Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

I taught a marketing workshop on “message and media” for our local United Way agencies here in Davidson County, North Carolina about a week ago (the slides are below). Since I had an op-ed column due for our local paper the same day, and no real topic in mind, I decided to ask the nonprofits in the room to tell me what was different or challenging about summer for them.

I said I would use the stories they told me in the column and set up a fundraising page at change.org to see if we could raise a few bucks online for them at the same time (online fundraising is practically non-existent among our local nonprofits, so that part alone was going to be an interesting experiment).

Here are just a few of the stories they told me:

– The domestic violence shelter sees an increase in family stays in summer because as the temperatures rise, so do tempers.

–Special Olympics offers sports programs all year long, but there’s a widespread misperception that their Spring and Fall Games are the only events they do, leaving them short of volunteers for summer sports.

–Our local free clinic director says about 40% of their patients need transportation assistance, and due in part to high gas prices, they are seeing many more appointment cancellations. While gas prices go up every summer, this year is especially hard and people who rely on friends and neighbors for a ride are getting turned down much more often, leading to the cancellations.

Here is the column I wrote. And here is the change.org page I set up. We’ve raised over $500 so far.

But here’s the take-home lesson for you: Look at how summer changes your work and pitch the story to your local media. Trust me, they are tired of the same ol’ baby/dog-in-hot-car, working-outside-in-the-heat summer stories. Give them something fresh to tie to the hot temps and I bet they’ll go for it.

Your donors may not even be aware of these challenges. While I had a hunch that I’d get some good stories out of our local nonprofits, some of them truly surprised me. Why not send an email appeal to your supporters asking for help with a particular summer challenge? Or write a personal letter to your biggest donors letting them know how critical their ongoing support is all year long, but especially during the summer months. Who knows, maybe you can use it as an angle to get some people to sign up for monthly giving plans.

Here are the slides I promised . . . this is one version of my Nonprofit Marketing 101 talks. I’ll be giving another version during this Wednesday’s webinar on “How to Write a Quick and Dirty Marketing Strategy.”

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Every time you launch a new campaign or implement a new program, I am sure you give yourself ample time to sit down and think through the very best marketing strategies and communications tactics. I have no doubt that you have ample funding to do market research, to hire the most creative talent, to always follow best practices, to test your marketing, and to launch your campaigns with great fanfare.

YEAH, RIGHT!

OK, here’s the real world. You have what is supposed to be a major fundraiser next week and you are just now thinking about a press release. You received a little grant for a new program that you think will really help your community, but it doesn’t include a line item to market the program to the people who need it. Your board is sick of that other group down the street getting all the attention and they expect you to do something about it.

NOW WHAT?

Take a deep breath. Grab a sheet of paper (or a napkin) and a pen (type if you want, but I personally find sketching these out much easier). We are going to do a “back of the napkin, quick and dirty” marketing strategy. I’ll explain this concept in much more detail with real examples during the “How to Write a Quick and Dirty Marketing Strategy” webinar on Wednesday, June 11, 2008. Details here.

1) What are you trying to accomplish? What’s the goal?

Trying to get a certain number of people to an event? Need to let a particular group of people know about a new program? What do you want to happen and whom do you need to engage to make it happen?

2) Why should they care? What’s in it for them?

Yes, this is important to you, but why should it be important to these people you want to communicate with? What do they get out of it? How are they going to be better off as a result of listening to you and acting on what you say?

3) What’s the easiest, most direct way to get information to them?

What are they already reading? Where are they already going? Who are they already talking to? Take the answers to #2, draft some marketing copy, and get it out there.

Yes, this is a really oversimplified, bare bones approach to nonprofit marketing. But if you can quickly work through these three questions before you start throwing pixels and print out there, you’ll be much better off.

Join us on Wednesday and you’ll see how this works in the real world and what other questions you should ask if you have a little more time.

I’ve made a few changes to the schedule for the Nonprofit Marketing Guide weekly webinar series.

This week’s webinar, “Easy and Effective Ways to Grow Your Email List” had to be postponed. The new date is Thursday, June 19 at 2:00 p.m. Thought you missed it? No worries, you still have plenty of time to register.

“How to Create Nonprofit Messages That Motivate,” originally scheduled for June 19, has been canceled. The guest speaker ended up having a scheduling conflict.

So, here’s the quick list of the next four webinars.

June 11 - How to Write a Quick and Dirty Marketing Strategy
June 19 - Easy and Effective Ways to Build Your Email List
June 25 - Must-Have Features for Nonprofit Websites
July 16 - Nonprofit Writing Stinks! How to Bring Your Writing Back to Life

I’ll be adding more topics to fill out the summer and early fall schedule within the next week or so.

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide weekly webinar series is back after a break with “Easy and Effective Ways to Build Your Email List” on Thursday, June 19, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern (11:00 a.m. Pacific). Registration is just $35. Get the details.

I’ll be covering the latest strategies for keeping your email list healthy and growing. The good news is that most of them really are easy and effective.

If you can’t make the webinar or just want a taste of its contents, here’s a new article from Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com on building your email list.

12 Easy Ways to Build Your Nonprofit’s Email List

List churn — the drops in your list size as people change email addresses without telling you or unsubscribe from your list — is inevitable. Many nonprofits lose 20-30% of their lists each year to this natural turn-over. How can you combat the churn and keep your list growing? Here are a dozen tactics you can use to keep your email list growing.

1. Send a regular e-newsletter to your list. Even if it is simply a short update that you send once a month, get in the habit of regularly sending mail to your list. An active list is much more likely to grow.

