1. The Mission Statement Opener

Dear Jane,

The mission of the Smithtown Association is to further the betterment of our community.

Blah, blah, blah.

Mission statements very rarely belong in marketing text at all and certainly not as the first paragraph. Same goes for those history openings: “We were founded in 1956 . . . ” Who cares?

2. The Stat Attack Opener

Dear Jane,

We are losing 100,000 acres per year to development, but we’ve saved 2 million acres so far or 3% of our state. But we need to protect another 2 million more acres over the next 10 years, when our population will grow by more than 1 million!

Huh?

Numbers can be useful, but only in small doses that are put in a context that people can understand without having to think too hard.

3. The Big Ego Stroke Opener

Dear Jane,

I have to say that this has been one of our best years ever. We have accomplished so much, with so very little. I’m really proud of our staff. Our board has worked really hard too.

Hmmmm . . . sounds like you don’t need donors like me anymore!

Yes, I made these examples up, but they aren’t too far off from several letters I’ve seen. These three appeal letter openers would fall into the Not Captivating category! Don’t use them!

If you don’t know how to write these stories, now is the time to learn. Trust me, the nonprofits raising the most money and expanding their lists of supporters the fastest know how to tell their stories well. You can too.

Once you know what to listen for, you’ll begin to hear story snippets all around you that sound like the chorus of a familiar song. Then you just need to do a little investigating to fill in the verses. You’ll have great stories to tell for your appeal letters, newsletters, websites, and other communications.

Here are some tips for writing each of the three basic plots.

1) The Challenge Plot

The challenge plot is your basic, three–act structure that practically every Hollywood movie is based on. These are your classic underdog, against-all-odds stories.

You start by introducing a character and her situation and goals. Then in Act 2, she faces barriers to reaching those goals and the tension mounts. Will everything work out? Usually not until things get even worse. Then in Act 3, we get to the big climax where our heroine finally triumphs!

One common mistake nonprofits use when telling Challenge stories is making themselves the hero. In most cases, your nonprofit won’t appear in the story until Act 3 and then you are typically just part of the supporting cast that helps the main character get over those barriers. These stories work best when the main character is a client, volunteer, donor or someone else involved in or affected by your work, but not the nonprofit itself.

2) The Creativity Plot

Creativity stories create those big “Aha!” moments and tell those “what if we … ” stories that work out in the end, even though the idea may seem a little too crazy or bold at the start. For a good creativity plot, you need a well-understood problem and a standard response that just doesn’t work.

Again, use the people around you — clients, volunteers, donors — to explain the problem and inadequate solution. Then introduce the new approach that your nonprofit or someone affiliated with your nonprofit is trying. Theoretical solutions and test runs are OK here – you don’t have to have all the details figured out in order to inspire someone with the possibility of new solutions. Then you end the story with a vision of a new reality and how that original problem would be solved.

Many nonprofits use this plot to tell their “founding” stories because finding creative new solutions to old problems is behind the formation of lots of nonprofits.

3) The Connection Plot

Of the three different story plots, this one is the hardest to pull off. If you don’t get it right, your story will sound sappy or manipulative. But like the others, if you can identify the different parts and find the right way to string them together, you’ll have a very powerful story.

Connection stories are the “bridging the gap” stories and “big meaning in small events” stories. Start with a small, specific situation or event, and then look for the larger connection to the greater human experience. These stories usually have a little surprise or epiphany in them that really drives the point home. It’s a nice little story, but the meaning doesn’t become really profound until you add in those last few surprising details or revelations. You’ll see heartfelt connections between the people in the stories and also between the storyteller and the reader.

Here are three steps to knit those strings together into an integrated online strategy both you and your supporters will love.

Step 1: Connect Everything

Give yourself some link love! Make sure that you have social media icons connecting to your various profiles in your website template. You can find hundreds of free icon sets online – with styling to match any website — by searching for “free social media icon set.” Add the icons to your email newsletter templates and social media links to your email signatures. Add “share” buttons to your website pages and email newsletters too.

On your social media profiles, include links back to your home page and your newsletter archive and subscribe pages. Where you can, embed your email signup form into your social media profiles.

Ensure that some basic branding (e.g. logos, colors, taglines) are consistent throughout. You shouldn’t try to make your Facebook page or email newsletter look just like your website, but they should match enough that we can tell they represent the same organization.

This may seem like a very basic step, but the reality is that few nonprofits have effectively connected all the pieces of their online presence. Your supporters should be able to effortlessly travel between your website, blog, email newsletter, and social media profiles without having to hunt down those connections. And what they see as they travel from place to place should be consistent.

Step 2: Share Across Channels

With everything connected, now you can start thinking about ways to strengthen the bonds between your online channels, which encourages your supporters to move between them and to connect with you in multiple ways.

The more channels you can use to reach a supporter, the more likely they are to see your updates, to engage in conversation, and to build a positive image of and rapport with your organization.

