A creative brief is a quick worksheet that you fill out before you get started on any significant piece of communications work. Using a creative brief forces you and/or your coworkers to consider important questions upfront, including the goal of the piece, the call to action, the style and tone, deadlines, how success will be…
If you are just getting started with creating and using an editorial calendar at your nonprofit, you might get overwhelmed at the prospect of including EVERYTHING in it. Relax. Here’s some good news. Most nonprofits don’t put every social media post into their editorial calendars. Here’s the approach we recommend instead . . . Start…
It’s one of those top perennial questions for nonprofit communications directors: What does your editorial calendar look like? What software is it in? There is no single right answer, although there are certainly editorial calendar trends and preferences in our sector. Before you make the right choice for yourself and your organization, you have to…
CALM not BUSY is the framework we created to help you understand how to manage your nonprofit’s communications work for maximum effectiveness. You should work on being more Collaborative, Agile, Logical, and Methodical (CALM) and less Bogus, Unrealistic, Sidestepping, and Yoked (BUSY). I just finished teaching the CALM not BUSY approach via a three-hour workshop…
At Nonprofit Marketing Guide, we’ve been exploring new ways to provide training and coaching, in addition to our training webinars and Communications Director Mentoring Program. Last month we kicked off a new 3-hour workshop format called a Master Class, and today we are announcing the creation of a 60-minute DIY workshop called a Jump Starter.…
Through the Nonprofit Communications Director Mentoring Program, I talk to a lot of communications directors who feel overwhelmed. I thought it might be helpful to you for me to share some of the questions I ask when I am coaching them. The first question I usually ask is how empowered they feel to make choices…
As Kristina and I were planning out our fall training schedule and editorial calendar, we moved everything important off of the week of November 2 – 6, 2020. I firmly believe that the entire United States (which is where 75% of our clientele lives) will be engrossed in the Presidential and Congressional elections and very…
A lot of the conversations I am having with nonprofit communications directors can be lumped under the category of “managing expectations.” That includes expectations from your boss and coworkers about what you do — or could do — as the communications lead. It includes expectations about how fast things will happen and the results work…
I’m starting to think about questions for the 2021 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report Survey, which we typically open in early November. This has been such a strange and different year . . . I’m wondering how much we should switch up our questions and how much we should leave as is. We typically alternate some…
A nonprofit brand and style guide is right up there with an editorial calendar as a top tool for nonprofit communications pros. Here are some of the core elements you might include in yours: Brand Guidelines (colors, fonts, logo use, etc.) Style Guide (word choices that convey voice and tone, preferred ways to say things,…
I just completed revising “The Nonprofit Marketing Guide” and the new edition will be out in Spring 2021. I made several updates to word choices and language — the book is 10 years old and our language has certainly evolved! I thought you might find it interesting what I changed, so I made a list.…
We are often asked to recommend nonprofits and other smart folks to follow for your own professional development. So every now and then, I will write a post called “Big Brains and Cool Kids.” Big Brains are interesting, leading thinkers in any area of study that connects in some way to the work of nonprofit…