2. Include a simple sign-up box on your website, ideally on every page, but on your homepage at a minimum.

3. Make changing an address very easy. Ideally, subscribers to your newsletter can update their own email addresses with just a few clicks. The harder you make it, the less likely they are to do it and the more likely they are to drop off your list permanently.

4. Encourage readers to forward your e-newsletter to friends and be sure to include a link to your sign-up form in each edition so those friends can sign up directly.

5. When people register for your events, tell them they will receive your e-newsletter too.

Read the rest of the article for remaining tips.

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the National Capital Gift Planning Council’s Annual “Planned Giving Days” conference in Washington DC. Planned giving refers to philanthropy in estate planning, like leaving money to a charity in your will or setting up a charitable gift annuity.

My friend Rob Blizard, who was coordinating the Marketing Track, asked me to speak about improving the newsletters that planned giving departments send out. And boy do most of them need some improvement! So, I took three hot trends in nonprofit marketing and applied them specifically to these kinds of newsletters. The presentation was very well received — thanks to everyone in the room for participating in the exercises and asking lots of great questions.

Since these trends can be applied to any nonprofit newsletter, I thought you might be interested in the slides:

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(Go to the blog if you don’t see the slideshare window.)

I’d also like to give a special shout-out to J. Erik Potter, who I met at the conference. He reads this blog and writes his own called A Blog on Giving. Thanks for introducing yourself!

My “blog about this” folder overfloweth with great stuff to share with you. Here are a few of the more recent items:

The Chronicle of Philanthropy did an online chat Q&A with Seth Godin yesterday. As to be expected, he didn’t disappoint. My favorite quote: “Obsessing about the basics is far more effective than managing the latest fad.” Read the full transcript here. I do disagree with his take on nonprofit annual reports, however.

Michael Gilbert says “Playing It Safe Is a Trap.” His article on five syndromes in nonprofit online marketing will definitely make you think. Are you letting fear and naysayers stop you from doing really exciting, meaningful work? Much of Gilbert’s philosophy was echoed by Seth Godin in his Chronicle of Philanthropy chat.  It also reminds me of one of my all-time favorite quotes: “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.” ~ Jim Hightower

Should you speak in an organizational voice or a personal voice when writing for your nonprofit’s blog? In other words, just how snarky can you get? You’ll find some great perspectives in the comments on Beth’s Blog.

This has been widely reported in the nonprofit blogosphere, but in case you missed it and you don’t currently use an email service provider for your e-newsletters (as you should!), Vertical Response will let you email 10,000 messages per month for nada.

Simple changes to Amnesty International’s website made a big difference in how much they raised online. These results provide not only interesting tips for your website design, but also validate once again the power of testing, testing, testing. 

I’ll let the rest of the “blog it” folder sit for a bit and see if it is really blog-worthy after all.

 

Photo by RaeA

If you’ve been waiting for me to make the recordings from the Nonprofit Marketing Guide webinar series available, wait no more. The following titles are now all available when you purchase an All-Access Pass.

For $97, you’ll get to view all of these webinars and any I add in the next twelve weeks. You also get to attend any and all live webinars I host for the next twelve weeks, at no additional charge.

Nonprofit Storytelling: How to Write Your Nonprofit’s Best Stories
Recorded May 14, 2008.

How to Connect with Generation Y
Recorded May 7, 2008. Featuring Sam Davidson.

What Do Baby Boomer Donors Want from Your Nonprofit?
Recorded May 1, 2008. Featuring Jeff Brooks.

Online Writing: Dos and Don’ts of Writing for the Web and Email
Recorded April 24, 2008.

How to Write a Press Release Reporters Will Love
Recorded April 17, 2008. Featuring Claire Meyerhoff.

Branding for Nonprofits: What Is It and Should You Do It?
Recorded April 10, 2008. Audio only, featuring Nancy Schwartz.

Converting Your Print Newsletter into an Email Newsletter
Recorded March 20, 2008.

How to Write a Four-Page Nonprofit Annual Report
Recorded March 13, 2008.

Can We Find You on Google? Keywords and Search Engine Optimization for Nonprofits
Featuring David Westbrook. Recorded March 6, 2008.

How to Make Your Nonprofit Brochures Pop! - The Crash Course
Recorded February 27, 2008.

What Should We Write About? Storytelling Ideas for Nonprofits
Recorded February 13, 2008.

Getting Reporters to Cover Your Nonprofit: Tell Your Story So They’ll Tell It Too
Recorded February 6, 2008. Audio only, featuring Claire Meyerhoff.

Yes, it’s a ton of great training at a very reasonable price. Ready to get your pass? Register now.

I’m going to try something new next week - instead of a weekly webinar, I’ll be hosting live “office hours” on Tuesday, May 20th, from 2:00 - 2:30 p.m. Eastern, right here on my blog.

Using a service called CoverItLive, I’ll be taking your questions and answering them in a live chat format. You don’t need any special software or accounts. Simply come to the blog home page on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. ET, and you’ll see the chat taking place.

You can submit questions right then and I’ll answer as many as I can on the spot. This won’t be an unwieldy chat where you can’t keep track of the conversation. I’ll choose which questions to answer, post them to the screen, and then answer them, so it’s all organized and easy to follow. Afterwards, you’ll be able to view the transcript of the entire session.

If you’d like an email reminder about “office hours” closer to the actual time, just fill in the form below. Select when you want the reminder from the drop-down menu, then enter your email address and hit enter. I hope you’ll stop by on Tuesday and submit a question!