As you develop your editorial calendar and think about what to say and where to say it, keep in the mind the strengths and weaknesses of various channels. You want to share the same basic message across all channels, but you’ll often vary the specific call to actions.

For example, if you are working on a fundraising campaign, email is a better bet than social media for the direct ask for the donation, with highly visible links back to a campaign landing page and donation form on your website.

But what if you want supporters to connect with others who are also giving to the same campaign? That’s where social media can be highly effective. For example, on your thank-you pages and follow-up emails, you could encourage your supporters to share a story about why they are giving to your cause on your Facebook wall. Both calls to action – donate in email and share in social media – support the overall campaign by capitalizing on the strengths of the two different channels.

Step 3: Reinforce What Works

Track how supporters are engaging with you through various channels online. What are they doing and where are they doing it? What paths are the taking as they move between your website, blog, email, and social media profiles? What types of content seem to work best in your email newsletter versus your blog or Twitter?

Also think about ways you can reuse content across channels. Listen to the conversations and bring what you learn back into new content. Can you post a question on Facebook or Twitter and use the conversation there to guide the creation of a blog post?

You shouldn’t silo your offline marketing from your online marketing, and you shouldn’t silo your website, email, and social media marketing either. Knit those loose ends together and you’ll weave a stronger community of supporters around your good cause.

Want More?

We offer many webinars and e-clinics on online marketing. Check the webinar schedule.

This article first appeared as a guest post on Beth’s Blog.

Many nonprofits find their website visits drop off in the summer, making it a good time to update pages and experiment with new features. You want to work out the kinks and make sure everything is current and working smoothly by fall, when online giving goes way up. Working on your website is also a good project for tech-savvy teens and college students looking for summer internship projects.

Check out these articles from my Nonprofit Communications Blog or on Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com to find out what makes a good nonprofit website.

10-Point Basic Website Checklist for Nonprofits

Your Nonprofit Website: Five Quick Fixes

Why Your Nonprofit Website Should Have Multiple Domain Names

Five-Step Strategy to Marketing Your Nonprofit Online

The Art of Chunking Your Website Content

Easy Ways to Track Your Online Marketing

Baby Boomers: Born around 1946-1964

Boomers work hard and play hard. They like to be rewarded with money, titles, and status. They believe political activism is essential for government change and social justice. Boomers are dissed by others as self-absorbed workaholics.

Generation X: Born around 1965-1980

Gen Xers (of which I am a member) want to do it their way and forget the rules. They value variety, challenge, informality and common sense. They see a substantive role for socially responsible businesses in solving society’s problems. They are skeptical, entrepreneurial, individualistic, and adaptable. Dissed by others as whiners.

Generation Y: Born around 1981-2000

Gen Yers prefer supportive, cooperative environments and enjoy group decisionmaking and working in teams. They insist on working smarter, not harder, and want to be lavishly praised and frequently rewarded. Service learning and volunteering are the norm. They are realists, but also have high expectations about increasing responsibility and quick advancement. Dissed by others as pampered and arrogant.

To see what this means for you, read my article on How to Reach Out to Volunteers in Their 20s

You can also check out the articles I’ve bookmarked on generational differences.

The Baby Boomers may be the wealthiest generation and therefore the target of your donor strategies for years to come, but if you want volunteers who like to work with others, can multi-task, and can teach you a thing or two about social networking, you should start thinking about ways to talk to Generation Y — people in their 20s.

Generation Y Has Grown Up Volunteering

This generation has grown up with volunteering –whether it’s been through service learning requirements, racking up community service hours for college applications, or simply finding fun things to do with groups of friends.

I’ve received some great tips from Sarah L. Sladek of Limelight Generations, a “Next Generation” marketing and consulting firm.

20-Something Trust Their Friends, and That’s About It

Sarah says that Generation Y rely only on the people who take the time to establish relationships with them and earn their trust. This is also the first generation to trust, almost exclusively, the recommendations of their peers.

What does that mean for your nonprofit marketing? “For the best results, use marketing messages that get to the point, are honest, and personal. Incorporate testimonials or case studies that profile how volunteering has made a difference in your younger volunteers’ lives. Highlight the ways your organization values its volunteers and the opportunities for professional development it provides,” says Sarah.

Communicating Online is a Must

She also advises nonprofits to use technology to communicate with Gen Y and make your organization accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. “Younger generations are savvy consumers who embrace technology and sophisticated marketing messages that are visually stimulating, innovative, concise, and professionally designed. Anything less will struggle to capture their attention,” she says.

Connect Now and Reap Rewards for Years to Come?

Professional fundraisers will tell you to spend your time on the Boomers for a quicker return. Sarah says nonprofits shouldn’t overlook the long-term potential of connecting with Generation Y now.

“A nonprofit’s relationship with its young volunteers should never end. It starts with how you communicate to new volunteers, and it should continue long after a volunteer has completed a project.  Maintain a relationship with former volunteers by surveying them, sending them the organizational newsletter, forming a peer group for them, or inviting them to sit on an advisory board,” suggests Sarah.

