Executive Directors: What Your Staff Want to Tell You

Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Email Newsletters, Nonprofit Writing, Print Newsletters3 Comments

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…

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, #2

Nonprofit Blog Carnival, Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Websites and Blogs1 Comment

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…

New Discussion List for Nonprofit Writers and Editors

Digital Marketing Tools, Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit WritingLeave a comment

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…

The General Public? Write for the People Who Matter

Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Writing2 Comments

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,…

Annual Report & Business Writing E-Courses Starting

Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Writing, Webinars and Online CoursesLeave a comment

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…

Innocent Words Branded as Spam

Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Email Newsletters, Nonprofit Writing1 Comment

Magilla Marketing published an article today called Not-So-Obvious Words Trigger Spam Filters, which is based on research by an email marketing firm in the UK. Here are ten of the words that could easily appear in email from nonprofits: acceptance accordingly presently maintained organization percent sincerely somebody statements urgent None of these rise to the…

Designers Who Can Write, and Writers Who Get Design

Hiring Consultants, Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Graphic Design, Nonprofit WritingLeave a comment

Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention wrote yesterday on the value of graphic designers who can write well too, quoting an article by Derek Powazek. While I think it’s incredibly difficult to be both an outstanding writer and an outstanding designer, it is reasonable to expect design professionals to have solid writing skills, and vice versa.…