.

If you want more on curating content right now, skip on over to Beth Kanter’s Scoop.it page on Content Curation, the best single resource I’ve found so far on the topic for nonprofits. And yes, curating is just what I did there. I found something great, and shared it with you, and now aren’t you happy with me?

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It’s almost done . . .  The Nonprofit Content Marketing Cookbook: Your Guide to Creating and Curating Content that Educates, Motivates and Inspires will be released later this month.

I’ve heard from so many of you who are excited about all of the different ways that you can directly reach your participants and supporters now, both offline and online. But in those same conversations, you’ve told me how daunting it is to create all of that content for your website, blog, newsletters, social media, direct mail, and more.

I’ve written this new e-book to help you sort it all out.  This e-book brings together in one place all of the thinking, teaching, and writing I’ve been doing over the last two years on nonprofit content marketing. I’m putting the finishing touches on it this week, and it will be available for you in mid-September. (Pre-order now and you’ll save 33%.)

Here are the chapters you’ll find inside:

• What is Content Marketing for Nonprofits?
• Why Your Nonprofit Should Embrace Content Marketing
• Nourishing Your Community: Content Marketing Strategies for Nonprofits
• Stocking Your Pantry: The Type of Content to Create and Curate
• Celebrity Chefs: How Personality Influences Content
• Reheating and Remixing: Repurposing Your Content
• Serving It Up: The Best Nonprofit Communications Channels
• Planning the Menu: Building Your Editorial Calendar
• Keeping Them Coming Back for More: Your Communications Arcs
• Inviting Others to Dinner: Creating Content Paths for New Supporters
• Who’s Cooking Tonight? Staffing Your Content Strategy
• Equipping Your Kitchen: Tools That Make Content Marketing Easier

It also includes a worksheet that you can complete as you read through the chapters, so you can outline your content marketing plan as you go.

Just like our Nonprofit Annual Reports E-Book, this one will be $37.

If you pre-order a copy now, you’ll not only be the first to receive a copy, but you’ll save 33% too.

Pre-order now and the Nonprofit Content Marketing Cookbook is yours for just $25.

By the way, All-Access Pass Holders will get this new e-book for free, as part of the Pass (just like with all of our e-books).

This is a PDF e-book. When you pre-order, we’ll send you a link in mid-September to download the e-book before it is released to the public.

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I’ve been doing a fair amount of consulting lately with nonprofits on their content marketing strategies, as well as talking with lots of nonprofits about how they handle content creation and distribution, and I see nonprofits falling into two different camps with different needs:

Nonprofits  That Don’t Have Enough Content

These are the groups who have a hard time coming up with material to fill all of the communications channels they think they should be using. What do we put on our website, in our email, on our blog, on Facebook, etc., they ask? How do we keep it all fresh and interesting, without repeating ourselves too much?  These groups tend to be the direct service providers who are busy interacting with clients all day long, and seem to have a hard time figuring out how to talk about their work with people who support them, but who aren’t in the trenches day in and day out. Or they work in fields that are pretty specialized, and they don’t understand how to talk to a broader audience.

(I created our free Monthly Nonprofit Writing Prompts to help these nonprofits.)

Nonprofits That Have Too Much Content

On the other hand, you have nonprofits that produce lots and lots of content — perhaps too much. Having enough fresh material to fill up channels isn’t the problem; rather it’s prioritizing and organizing all of that content so that it makes sense to their supporters. They have great material, but with so much content, users of that material often get lost within it and either don’t see the big-picture mission, or can’t find what they are really looking for. They also have trouble with “snack sizing” their communications and end up sending out newsletters that are way too long, for example. These groups tend to be more of the technical assistance and resource providers, advocates, and coalitions.

In the course of consulting with both types of organizations, I’ve been developing a number of tools and resources that I plan to share with you in the coming months.

I’m also trying to apply some of them to my own work here at Nonprofit Marketing Guide — I’ve heard from many of you who appreciate all the great stuff we produce in this blog and on our site, but who are overwhelmed by it all and don’t know where to begin. I hear you, and I’m working on some ways to fix that!

Where do you fall on the not enough content – too much content continuum and what tools would you find helpful as you manage your content marketing?

Share your answers in the comments.

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Convio has released a couple of interesting research reports that clearly demonstrate that multi-channel or integrated marketing (where you add online communications to direct mail)  increases donor retention rates, giving frequency, and consequently lifetime value. The boost in lifetime value occurred whether or not the donor actually elected to give online (guess what, direct mail donors read email!). Donors who actually gave online, in addition to the mail, were shown to be even more valuable (communicate with them and get them giving in more than one channel and you really win).

