All this week, I’m celebrating the one year anniversary of the release of my first book, The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause.

Daily Prizes for Blog Commenting

Books You Can Win This Week by Commenting on Blog Posts

With each blog post this week, I’ll ask you a question, and you can reply in the comments. Then I will randomly select one person who commented to win the daily book prize (see below for the book list). Be sure to leave your email address or Twitter handle when you comment so I can contact you directly for your snail-mailing address if you win.

To kick off the week, there are two ways to win today . . .

Buy My Book Today, Get into Tomorrow’s Webinar for Free

1) If you don’t have a copy yet, buy a copy of my book, The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause (on sale for $23.29 at Amazon). Forward the email receipt to me at book@nonprofitmarketingguide.com. We will then register you for tomorrow’s webinar, “Get Real! Use Your Organization’s Personality to Build Rapport with Supporters.” Webinars are $35, so it’s a great deal. Everyone wins on this one . . .  buy the book before 11 a.m. Eastern Tuesday and we’ll register you for the webinar for free.

What’s Your Six-Word Annual Report?

2) How would you describe your accomplishments over the last year or so in exactly six words?

I’m advocating all kinds of “new and improved” nonprofit annual report formats, and as a spin-off on the “six-word story” phenomena, I want to hear your six-word annual report to date.

Share your six-word annual report in the comments below, and you’ll be entered to win a free copy of “Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission” edited by Holly Ross, Katrin Verclas, and Alison Levine.

Here’s a sneak peek for the rest of the week:

• Tuesday: Comment to win “Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications” by Sarah Durham
• Wednesday: Comment to win “Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Thursday: Comment to win “#SocialMedia Nonprofit Tweet: 140 Bite-Sized Ideas for Nonprofit Social Media Engagement” by Janet Fouts with Beth Kanter
• Friday: Comment to win “Nonprofit Management 101: A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals” edited by Darian Rodriguez Heyman

To give everyone time to participate, we’ll draw all of the winners the week of June 20th.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Claire Meyerhoff and I are hosting the second installment of our virtual book club for The Nonprofit Marketing Guide today (Friday) from 1:00 – 1:30 pm ET (10:00 – 10:30 a.m. PT) on our Magic Keys Radio & Podcast. We broadcast live over the Internet, and afterwards the recording is immediately available as a podcast. You can call in your questions over the phone or send them to us on Twitter @magickeysradio during the live show.

Today we are talking about Part II of the book: Writing a Quick-and-Dirty Marketing Plan for a Specific Program.

We’ll talk about how nonprofits need to stop thinking in generic terms like the general public, outreach, and education, and start targeting their marketing by asking three simple questions:

• Who Do You Want to Reach?
• What Do You Want to Say? and
• How and Where are You Going to Say It?

Listen to the show.

We’ve sold more than 2,500 copies of the book so far! Thanks to each and every one who has purchased a copy and especially to those of you who have shared your comments on it with me or by leaving an Amazon review. I love hearing your stories and seeing how you are using the book!

I mentioned to Sandra Lundgren, a communications specialist with the Westport Public Library, that I had yet to see the book on a store or library shelf and she was kind enough to send me a photo from her library.  I’d love to see your photos with the book too! You can upload them to Flickr or our Facebook page or email them to me.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

I’m hearing some great stories from readers of The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause (Amazon link) and I want you to be able to hear and share them too. So, Claire Meyerhoff, our resident media relations pro, and I are turning our Magic Keys Radio and Podcast into a virtual book club meeting on the third Fridays for the rest of this year, starting this Friday.

But it’s not a book club without you.

Each of the four shows will cover one of the four parts of the book. We’d love to hear from you if

• As you read that part of the book, you thought, “Kivi should have used us as an example here!”
• You’ve made a recent change to the way you approach your work based on something you read in the book
• You are struggling with a topic in the book or have a question that will help us expand on what’s included in the book

All of the shows will broadcast live over the Internet at the times below and we’ll be able to take calls over the phone and via Twitter (send questions to @magickeysradio). The podcast will be available a few minutes after the show ends. There’s no charge to participate live or to listen to the podcast.

Friday, September 17, 2010 (1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Part I: Getting Ready to Do It Right (go to the show)

We’ll talk about what nonprofit marketing is, what it means to be good at nonprofit marketing today, and the importance of building market research (or listening) into your daily routine.

Friday, October 15, 2010 (1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Part II: Writing a Quick-and-Dirty Marketing Plan for a Specific Program (go to the show)

We’ll talk about how nonprofits need to stop thinking in generic terms like the general public, outreach, and education, and start targeting their marketing by asking three simple questions: Who Do You Want to Reach? What Do You Want to Say? and How and Where are You Going to Say It?

