After many years of living in the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington DC, my husband and I moved back to his hometown of Lexington, North Carolina in 2001. Living in a small town in rural county has given me an entirely new appreciation for the complexities involved in nonprofit management, fundraising, and marketing. We…
And Other “Stupid” Questions You Were Too Afraid to Ask! Photo by B Tal on Flickr The “Be the Media” project led by the Nonprofit Technology Network and Beth Kanter starts today. The project will ultimately be the “go-to” spot for people who are both learning and teaching about the use of social media in…
Several nonprofit friends have forward me Daniel Gross’s column on the “Coming Charity Crisis” which appears in both Newsweek and Slate. Yes, it’s likely that charitable giving will drop because of the recession. If you think it’s already hard to raise money for your cause, it may feel even harder before it gets easier again.…
During last week’s webinar on “How to Write a Quick and Dirty Marketing Strategy”, I worked through the three most important questions with three volunteers, while all of the other participants chatted in their suggestions too. Those three questions are 1) What you you trying to do — specifically, what are trying to get someone…
My recent presentation on “Message & Media: Marketing for Small Community-Based Nonprofits” is featured on the homepage of Slideshare.net today. It’s the same presentation that I shared with you in a post on Monday. I’ve been meaning to talk a little bit about the value of Slideshare to nonprofit communicators, so this is a good…
I taught a marketing workshop on “message and media” for our local United Way agencies here in Davidson County, North Carolina about a week ago (the slides are below). Since I had an op-ed column due for our local paper the same day, and no real topic in mind, I decided to ask the nonprofits…
Every time you launch a new campaign or implement a new program, I am sure you give yourself ample time to sit down and think through the very best marketing strategies and communications tactics. I have no doubt that you have ample funding to do market research, to hire the most creative talent, to always…
Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention wants your votes on the best nonprofit taglines for her first-ever Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards. The tagline finalists you’ll see in the poll have been carefully culled from the more than 1,050 taglines submitted to the recent Getting Attention Tagline Survey. While they may all be good, let’s decide…
12 Easy Ways to Build Your Nonprofit’s Email List List churn — the drops in your list size as people change email addresses without telling you or unsubscribe from your list — is inevitable. Many nonprofits lose 20-30% of their lists each year to this natural turn-over. How can you combat the churn and keep…
Last Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the National Capital Gift Planning Council’s Annual “Planned Giving Days” conference in Washington DC. Planned giving refers to philanthropy in estate planning, like leaving money to a charity in your will or setting up a charitable gift annuity. My friend Rob Blizard, who was coordinating the…
This week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is up at Giving in a Digital World. The theme is online fundraising and you’ll find posts on optimizing your website to raise more money, as well as using email and social networking more effectively. Thanks to Bryan for another great edition of the Carnival! My apologies for posting…
My “blog about this” folder overfloweth with great stuff to share with you. Here are a few of the more recent items: The Chronicle of Philanthropy did an online chat Q&A with Seth Godin yesterday. As to be expected, he didn’t disappoint. My favorite quote: “Obsessing about the basics is far more effective than managing…
