Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Messaging Monday: Your Favorite Posts of 2021

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Here are the favorite posts of Communicate! readers during the past year about messaging, marketing…and miscellaneous.

Did you miss any of them? Now is a good time to catch up on advice that will help you gain more followers for your mission in 2022.

Have you already put some of that advice into practice? How did it go? We would love to hear about it!

What You REALLY Do to See More Friends on Facebook

A lot of the people who read this post were probably your followers, because they are just as frustrated with the behemoth we call Facebook as you are. Feel free to share this advice with them! Add specific instructions on how they can make sure to see your nonprofit posts more often.

When You’re Planning Meetings, Include Other Religions

This post touched a nerve with many readers who feel excluded when you plan around Christmas but only hear about their holidays when they point them out to you. We can all do better on this! For a calendar of Jewish holidays, check out https://www.hebcal.com/holidays/. (But that isn’t going to help you figure out Diwali, Chinese New Year, Naruz, or Ramadan. Search and learn!)

Determining Marketing Channel by Donor Segment: 5 Strategies

Guest author Grant Cobb explains how to:

  • Look at your donor’s past engagement.
  • Reference the donor’s preferred communication channel.
  • Use demographic information.
  • Categorize based on average gift size.
  • Orient your marketing around your donor’s location.

A Priest, a Rabbi, and a Communications Pro Walk into a Bar…

Can you tell a joke? Then you can write for blogs and social media.

Priest rabbi joke favorite

How to Talk about Your Nonprofit with a Complete Stranger

Does this sound familiar? You’re on the Board or staff of a nonprofit organization. You love the work it does. Yet when you’re in a social situation and somebody asks “What does your organization do?”, you’re at a loss for words.

It’s embarrassing–and it’s a wasted opportunity. That person asking you about your organization could become your most devoted volunteer, or your most loyal donor, if only you could get them interested.

And you can. Click the headline link to find out how.

Troubleshooting Your Year-End Giving Challenges

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A guest post by Carl Diesling, DNL OmniMedia

The final three days of December are some of the most significant fundraising days of the entire year. But, when December comes around, will your nonprofit be looking back upon a successful year-end giving season or a series of challenges that prevented you from reaching your full fundraising potential?

Year-end giving in 2021 is rife with challenges both new and old, but that shouldn’t hold your organization back from funding your mission.

In this guide, we’ll cover two challenges that nonprofits are facing with the 2021 year-end giving season, as well as solutions to help your nonprofit confront them. For more tips, explore DNL OmniMedia’s guide to year-end giving.

Let’s get started.

Challenge: Balancing in-person, virtual, and hybrid events

Last year, in-person fundraising events were either pivoted to the virtual sphere or canceled outright as COVID-19 safety protocols prevented in-person gatherings beyond individual households. Now, with vaccinations widely available, in-person events are an option for your nonprofit once more.

While some thought the return of in-person events meant a return to normalcy, that has been far from the case. Instead, your nonprofit is facing a complicated year-end event atmosphere in which all of your supporters are seeking different experiences. For example, you’ll have groups that:

  • Feel safe returning to in-person events.
  • Feel unsafe and uncomfortable with the return to in-person events.
  • Enjoyed digital fundraising events and would like to continue with that format, regardless of safety concerns.
  • Are eager to return to in-person events as soon as possible.

Now, your nonprofit has to decide whether to host virtual, in-person, or hybrid events (or, a combination of all three). Only hosting one of the three puts you at risk of isolating a segment of your supporter base.

Solution: Create a strategy that incorporates a variety of event types to appeal to all supporters.

Incorporate virtual, in-person, and hybrid events into your year-end fundraising strategy to ensure you offer opportunities that appeal to all. Consider the following ideas for each event type:

  • Virtual Events: Livestream a comedy show, concert, or cooking course and raise funds through ticket sales.
  • In-Person Events: Host an outdoor walk-a-thon in which participants raise peer-to-peer funds in anticipation of their efforts during the event itself.
  • Hybrid Events: Host an in-person auction event and allow virtual participants to attend and place bids via virtual auction software.

Note that some of these events may require an investment into new virtual fundraising software solutions, such as livestreaming software, general virtual events software, or even event-specific software such as virtual auction software. You can also turn to your current event software to see if there is existing functionality to support new event types. For example, TeamRaiser, Blackbaud’s peer-to-peer solution, can be used to support virtual and hybrid events alongside in-person events.

Challenge: Decreased team capacity for intensive fundraising efforts

The year-end fundraising season represents the busiest time of the year for your nonprofit in all senses— you have more donations coming in, marketing communications that need to be shared, and events to host.

At the same time, nonprofits aren’t known for having an abundance of staff resources. You likely have a few team members who wear many hats, each of whom is responsible for crucial aspects of your fundraising effort. It can be challenging to cover the basic functions of your nonprofit, let alone try new efforts, like innovative new fundraising opportunities that can diversify your fundraising revenue and add stability to your mission overall.

The last thing you want is for your year-end fundraising campaign to stagnate due to limited staff capacity. However, it wouldn’t make sense to increase the size of your team permanently for the year-end season alone.

Solution: Partner with a nonprofit consulting firm to fill any gaps in your team’s capacity.