Friday, November 19, 2010 (1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Part III: Building a Community of Supporters Around You (go to the show)

We’ll talk about how nonprofit communicators are turning into nonprofit community builders and look at some of ways nonprofits are building community by making their communications more frequent and personal, by positioning themselves as a trusted source, and by empowering their fans to build the community too.

Friday, December 17, 2010 (1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 – 10:30 a.m. Pacific)
Part IV: Doing It Yourself without Doing Yourself In (go to the show)

We’ll talk about ways that you can not only survive as a nonprofit marketing department of one, but thrive. We’ll share our favorite ways for do-it-yourself marketers to manage their time, talent, and treasure.

We are looking for nonprofits to feature during each of these four shows, so let me know if you have a story to share! You can email me directly at kivi@ecoscribe.com. Put “book club” in the subject line.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Writing a book can be a very lonely experience. It’s up to you and only you to put each word on the page. But at the same time, writing a book like The Nonprofit Marketing Guide is a group project, and I feel like I had scores of co-authors. You can’t read very many pages in it without coming across a great nonprofit story or some wonderful words of wisdom from people much smarter than I am.

In this slideshow, I thank many of the people who are featured in the book directly and indirectly. I showed this at the book party in DC on Friday and the response was so positive that I want to share it with you too.

There are still many more people to add, which I hope to do in the coming weeks. Thanks to everyone in the book, and thanks to everyone who’s purchased a copy already! (Here’s the Amazon link if you want your own.)

P.S. Here’s what’s coming up on the webinar schedule . . .

June 16: Bootstrapping a Marketing Plan for the Rest of 2010

June 23: Turning Your Whole Staff and Board into an Effective Marketing Team

June 30: Asking Your Supporters to Fundraise and Friendraise for You Online

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

At Noon Eastern today (9:00 a.m. Pacific), I’ll be answering your questions live during a Chronicle of Philanthropy chat on “Smart Ways to Make a Small Marketing Budget Go Far.” It’s part of my Virtual Book Tour. You’ll be able to review the transcript even if you can’t make the chat live.

Watch later today for an interview that Katya Andresen did with me for The Nonprofit Marketing Blog (update: here it is). I’ll be showing up on Frogloop and SocialFish later this week too. And for those of you in the DC area, don’t forget the Happy Hour/Book Party near Dupont Circle on Friday from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. RSVP Here.

Stops on the Book Tour

Here are the other stops I’ve made in the last week:

Where to Begin with Nonprofit Marketing at Getting Attention (June 1)

Five Ways to Do More Marketing in Less Time at Have Fun – Do Good (June 3)

Knitting Together Your Website, Email, and Social Media Content on Beth’s Blog (June 3)

Top Three Challenges for Nonprofit Communicators on IMPACTMAX (June 7)

Book Reviews

And here are some reviews of the book I think you’ll enjoy:

Why Fundraising Writing Needs a Boost & What You Can Do About It (at The Non Prophet, by the Community Foundation of Sarasota County)

Welcome Help for the One-Person Marketing Department (at About.com)

Thanks to Josh Leo for being the first to review the book on Amazon! If you have a copy of the book already, please add your review to Amazon too!

Winners of the All-Access Passes

On Friday, we drew three names out of all of the people who forwarded their book receipts to us last week as winners of Quarterly All-Access Passes to our weekly webinar series. Congratulations to Theresa Harris of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, Jo-Ann Proudian at VascularCures, and Carolyn Paige of the Animal Protection Society of Durham!

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

I sent an email about buying my new book out to my email list this morning and in the four hours since then, my Amazon ranking went up 36,645%!

Thanks to everyone who has purchased a copy today!

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide is currently #312 overall on Amazon, and #1 in nonprofit books and #2 in marketing books. (Would love to knock off The Tipping Point if only for an hour!)

What’s all the fuss about today? Well, I kicked off my month-long virtual book tour, with my first stop at Getting Attention.org where I answered the common nonprofit marketing question, “Where do I begin?”

When you buy the book TODAY (Tuesday, June 1) before midnight, and forward your receipt to me at book@nonprofitmarketingguide.com, you’ll be entered to win an Annual All-Access Pass to our webinar series (yep, free webinars for a year) or a tagline review by “Queen of All Things Nonprofit Tagline” Nancy Schwartz.

Here’s a video tour of the virtual book tour so you can see what good stuff is coming up this month:

Day 1 of Kivi’s Virtual Book Tour for the Nonprofit Marketing Guide from Kivi Leroux Miller on Vimeo.

