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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

What’s More Exciting: a Blizzard, or Your Nonprofit?

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Blizzard? Hah! I live in New England, where people line up for ice cream in the middle of a snow storm.

For the past several years, however, people have been snow-shy. Every time the white stuff was in the forecast, people remembered a month of being snowed in. (After a year of being locked down, quarantined, and going out only wearing a mask, that may not seem like much, but in 2015 we had no idea!)

The Blizzard of 2015 had great publicity, and it was all free. Can your nonprofit do as well by its own events? Click To Tweet

A Storm of Free Media

A blizzard has no bank account. It has no marketing budget. Without paying a cent, however, the storm that hit New England in January 2015 had its own hashtag…and hundreds of unpaid photographers.

I went on Facebook one Tuesday morning last January and found this:

Car covered with snow

And this:

Clearing snowy street

And even this:

Dog looking at snow

The Secret of the Storm’s Success

It snows every year. Why do people rush out each time it snows and snap photos?

It’s great if the photo is unique or memorable, but that’s not the reason people post their photos. Most blizzard photos look the same from person to person, from year to year. So, why are we all giving the blizzard free publicity?

I think it’s because a storm is a shared event. By taking pictures and posting them, people say, “I was here. I was a part of this.”

Of course, in 2015, we had blizzards every two weeks for a month and a half. By the end, there was nowhere to pile the snow, and people were too tired to take many photos. But at first, the excitement was real.

Can You Do As Well as a Blizzard?

At your nonprofit, are you making people feel that your events are shared events? When they attend your events (in person or online), do they want to claim them and show they were there?

You invite them to show up at the time of the event. Are you inviting them to show up later, with their photos?

Take my advice and plan ahead for how to get free media for your next event. For now, though, I’m signing off. After a relatively dry winter, we had a storm in Eastern Massachusetts. I have snow to shovel.

Dial M for Marketing: The Best of 2020

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On this blog, Tuesday is for fundraising (and just wait until you see what I have for you tomorrow!). Thursday is for thank-yous. And Monday–well, it’s Messaging, Media, Marketing, and Miscellaneous. Dial M for Monday!

Here are the best “M” blog posts of 2020, according to the readers of this blog.

  1. What You REALLY Do to See More Friends on Facebook (and what your nonprofit tells its followers to do if they want to see your posts more often!)
  2. When You’re Planning Meetings, Include Other Religions. To start, look up Jewish holidays on Hebcal.
  3. Why You Should NOT Run a Nonprofit Like a Business no matter who tells you to!
  4. How to Talk about Your Nonprofit with a Complete Stranger
  5. Putting On the Shoes: What Ray Bradbury Taught Me about Marketing

Happy 2021!

Fundraising Tuesday: Can Your Nonprofit Do Better than a Drug Store?

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Pharmacy counterThe drug store where Rona and I get our prescriptions has terrible marketing. But is your nonprofit doing any better?

Our pharmacy gets all these things wrong:

  1. It keeps trying to get me to renew prescriptions long before I need them–when I still have weeks’ worth of pills on the shelf.
  2. It refuses to renew the prescription that Rona needs every day, for her health, until she’s almost out of pills.
  3. It ignores our dissatisfaction with the service we’re getting. Instead, it offers us the “opportunity” to order three months’ worth at a time.
  4. It prints out cash register receipts three feet long, with coupons for items we’ve just used and are unlikely to buy again before the coupon expires.

Rona and I are stuck with this pharmacy. Our health plan makes us use it. But your donors are not stuck with you!

Is Your Nonprofit Making the Same Mistakes?

Does your nonprofit ask me for another donation as soon as I’ve given you the first one? That’s like pushing me to order more pills than I need.

Sure, some people will give again within the first month or two. It’s worth asking once. But how hard would it be to find out–and remember–how often I give? (Especially if I’m a loyal donor who’s been giving for years!)

Does your nonprofit put your needs before your donors’ needs? Donors must know that their gift made a difference–and feel pride at identifying with your organization–if they’re going to give again.

If you only communicate with them when you’re asking them for money, you’re telling them “On our schedule, not yours. For our needs, not yours.”

Does your nonprofit ignore how satisfied or dissatisfied your donors are? (Do you even know?)

Every nonprofit should be trying to attract monthly donations–but every donor is not a monthly donor. The ones who are are not the biggest givers but the most regular. Don’t ask the person who’s decided to stop giving at all if they’re ready to give monthly!

Does your nonprofit send out too much paper, or too little?

Some donors want as many pages of news as my pharmacy prints coupons. Some toss the newsletters (and the coupons) in the recycling bin before reading them. Find out what your donors want.

 

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