We are now accepting registrations for Session #8 of the Mentoring Program for Nonprofit Communications Directors. I know many of you have been working towards participation in the program, so I want to point out a few changes we are making this time. You Pick: Fundraising Emphasis or Community Engagement Emphasis? Over the past…
If you are a nonprofit communicator, odds are you are fighting the Curse of Knowledge in your organization in some way, most likely because your program experts and long-time staff have it. How Knowledge Can Be a Curse The “Curse of Knowledge” is when you know so much about a topic that you lose the…
Wonder where we get numbers like a typical email open rate for nonprofit e-newsletters, or estimates of how much money you could be raising online? One of those sources is the M+R Benchmarks Study, and the new edition is now available. Here are a few highlights: Online revenue is up! Online revenue increased by…
“Going viral” isn’t really something you can predict. In his latest guest post for us on PR for nonprofits, Peter Panepento explains how the culture of your organization is much more important to your work than coming up with a clever video. ~Kivi Guest Post by Peter Panepento of Panepento Strategies “Why can’t we go…
A lot of people ask us whether Facebook advertising is a good idea or not. So we are happy to introduce the good folks over at ActionSprout to share some answers! They help nonprofits find supporters on Facebook and get them to act. We’ll be working with Action Sprout to provide more tips, resources, and training on…
I recently contributed to the 10-Minute Board Exercises Series by the Center for Nonprofit Stewardship. These exercises and worksheets are meant to be incorporated into your board meetings to get board members talking about important issues. My worksheet, Becoming Your Donor’s Favorite Cause, is about helping your board brainstorm ways to solidify your relationships with…
Email newsletters consistently rank among the top 3 when we ask nonprofits what their most important communications channels in our annual trends report survey. You also spend more time on creating email newsletter articles than most other types of content. For something so important and time-consuming, you want to make sure it’s right. Unfortunately, a lot of nonprofit e-newsletters are…
Charity: Water has done it again with a brilliant fundraising email posing as a newsletter (or newsletter posing as a fundraising email . . .) You can use this tactic too: Find three of your supporters and highlight what they are doing to support your cause. This not only promotes their individual fundraising campaigns, assuming…
We are getting ready for the third edition of #NPCommPix . . . want to play along this time? It’s super easy and fun. Just look at the prompt for the day of the month and post a picture that’s related in some way – literal, metaphorical, whatever. We’ve seen nonprofit communicators using the challenge…
Last month, Peter Panepento challenged nonprofits to Stop Approaching PR Like It’s 2007. This month’s he’s back to share more about how you can best reach your audience and cultivate relationships with the media. ~Kivi Guest Post by Peter Panepento of Panepento Strategies You probably wouldn’t expect Bob Dylan to draw inspiration from Frank Sinatra.…
Do you struggle to find time in your workday to actually sit and think? To plan for what are strategically the best new moves for your organization? Is it a badge of honor to NOT use vacation days, or to work late into the night, every night? To respond to emails as soon as they…
I hear it all the time from nonprofits: Our e-newsletter doesn’t work. Direct mail doesn’t work for us. Social media doesn’t work for us. When I probe a little deeper, what people often mean is that their communications don’t seem to be motivating people to do what the nonprofit wants, whether that’s donating money, signing…