P.S. Getting the book today would be FANTASTIC, but if you end up doing it later in the week, go ahead and send us your receipt anyway. We’ll do another prize drawing on Friday (but not for the Annual Pass – that’s today only!) We’ve included Amazon partner links for you here, but you can buy the book anywhere you want and still participate in the drawings and other fun book tour stuff.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

My First Peek at the Book

I’ve sometimes compared writing my first book, The Nonprofit Marketing Guide,  to having a baby, and the metaphor held true today. Just like our second-born daughter, the book arrived more than a week before it was expected! I was told to expect my copies late next week at the earliest, and Amazon has been using June 9 as its shipping date.

Well, my books arrived this morning, and Amazon now says it’s shipping within the next day or two. So if you pre-ordered your book, you’ll get it very soon.

Just like when Jianna decided to arrive early, I’ll be spending the next day or so reworking my plans. I thought I’d be marketing the book for the next three weeks as a pre-order, and had designed a major campaign around that.  The “book buyers only” section of the website isn’t online yet.  Good marketing people can think fast, and adjust to what’s happening in real time, so that’s what I’m doing too!

I’ll start by sharing the first video review of the book with you from Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation. Danielle reviewed a draft of the book and provided one of the “praise” quotes you’ll find on the first page.

I’ll be sharing lots more about free training I’m offering, book giveaways, book clubs and more soon. Stay tuned!

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Pre-Order Now at Amazon for June 8 Delivery

The release of my new book, The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause, is finally less than a month away!

To celebrate, we are hosting two book parties and you are invited.

We’ll have eats, drinks, and books for sale. Both locations do have limited capacity, so please RSVP if you plan on attending.

Friday, June 11, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. in Washington, DC

We’ll be at the MAA Carriage House, two blocks from the Dupont Circle Metro. Thanks so much to my dear friends and business partners, Katya Andresen of Network for Good and Claire Meyerhoff, nonprofit media genius, for sponsoring the DC party. Katya wrote the foreword to the book and Claire influenced much of the thinking in it.

RSVP for the DC Book Party

Thursday, June 17, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. in Raleigh, NC

Another dear friend and business partner, Gail Perry, is hosting a porch party at her home to welcome the arrival of summer and the book! Gail just taught a webinar for us on throwing the best party in town, so I’m blessed that she’s hosting the NC party.

RSVP for the Raleigh Book Party

I hope you’ll bring some nonprofit friends and join us in DC or Raleigh. See you there!

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

I’m devoting a chapter in the upcoming “Nonprofit Marketing Guide” book  (available Spring 2010) to time.  One of my 10 realities of nonprofit marketing is that it takes more time than money to do it well. This particular chapter is only about half-written, so please help me finish it!

What are some of your favorite ways to save time, manage your time, or otherwise work more efficiently on nonprofit marketing?

I don’t want this chapter to be full of generic time management advice. I want it to be specific to the workload of nonprofit communicators.

Here are a few of the topics I know will be in the chapter:

- Content creation strategies that help you repurpose what you create.

- Using tools that help manage social media (e.g. syncing status updates, scheduling blog posts and tweets in advance).

- Keeping up with “best practices” (BTW, I’m sick of that phrase – got a better one?) and “big brains” (smart people you can learn a lot from), so you spend your time on what others have already proven is most likely to work.

- Some easy ways to measure return on investment (defined loosely – not just financial return) so you see what works best for you, helping you know what to do more and less of in the future.

- Prioritizing the typical list of communications tasks most nonprofits are trying to implement (e.g., I’d put getting your thank-you letters out above getting your newsletter out).

What’s your experience on these topics and others related to time? I have plenty of room for good anecdotes in this chapter, so please add your perspective on these, or entirely different time-saving tips, by leaving a comment on the blog (if you are  reading in your email box or rss reader, click on the headline to go to the blog.)

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

As you may know, I am in the middle of writing the full-length, printed book version of Nonprofit Marketing Guide, to be published in Spring 2010 by Jossey-Bass.  As I was writing various chapters on both strategy and tactics, I realized that I was making choices about what to include and what to leave out based on my own set of assumptions about the world that nonprofit communicators are working in. So I decided to make the first chapter of the book a summary of these assumptions.

Here is the my list of 10 marketing realities for nonprofits, with abridged commentary. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment on the blog, and maybe you’ll end up in Chapter 1!

Reality 1: Marketing is not a dirty word. Neither is communications or public relations.

Marketing gets a bad rap because when it’s done poorly, it can be downright offensive. No one wants to feel like someone, especially a charity, is trying to trick or cheat them. No one likes being yelled at, patronized or coerced. So don’t think of your marketing program as a megaphone or a soap box, but as a conversation. It’s true that some communications tactics are naturally more one-way or impersonal than others, but your marketing program as a whole should include many opportunities for back and forth dialogue with your supporters.

Reality 2: There is no such thing as the general public.