She also notes that this generation is loyal to people, not places, so when it comes to recruiting and retaining Ys to your nonprofit, the strategy of building relationships with them is imperative. “Give Generation Y a place to belong and they will be dedicated ambassadors and volunteers for many years to come,” says Sarah.

The problem is that nonprofits often want to make themselves the center of the story — and that’s usually the wrong approach.

It’s easy to understand why this happens. Nonprofits themselves are typically understaffed and underfunded (sounds like formidable challenges to me) and often perform Herculean tasks to make the world a better place, overcoming everything from well-funded adversaries to a local media more interested in crime and celebrity. Running a nonprofit is a struggle, but it’s not the one your supporters want to hear about.

What they do want to hear about are the stories of the people who are supporting and benefiting from your organization’s work.We want to hear stories about your clients, your donors, your volunteers, your members, your advocates, and other supporters of your work. What challenges are they struggling with and overcoming?

So where then does your nonprofit come in? Your nonprofit is likely helping the protagonist overcome the challenges, so you’ll appear in the second half of the story.

Focus on the people you are helping and the recognition you want will follow.

• People call your nonprofit all the time asking for assistance on issues you don’t really work on, because they are confusing your organization with another one in town.
• You don’t have an “elevator speech” because it’s just too hard to explain what it is you do in 30 seconds.
• You have trouble finding your own organization’s table at a community festival, because your banner and materials blend in with everyone else’s.
• When your board members talk to potential new donors about the work you do, it sounds as though they are describing a completely different organization than the one you work for.

In all of these cases, your organization is being confused with others, overlooked or misunderstood. Why?  It’s often because you have no real “brand” — no clear organizational identity, reputation, or single thing that you are best known for.

On the other hand, when you do have a strong brand, people can immediately explain who you are and what you do and can pick you out of the crowd. They are more willing to donate to you and volunteer, because they “get it” — and can easily explain it to their friends and family. Wouldn’t you rather be in that situation than the ones above?

Here are a few thoughts on nonprofit branding from branding expert Nancy Schwartz from GettingAttention.org.

How can you take all of your marketing efforts, in different formats and by different staff members, and turn it all into something that makes sense? Create a strong organizational brand and make sure it’s used consistently across departments, site and marketing outputs, both print and online.

Nancy recommends this four-step approach:

1. Make sure that there’s agreement, within leadership and key departmental staff, on what your brand is. A brand portfolio includes a positioning statement; key messages for your nonprofit and for each of your programs or services; and design guidelines on use of your logo and colors.

2. Discuss the communications creation process with your colleagues and, with input from representative staff departments, create a process for creation and review of marketing materials.

3. Design and implement additional tools to make it easier for your staff to develop or generate communications that do convey the brand. These include style guides and templates.

4. Hold a training session where you explain your brand (messages, design standards, style guide, processes, and templates) and why it’s important to be consistent in using it.

Read Nancy’s full article from which this one is excerpted.

If you’ve been approaching online marketing in a piecemeal fashion, I recommend the following five-step approach to start pulling together a real nonprofit marketing strategy.

1. If Your Website Sucks, Fix It. Here’s my 10-Point Basic Website Checklist for Nonprofits. Make sure your website passes on all ten points before worrying about anything else. Don’t have your own domain? They are dirt cheap. Get one now. No excuses.

2. Build Your Email & RSS Lists Everywhere, All the Time.The two best ways right now to communicate directly with your supporters online are through email and through RSS feeds.Learn more about RSS at TechSoup. Yes, there are other ways to reach people online, such as through social networking sites, discussion lists, and text messaging. But email and RSS are going to reach the overwhelming majority of people. These lists are easy to manage and easy for your supporters to join and leave (if you have them set up correctly).

3. Create Tools and Great Content for Your Biggest Fans.The beauty of online marketing and Web 2.0 is that it is so easy for friends to pass info on to other friends. You can build your network of friends of friends of supporters of your organization incredibly fast online. But that means you have to identify the “influencers” or “patrons” in your network — your biggest fans — and give them the tools they need and the information that excites them, so they’ll pass it on. This is what Seth Godin calls “Flipping the Funnel.”

4. Dip into Social Media, But Dive into One Tool. Yes, social media is all the rage. You’ve got everything fromFacebook Causes and Care2 to Digg and Flickr. It’s impossible to be everywhere in any kind of meaningful way. At the same time, social media is the new web, and you need to be a part of it in some way, if only to understand what others are doing. Pick one or two social media or social networking sites and dive into those. Learn how to use them and become a part of those communities.

5. Measure, Learn, and Adjust. Return on Investment (ROI) for social media is a hot topic right now and the best ways to measure success are still to come. But one of the great aspects of online marketing is that measurement is built right into most of the tools. You can tell how many people are subscribed to your e-newsletter and RSS feeds. You can tell how long people are staying on your website. Keep track of what you can, learn from both your successes and your failures, and adjust your strategy over time.

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