I get this question all the time when I teach newsletter courses. It’s a very common question because (1) the nonprofit staff asked to “do the newsletter” rarely have any graphic design experience and (2) all they have on their computers is the Microsoft Office Suite, so they start with Word or Publisher and quickly…
I have launched a new online directory for nonprofits at www.500GoodCauses.com. It’s a “word cloud” directory made famous in the past few weeks by Joel Comm and his 500Words.com site. I’ve taken Joel’s software and am using it for good causes! It works like this: Each of the 500 words or phrases on the site…
Jeff Brooks at the Donor Power Blog has posted the 4th Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. It contains some great advice, so check it out if you do any fundraising work at all. Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by N-TEN on the subject of technology for nonprofits. Submissions are due Friday night at 8:00 p.m.…
“Writing Tips” is a free monthly e-newsletter I publish that’s full of . . . you guessed it . . . writing tips. It contains free advice to help you write better at work and covers grammar, writing style, how to write various types of publications, and more. Here is the table of contents for…
Welcome to the third edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. This week’s theme is “Advice for New Executive Directors.” Whether you are “new” or not, you’ll find this week’s posts helpful if you are in any managerial position. On to the show . . . Heather Carpenter at Aspiration tells you “How to improve…
Earlier this week I taught “Strategies for Successful Nonprofit Newsletters” for the Duke University Certificate Program in Nonprofit Management. During the course, several students expressed their frustrations about working with their executive directors on various newsletter issues. Here are three questions they asked and how I answered. Q: We always have to print the “letter…
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. Remember to visit the Carnival home page to subscribe to the feed so you’ll know when each edition is published or to join the contributors’ mailing list for reminders about deadlines, themes, etc. I also offer an especially warm welcome to four new contributors…
If you are interested in networking online with other nonprofit writers and editors, check out the new Writers and Editors Affinity Group at N-TEN. It’s essentially an email discussion list, but affinity groups can also produce blogs and wikis. As of today, there are 39 N-TEN Affinity Groups, so you might find others that interest…
In every workshop I teach on nonprofit communications, I always include an exercise on defining your audience, and that exercise always starts with this statement: In nonprofit communications, there is no such thing as the general public! The “general public” includes everyone from my three-year-old daughter to my eighty-year-old grandma. It includes Wall Street brokers,…
Welcome to the very first Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants! I’m Kivi Leroux Miller, the founder of this carnival and this week’s host. I blog on Nonprofit Communications, so check out the rest of this site if you are interested in that topic. Here are the seven posts I’ve selected for this week’s edition. Peter Brinckerhoff…
June 5 is here and we are now accepting submissions for the first edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. Consultants, submit your best post of the week containing advice for nonprofits to the Carnival by this Friday, 8 pm ET. Send your name, blog name, and post URL (not your blog home page URL)…
I’ve got three online courses beginning Monday, June 5. Since each week’s materials take one-two hours to complete, you can safely enroll anytime next week and not get behind. All of the courses are four weeks long. How to Write a Nonprofit Annual Report — This course teaches participants the basic steps for creating an…