The general public includes everyone, from children to seniors, rich and poor, incarcerated and homeless. No matter how much you try, you will not reach everyone. In fact, if that’s what you try to do, odds are good that you will, in fact, reach no one. Instead, you need to focus on specific groups of people and work toward communicating with them in ways that connect with their particular needs and values.

Reality 3: You need to build your own media empire.

Don’t depend on the mainstream media to get your message out. That sector of our society has its own set of survival problems. Instead, build your own media empire using online tools. I’d much rather see a nonprofit spend a day writing blog posts and uploading photos or videos than writing a press release and calling a scattershot list of reporters about it. Media coverage can still be incredibly helpful. I’m not suggesting that you forgo media relations entirely. But in today’s media environment, I believe you are better off spending more time creating and publishing your own content than trying to talk someone else into publishing it for you.

Reality 4: Old people are online.

Grandma has email and she’s thinking about getting on Facebook too. The Pew Internet & American Life Project’s “Generations Online in 2009″ found that the biggest increase in Internet use between 2005 and 2008 was within the 70-75 year-old age group – not just grandparents, but great-grandparents.  Older people will continue to get online, and even more significantly, the younger generations, particularly those in their 30s and 40s now who came of age with personal computing, will remain online as they age.  Their expectations for communicating online with their favorite charities will likely be extremely high. Prepare to meet those demands by getting through the steepest parts of your learning curve now.

Reality 5: Nonprofit communicators are transforming into community organizers.

Think about when you host in-person events. Isn’t it wonderful to see all of those people who care about your work in one place, talking to each other about the good work you are doing, and feeling good about their contributions to something much bigger than themselves? Smart nonprofits are now using social media tools to create those same cozy feelings online.

Find those people who are enthusiastic about your cause and who also have large networks of their own. Then feed those big fans, and help them spread the message to others. They may fundraise for you, but just as importantly, they’ll also friendraise for you. Organizations that merge now-separate functions of fundraising, communications, and information technology into community building teams will ultimately be more successful in the coming years than those who maintain these professional silos.

Reality 6: Personal and organizational personalities, or brands, are blending.

What is your group known for? This is your organization’s brand, image, or personality — and many nonprofits are finding that their organizational brand is closely related to the personalities of their most public staff members. This has always been true for smaller organizations, groups led by a founding or long-time executive director, and nonprofits created in someone else’s memory or honor. But now larger nonprofits must contend with this reality too. Good online marketing, especially in social media, is personal, which means that your staff should present themselves as real human beings in your communications. The personality of the messenger – you – can affect that organizational message.

Reality 7: Good nonprofit marketing takes more time than money.

Because the Internet has revolutionized communications between organizations and individuals, effective nonprofit marketing programs can be implemented for online pennies on the print dollar. Engaging supporters in conversations is more time-consuming than blasting messages out to them. Managing profiles on multiple social media sites is more time-consuming than updating your website once a month. Writing a blog with several posts per week is more time-consuming than sending out a print newsletter twice a year. While all of these tasks do take more time, they are also more effective at building a community of supporters.

Reality 8:  You’ve already lost control of your message. Stop pretending otherwise.

Control over the message about your organization or issue is not yours to give up. It’s already gone. What you can control is your response to how others are communicating about your issues and your organization. If someone wants to bad-mouth you online, they can do it right now whether you are there to see it and respond or not. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of comments that people make about charities online are positive or neutral. For those that are negative, isn’t it better to see them and consciously decide whether or not to respond than to be oblivious to them entirely?

Reality 9: Marketing is not fundraising, but it is essential to it.

Nonprofit marketing has many possible outcomes, and raising dollars is one of them. But nonprofits also use marketing to find and organize volunteers, to persuade decisionmakers, to change public policy, to raise awareness, to encourage behavior changes, and to foment social change.

While you can have successful long-term marketing campaigns that don’t involve fundraising, you cannot have successful long-term fundraising campaigns without marketing. Marketing and communications are how you talk to your donors in between those times when you ask for money. It’s what puts new people into your pool of potential new donors and what keeps current donors happy with your organization so they will give again.

Reality 10: Old-fashioned basics still work best, even online.

“The basics are what most organizations are missing. Obsessing about this is far more effective than managing the latest fad.” I didn’t say that, but I agree with it 100%. Marketing maven Seth Godin said it during a May 2008 online chat about nonprofit marketing hosted by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

With online marketing in particular, don’t fret about Facebook until your website is in good shape. Don’t get all twisted up about Twitter until your email marketing program is effective. Focus on the basics first, and do them well. Tell good stories. Be grateful, and get your thank-you letters out. Become a valued and trusted source for others. That’s how you make it big.

Agree? Disagree? Want to add another item or two? Leave a comment on the blog.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.