“Content is King,” they say. While that may be true, “they” don’t mention how hard it is trying to come up with fresh ideas that resonate with your readers. Inspiration can be hard to come by some days, but that’s where our Monthly Nonprofit Writing Prompts come in. Every month we send out an e-newsletter…
My great friend Claire Meyerhoff is back with a 3-part series on writing more donor-centric communications. ~Kivi Guest Post by Claire Meyerhoff We’re nonprofit gals and guys, so for the most part, style is a matter of function and budget. Our fashion icons are…well, uh… What do you mean you don’t have one? How about Grace Kelly?…
A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you what kind of communications I received from twenty different national nonprofits after giving year-end gifts in the last days of 2011. The results were very mixed, with about a 1/3 of the organizations doing what I would consider good online donor retention, 1/3 doing it inconsistently,…
I’m very lucky to have been asked by several people to speak on their panels at the upcoming Nonprofit Technology Conference in Minneapolis in April. This is the one conference I attend every year, and that I recommend all nonprofit marketers attend! But these sessions aren’t on the agenda yet — They need to receive…
Welcome to this month’s edition of the Nonprofit Blog Carnival, where we are looking at trends in nonprofit newsletters. The seemingly simple newsletter, and our reactions to them, aren’t so simple after all as Jen Gonyer-Donohue points out in E-Newsletters: A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma. Shari at VolunteerMatch shares the email newsletter…
Thanks to all of you who took our survey this month on nonprofit newsletters. I’ve shared some of the results already in posts on how social media is influencing newsletters and how often you should send email newsletters to supporters. Here are some other interesting stats from the survey, which was completed by 419 nonprofits.…
Happy Friday, everyone! Time, once again, for some Mixed Links… Video is one of the best ways to inspire supporters. Here are 10 Video Campaign and Fundraising Tips for Nonprofits and Social Causes. For other ways to get your supporters involved — even if you are graphically challenged — try How to Easily Create Professional-Looking…
Every nonprofit communicator wants an answer to this question! My generic advice — knowing nothing about your organization — is monthly bare minimum and really more like twice a month. You should step it up beyond that to more like weekly if you need people to do lots of things (you have lots of calls…
Yesterday I taught a webinar with our training partner CharityHowTo.com called “How to Create a Nonprofit Annual Report People Will Actually Read.” At the beginning of the webinar I surveyed the participants (about 80 people) about the format of their last annual report. I teach this webinar several times a year and these are…
In yesterday’s post, I told you that I suspect that the reason online givers seem to be one-hit-wonders has less to do with online givers being fickle and more with nonprofits not yet figuring out how to do online donor retention well. I promised to share what happened when I gave online gifts to 20 national…
You may be wondering why online fundraising seems to work so great for a few organizations and really poorly for others. And you may have heard that online givers are flaky or fickle, which was reinforced by Blackbaud’s research that concluded that online-acquired donors are more valuable in the long-term than traditional mail-acquired donors, but only…
Welcome to Mixed Links! Engagement (or as Claire would say, “Getting peeps talking”) Does your nonprofit know the difference between documentation and communication? Make sure you do in Stop Documenting. Start Communicating. Getting people on your email list is very important, but so is what you do after you get them there. Katya Andresen shares…
