Another week over, another round of Mixed Links! Blackbaud has a couple of things for us this week. The Blackbaud Index reports some good news for small nonprofits: The Index found that three-month overall giving for small organizations (prior year revenue of < $1 million) increased 18.2% in November. Giving at medium organizations (prior year…
A flurry of questions came in at the end of today’s webinar on Writing for Social Media, so I’m going to try to quickly answer a bunch of them here. I didn’t get permission to use people’s names, so I’m sharing these questions anonymously. We have both the Facebook Page and the Group. I know…
Putting aside for a moment whether we should call them “target audiences” or not, it’s always good to remember that, as a nonprofit communicator or fundraiser, you are very rarely the kind of person that you are trying to communicate with. Even if you match the demographics, the fact that you are employed by your…
Back in June, I shared some of my favorite tips for writing Facebook and Twitter updates. In that post, I urged you to think of your social media writing goals in terms of the reaction you were looking for. Do you want someone to DO something, THINK something, or FEEL something in response to what…
I woke up this morning and saw a tweet from Drew at Throwing Light, asking me if I ever deal with information overload. In his own post today, Drew talks about how he blames all the blogs he wants to read for his recent creative slump and explains what he did to overcome. Since I…
It’s Friday, so it’s time for some Mixed Links, my roundup of good links for nonprofit communicators. Wild Apricot Blog has a list of 30 Great Podcasts for Nonprofits. With experts ranging from The Chronicle of Philanthropy to my own podcast (Magic Keys Radio) with Claire Meyerhoff, there are a lot of good resources to…
It’s dry. It’s boring. It’s dead — or deadly. It’s nonprofit writing! Not all nonprofit writing, of course, but a fair amount of it. Here are 20 ways you can bring your writing back to life. 1. Use more descriptive nouns and verbs. Don’t say child when you can say teenager or toddler or even 16-year-old or 3-year-old. 2. Add…
It’s really easy for nonprofit communicators to get overwhelmed with all of the choices they have to reach out to current and potential supporters. The 2011 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report confirms that, as if there was any doubt. But don’t get sucked into a lot of tactical decisions about which tools to use without first…
The 2011 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report is officially available! Thanks to the 780 nonprofits who completed the survey last month, making this report possible. It answers many questions that a lot of us simply speculated about before. Here’s one of the charts from the report, which shows how nonprofits ranked 14 different communications tools. If…
It’s a little chilly out there, so let’s make some hot mixed links, shall we? For those who truly know what “chilly” is, Convio put out a report on The Next Generation of Canadian Giving. It found some interesting comparisons to American donors, such as more Canadians give as part of a monthly giving program, but…
Do you struggle with what to write about in your newsletter or blog? Or what to put on your Facebook page? Or what to pitch to the media? I’ve been considering offering some monthly suggestions to get nonprofit communicators thinking more creatively and strategically about the content they create. I hate the idea that you…
I’m a regular watcher of the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (usually recorded – it’s part of my nightly wind-down routine), and one of my favorite segments is Making a Difference. For the last few years, the Nightly News has regularly run segments on do-gooders. Because these clips are so popular, NBC recently created…