But integrated marketing is really more than just wrapping email around a direct mail letter. In Convio’s latest Integrated Multi-Channel Marketing Report, they identify it as six key concepts.

1. Constituent Centricity

Convio says this is “aligning processes and communication to respect constituent preferences and optimizing engagement based upon constituent actions.”  In plain English, that means communicating with people the way they want to be communicated with. This encompasses tailoring channel mix, content, program participation and message frequency based upon what your supporters want and how they interact with you. It also means moving away from a pure calendar based communication model to a communications stream that is more events driven, where an event is defined as a constituent interaction. An example is sending a message to encourage a donor to become a monthly (committed) donor after they donate for the second time in six months.

2. Presence in Multiple Channels

Multiple if not all channels (direct mail, phone, TV, email, social media, SMS, etc.) are considered for every campaign as a means of engaging constituents where and how they want to be engaged, and as a means of amplifying a message across different media.

3. Thematic Integration

Regardless of channel or program (fundraising or advocacy) there is a consistent theme and message that tells the same story and uses reinforcing images across multiple formats. Copy does not need to be identical – e.g. you cannot write the same copy for Twitter as you would for direct mail – it just needs to be thematically consistent.

4. Integrated Processes

Using the right combination or sequence of messages or touch points across channels to optimize response and long-term impact. For example, for a renewal, what is the right sequence of messages and channel touches for a given audience segment?

5. Integrated Measurement

Establishing metrics that measure donor behavior and campaign performance across channels, and which focus on long-term value versus a single response. Ideally, metrics should also focus on net return as opposed to gross revenue.

6. Organizational Alignment

All teams work in coordination to ensure internal silos are broken down and campaigns work together as a cohesive unit rather than individualized efforts within an organization.

Convio notes that the participants in this most recent research report tended to focus on some but rarely all of these aspects, and focused primarily on thematic integration.

Where will your organization start? Share in the comments.

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Thumbs Up or Down?

Sometimes it’s hard to know whether you are doing the right thing or not, or where to stand in that big gray area. Take nonprofit emailing, for example.

There’s the CAN-SPAM law, but its application in specific situations is often confusing and subject to interpretation.  There are “best practices” that various experts share, but it’s easy to find plenty of inconsistencies and conflicting advice online, and each bulk emailer seems to have its own rules.  There’s what “everyone else” is doing, which may or may not reflect the law or best practices!

So what’s a nonprofit to do?

Take this specific case emailed to me for advice last week (with identifying information removed by request):

“We’re a politically focused nonprofit think tank, and we work to improve bipartisanship in DC (a herculean task!)  We host many events aimed at bringing both sides together to work on various policy issues, sometimes working directly with congressional committees or offices.  We regularly email congressional staffers with event invitations, relevant policy information updates, etc.  We obtain the congressional data from a vendor that specializes in providing congressional directories – there are numerous such vendors in this area.

We are NOT fundraising or selling anything as we do not charge admission for our events.  We are communicating with congressional staffers  about specific policy issues that they deal with.

The problem is we are purchasing the congressional contact information and these contacts did not opt-in.  Many of these staffers attend our events and provide us with their contact information, but still do not meet the definition of opting-in (at least not until after-the-fact).

It wasn’t until we began planning a switch from our current bulk email vendor to a new one that we realized this was a problem.   I spoke with a representative from the new company we are considering and explained our situation, but they were adamant that what we were doing (buying the directory and emailing to it) is a big no-no.  Further checking revealed that many bulk email vendors have the same policy.

So, we need some help to sort this out.

1.  Is what we are doing a violation of the CAN-SPAM law?

2.  If we are okay with CAN-SPAM but still in conflict with permission-based restrictions – what are our options for bulk email?

3.  How do other groups who communicate with Congress deal with the opt-in situation?

4.  Is there some other aspect to this situation that I’m overlooking?”

I’m no CAN-SPAM expert, but here’s what I would say:

Most of CAN-SPAM doesn’t actually deal with opt-in, but rather what’s actually in the email and opt-out.

It’s also confusing when you work in the political arena, because “political email” is exempted from CAN-SPAM (naturally, the pols give themselves a loophole!). We end up seeing lots of organizations that are not technically campaigns or not sending what is really “political” email, but who are heavily involved in the political arena, doing all kinds of list swaps, etc. that might be illegal, and are definitely not “best practice.”

In this case, it seems like the permission-based opt-in best practices that many bulk email companies are enforcing — and not the law itself — is what’s tripping up this group.

