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The job of a nonprofit communications and marketing team is evolving fast. I'm often asked what skills a nonprofit marketer needs as a professional, and what skills need to be present on a team as a whole. I've answered it in various ways over the years, but here's what I think now, in mid-2013, especially…
For many nonprofit communicators, planning more than a few weeks or months at a time is a luxury. You just do the work, and roll with the changes as you go. But that approach can leave you wondering what you are missing, and if you are doing the right things at the right times. So…
"Let's stop and see where we are before we add anything else." Many nonprofits -- maybe yours? -- have reached this conclusion about their communications. Your staff gets overwhelmed by the number of communications channels and creative possibilities. That leads to discussions about reviewing or auditing the current situation, and nonprofits will often turn to…
Is your organization thinking about reaching younger supporters? For some of you, younger means Baby Boomers; for others it means Gen X or Y. What might that mean for your communications strategy? Let's try to look at the big picture. Lumping hundreds of millions of people into categories always creates stereotypes. But for purposes of…
"The customer is always right." – Marshall Fields “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” – Steve Jobs You know that you are supposed to listen to your target audiences and give them what they want to hear from you. But you also have your own…
Nonprofit marketing is, without question, a growing field. But it’s still very much a young field too. There is no single job description for a nonprofit marketer. I’m not even sure we’d have it covered if we came up with 10 different job descriptions. While there’s a lot of fun to be had working in…
Yesterday I facilitated a board retreat for Gaston Day School. Liz Minor, the director of development, gave me a lot of leeway in structuring the agenda. She told me that she had a great board that was very willing to help with marketing the school, but that they felt like they didn't know how to do…
What is a Nonprofit Communications Director anyway? In the comments on my recent blog post, "My Communications Director is an Idiot," several people mentioned that program staff didn't really understand what the communications director's role was. Maybe some of these substitute titles are better descriptions of your job - not necessarily for your business card, but…
Do you feel like you are just throwing out a bunch of words and pictures into the universe without much rhyme or reason, and calling it your communications plan? One way to bring some order and focus to your communications plan is to sketch out what I call your Big Picture Communications Timeline. This is…
Earlier this month, I shared with you five common problems or gaps I had identified within the field of nonprofit marketing, based on my experiences over the last several months with participants in our Mentoring Program. Today, I want to share what I've learned from participants about how incredible the people are who are drawn…
