As the founder of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, I’m happy to see that the success of this carnival has inspired two of our participants to start their own carnivals. Sean Stannard-Stockton at Tactical Philanthropy started The Giving Carnival and Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project started the Wiki Carnival. A quick web search will…
This week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is up at Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology. Michelle highlights several posts that will help you figure out the best ways to manage all kinds of data that nonprofits need to track efficiently. Next week the Carnival heads to Heather Carpenter’s Nonprofit Operations Blog…
A good newsletter will have several different types of articles in it, and some formats are harder to write than others. Which type of newsletter article is toughest for you to write? Take the poll, or add your own answer. You can also leave a comment on this post. In a week or two, I’ll…
You realize that it is time to publish your newsletter or that your website hasn’t been updated in months, and the dread sweeps over you. “What are we going to write about this time?” you wonder. You can take much of the anxiety out of the publishing process by creating an editorial calendar for each…
Website Magazine started appearing in my mailbox a few months ago, and I’m not sure where they got my name, but I’m glad they did. I do 90% of the work on the various websites I run, but I have no serious webmastering training. I learn as I go, like many nonprofit communications staff, and…
ALT tags are the bits of text that you can attach to images on webpages and in email messages and e-newsletters. As I explained yesterday, using the ALT tag is essential when including images in email campaigns and e-newsletters, because if the people reading your email have image blocking turned on, they won’t see the…
I always advise nonprofits to include photos in their print newsletters. But what about images in e-newsletters? The answer is not as clear-cut and here’s why: a large portion of your online readers probably won’t see the images automatically. Worse yet, if you don’t watch your design carefully, these readers may see only a big…
This week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, which is a joint edition with the Giving Carnival, is now up at Donor Power Blog and Tactical Philanthropy. You can read it either place. The selected posts are the same, but Jeff and Sean added their own comments to their versions. The posts take a…
I’ve decided to start blogtipping as a way to help build and support the nonprofit blogging community, along with managing the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. If you are also blogtipping in the nonprofit sector, please tag your posts npblogtipping (thanks to Michele for making the call on that one). I didn’t know about these three…
Last week I received an invitation to a fundraiser from a local American Red Cross chapter, and it really turned me off. Here is what part of the invitation said verbatim (except for the italics I added). Fine Art Auction The Auction will showcase 5 artists, and we will have a live auction with a…
I have decided to start blogtipping and I encourage my friends in the blogosphere to join in the fun. Here is what you do. On the first of each month, pick three blogs that you want to give some exposure to on your blog. For each one, list three things you like and provide one…
Two magazines from two nonprofits I belong to came in the mail last week. One fits the image the organization is trying to portray, and the other doesn’t. The Sierra Club’s magazine is printed on recycled paper. This is actually a fairly big deal in the publishing world. Lots of magazines write about environmental issues…