To get to “single opt-in” many people rely on the “existing business relationship” theory, where it’s OK to email someone if you already have a business relationship with them. I bet many of the groups in this situation would argue that because their mission statements are about working with this narrowly defined and limited audience (congressional staffers), they have an automatic business relationship. This would be the “but that’s what everyone else does” argument.

There seems to be quite a bit of disagreement about the “existing business relationship” theory, however, and what really constitutes a relationship. In this situation, would someone have to attend an event BEFORE getting on the email list, for example?

And that’s just single opt-in . . . getting to double opt-in would obviously require an individual to confirm his or her email address. Some of the bulk email companies will allow a single opt-in list, but send out those emails on a lower-quality server, seriously affecting the how many actually get delivered, while reserving their “high quality” IP addresses for double opt-in email. Some won’t allow lists that have been rented or purchased at all, regardless of what those renting out the lists say about the opt-in status of the list.

What’s black and white here, where is the gray area, and where should this group stand? What would you do?

Can you share your experiences and thoughts in the comments? I’ll also ask some of the big email companies to weigh in too.

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Nonprofits have always had many content buckets that needed to be filled regularly, from print newsletters and other direct mail to reports for boards and funders. Then came along your website and email newsletter. And now, with social media, you may be producing content for a blog, video channel, Flickr group, podcast, Twitter feed and Facebook page.

It can feel like you are trapped inside those buckets with little hope of ever getting out, especially if you are working under the illusion that everything you create has to be 100% original content.

All people who produce content for a living, whether they are writers, musicians, artists, or nonprofit communicators  repurpose their content. No one produces completely original content all the time.

I suggest you start with a 50-50 balance and adjust from there. Half of what you give to your supporters through various communications channels (or put in those buckets) will be brand-spanking-new content. The other half will be remixed in some way.

Here are seven of the best ways to repurpose content.

Use a different channel. If you’ve written a blog post, is there something you can do with that elsewhere?  Three short blog posts can be combined into one longer newsletter article. You can use a top 10 list you published in your email newsletter as a starting point for a video script.

Edit for a different audience. Also think about your different audiences and how you can put a slightly different spin on existing content to make it more relevant to a different segment of your audience.

Make short stuff longer. If you started with a 200 word blog post or even a quick tweet or Facebook update, flesh that out into a newsletter article by adding some examples. Add more descriptive details, get quotes from people, or share opposing points of view.

Make long stuff shorter. Pull the headline and use it as a status update. Reduce your paragraphs to bullet points. Publish a teaser and link back to the longer piece.

Change the lead. Simply start the article in a whole new way. Move something that was lower down in the article to the top. If you didn’t use a quote in the first paragraph before, use one now. Open with a trend or other big-picture explanation.

Change the perspective. You can also change the perspective, so you tell the same story, but from a slightly different point of view. Maybe you’re talking about three people who your organization has worked with and you’re emphasizing one of them. Tell the same basic story, but just emphasize the other person in the story this time.

Change the format. Start with live audio, and record it as a podcast, video or webinar recording. Have the recorded audio transcribed. Pull text from that. If you’ve written a how-to article, turn it into a top ten list. If you’ve written a top ten list about how to do something, rewrite it as an opinion piece or as a review.

This is how you reuse, repurpose, and remix your content — and save time and your sanity.

Like this post? Join us tomorrow, May 25, 2011, for Creating Awesome Content: Ideas for Nonprofit Writers.

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Guest Post by Julia Reich, Julia Reich Design

Julia Reich

Julia Reich is guest blogging for us on several graphic design topics. This second post focuses on logos and how they relate to branding. You can read her first post on graphic design style sheets here.

People are passionate and loyal to brands they feel connected to, and that doesn’t just apply to coffee and sneakers, it’s relevant to nonprofit brands too. Loyalty leads to increased awareness, participation, and donations. A logo, as the visual representation of your nonprofit brand, is often the first touchpoint your audience will have with your organization. It should make a connection with the viewer by evoking an emotional response.

How is that done, and how do you know if it’s done well?

When my company undertakes a logo design project, research we’ve conducted is synthesized to determine a brand’s attributes. Then, during the creative process, we communicate how the logo should make a person “feel” using a combination of the following graphic elements:

1. Typefaces: for the name of the organization. Fonts can be elegant, fun, modern, and more. Type styles evoke emotion, so they should be carefully considered.

2. Imagery: if used, an icon or other graphic should enhance the name of the organization, not overshadow it.

3. Color: perhaps the most important consideration, color has been shown to have measurable psychological impact, and is often affiliated with a specific industry. For example, blue is calming and often used in the health care and financial sectors; green is natural and healthy; yellow is youthful and cheerful; white is cool, clean and fresh; and red is powerful and energetic.  (Learn more about the importance of color in brand identity.)

When we first began presenting our logo concepts to clients, the ensuing discussions often devolved into a subjective discussion of who liked blue better than green. This was not terribly helpful feedback, so we developed guidelines for our clients to ask themselves as they reviewed the options:

• Is it legible? Is it easy to read and understand?

• Is it impactful? Does it stand out and catch your eye?

• Is it meaningful? Does it support your organizations goals and objectives?

• Is it differentiated enough from your ‘competition’ and does it avoid obvious visual clichés? For example, a project we did recently for a community organization placed a lot of emphasis on ethnic diversity. When we examined the landscape of similar groups we discovered many logos that used multi-color hands – hand holding, overlapping hands, hands in circles. We decided to emphasize this group’s uniqueness by offering other design solutions.

• Is it authentic? Does it feel genuine and appropriate for what you do, who who do it for and who you want to reach? If you offer services for the homeless, for example, you wouldn’t want your logo to look like one for a contemporary art museum.

• Does it have enduring value? Will it stand the test of time, and look just as fresh in several years as it does now? Logo designs can fall into trendy traps. For instance, according to logolounge.com, did you know that “nested circles” and overlapping, transparent colors in logo designs are all the rage right now? (Check out this article for more on recent logo trends.)

• Is it flexible? Will it work across different media, such as your website, business card, tote bag, PowerPoint slide, email newsletter…?

• Will it work for you both in color and in black and white?

• Do you need a tagline with it and if so, will it accommodate one?

Finally, remember that the logo is not the only element of your brand identity. It is a part of the whole picture, but not THE whole picture. We utilize the logo within an entire brand system, with other elements such as color, typography, images, core messages, etc., that help to complete your unique story. In other words, the logo does not necessarily have to communicate everything you stand for.

Julia is Principal of Julia Reich Design, which helps nonprofit organizations bring their mission to life with award-winning brand strategy, graphic design, and web design services. Clients love her team’s top-notch creative work combined with an affordable, personalized approach.

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Let a Communications Arc be Your Progress Bar

Yesterday Katya Andresen wrote a very short, but powerful post called What’s Your Progress Bar? It’s so short, I’m going to copy the whole thing here:

Katya wrote:

“When we download something, we see a progress bar inching toward an outcome.

What is your cause’s progress bar? Which events, stories, or experiences can make a donor feel that she’s walking a road with you, toward a destination that is near? I’ve always wished I could give to a community cause online, know that Gail from the accounting department logged my donation, watch Jane add another family to their community outreach plan because of my support, and then see the difference I made in someone’s life.

People expect tangibility, so give it to them.”

I think this is a natural fit with three concepts I’ve been talking a lot about lately: editorial calendars, the communications arc, and storytelling. (Nelson Layag did a great job explaining how editorial calendars and the communications arc work for CompassPoint Nonprofit Services in our video interview.)

Think about it. You might not be able to create the kind of progress bar that Katya dreams about (at least not quite yet), but you can definitely create it over the course of several weeks or even months for your supporters.

1. Pick some aspect of your work that includes several interesting people and stories, but is still relatively well defined. You can’t use your organization as a whole. Let’s say it’s a new group of volunteers.

2. Using the idea of the communications arc, map out several potential touch points. For example, the volunteers connect with you in several different ways. They attend an orientation together. They do their first assignments. Some have life-changing experiences. You start to see some of the results of their work. Some volunteers move on; others renew their commitment. There’s a beginning, middle, and end to the arc.

3. Think of different ways to tell stories along that arc, hitting on the major touch points. Keep in mind that many of the real details will probably change as events actually occur. That’s OK. Sketch out the arc and the stories on it the best you can for now. For example, maybe you choose to follow three of the ten new volunteers more closely to get their back stories and to interview them more intensely during their time with you.

4. Schedule when you can tell these stories into your various communications channels on your editorial calendar. Think about the best ways to share these stories over the weeks or months in your e-newsletter, on your blog or website, and on Facebook, for example. Do you put one volunteer in each channel, or mix up their experiences? Think about how you will maintain the arc, and give readers enough information to get them hooked, and waiting for the next update from you.

5. Deliver the content. Adjusting your plan as needed, share your real stories. Be sure your supporters know where and when to get that update! And link back to previous “episodes” of the story so those who join in mid-stream can easily catch up.

Can you share one of your communications arcs? Leave a note in the comments.

We’ll talk more about communications arcs during Wednesday’s webinar,  Taming Your Editorial Calendar and Content Creation Process, on May 18, 2011 at 1:00 p.m. ET and during Creating Awesome Content: Ideas for Nonprofit Writers on May 25.

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