A nonprofit consultant can extend your team’s capacity during the year-end season, helping you maximize this valuable fundraising opportunity and optimize your strategy for the future. DNL OmniMedia’s guide to nonprofit consulting firms discusses a variety of consultant types that your organization can partner with for specific aspects of your strategy, such as:

  • Technology Consultants: This team can conduct a nonprofit technology assessment, help you choose new software solutions to invest in, implement any new solutions you purchase, and optimize your current technology to perform at its highest level.
  • Marketing Consultants: This team can develop branding materials and key messaging for your year-end campaign, design marketing materials, and analyze the success of your outreach efforts to continue improving them going forward.
  • Fundraising Consultants: This team can help you research prospective donors, develop fundraising goals and calendars to achieve them, and pursue innovative fundraising opportunities to diversify your revenue streams.

It’s important to find a consultant that not only specializes in the specific service you need but also in the type of organization you are. For example, DNL OmniMedia specializes in nonprofit technology consulting for mid-sized and large nonprofits. However, other consultants specialize in small and growing nonprofits as well.

The 2021 year-end fundraising season is rife with challenges new and old. However, these obstacles don’t need to hold your nonprofit back from reaching great heights in the year-end season. Whether investing in new fundraising software and diversifying your calendar or bringing in a new team member for the season, there are strategies to help your nonprofit troubleshoot your year-end giving challenges.

Carl Diesing DNLCarl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.

Enhancing Your Site’s SEO Value: 4 Tips for Nonprofits

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Are you looking to boost your nonprofit’s website’s traffic? Maybe your site sees little traffic, only a few thousand visitors per month or so. But you know that you could be doing more when it comes to promoting your website. After all, more website traffic means greater visibility for your mission and even a donation boost!

Using search engine optimization (SEO) strategies is a popular strategy among nonprofit organizations to increase their website engagement. SEO is a set of techniques used to boost a website’s visibility on search engine results pages by improving its appearance, content, and technical structure.

If you’re interested in adopting SEO strategies but don’t know where to start, these tips will set you on the right path:

  1. Incorporate keywords into your website content.
  2. Offer valuable educational content.
  3. Streamline your site’s user experience.
  4. Build a strong internal and external link profile.

SEO can be a great addition to your nonprofit’s digital strategy. It can supplement your other online marketing efforts to create a well-rounded digital presence and grow your audience. Let’s dive in!

1. Incorporate keywords into your website content.

In the context of SEO, keywords are the terms or phrases that people type into a search bar when they’re looking for information. When you use keywords naturally in your online content, you signal to search engines that your content is relevant to the terms and questions people are searching for.

For instance, let’s say your nonprofit supports girls entering the STEM field. Some popular keywords that are relevant to your mission might be “scholarships for girls in STEM” or “conferences for girls in STEM.” By including these keywords in your blog posts or “about” page, you’re telling search engines that your content is relevant to searches for STEM opportunities.

Also, consider keywords that are popular locally when crafting your site content. For instance, if your organization is looking for local volunteers or donors, you might target keywords like “volunteer opportunities near [your city’s name]” or “nonprofits near [your city’s name].” This can help your local community members connect with your volunteer or donation opportunities.

2. Offer valuable educational content.

You can’t just add your keyword to a page a bunch of times and expect your site to rank higher. That’s called “keyword stuffing,” and it’s highly frowned upon by Google and other search engines. These platforms may devalue your content if you adopt this practice.

Instead, your content must have value. If your website features original, engaging, valuable educational content, search engines will note that your content is useful for users, boosting your chances of ranking higher on results pages.

Use your organization’s institutional knowledge and expertise to write valuable content. For instance, let’s say your organization helps combat the effects of climate change in the Florida Everglades. You might create an in-depth, multimedia guide that explains the issue and educates your audience on the implications of unmitigated climate change on the ecosystem.

3. Streamline your site’s user experience.

A good page experience doesn’t only encourage visitors to browse and return to your site—it can also impact your search results rankings. In November 2020, Google announced it would start considering page experience when ranking pages.

Make sure each page of your site, from your homepage to your online donation form, offers visitors a user-friendly experience by:

  • Using a clear page structure: Each page should have a clearly defined title with an H1 tag. All subsequent page sections should use heading tags in descending order (H2, H3, etc.). A clear page structure makes it easy for visitors to browse through your content and quickly find what they’re looking for.
  • Ensuring your website has a fast load speed. The recommended load time for website pages is just two seconds. If your website loads any slower, you’ll start losing visitors. To avoid this, compress all images, eliminate unnecessary characters from your code, and avoid complex design elements that require a heavy coding lift.
  • Crafting an aesthetically pleasing design: Incorporate design best practices such as using white space and multimedia elements to break up chunks of text. 

In addition to these tips, ensure your website is mobile-friendly. According to this nonprofit fundraising statistics page, half of all nonprofit website traffic last year came from mobile and tablet users. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, a large swath of visitors can’t use it. Review how your website looks in mobile view and adjust any formatting issues as needed.

4. Build a strong internal and external link profile.

As you start building your SEO strategy, create a plan for using valuable links both inside and outside of your website.

Each page of your website should include links to other pages on your site using in-text links and buttons. A strong system of internal links helps search engine crawlers move through your website quickly and efficiently.

An external or backlink is a link on a different website or blog that leads back to your website. A strong backlink profile signals to Google that your content is legitimate and valuable for users.

The most effective strategy to build your backlink profile is creating valuable internal content on your website that encourages external sources to link to your pages. You can also begin writing guest blogs for other organizations’ websites that link back to your own site. The more reputable the organization, the more powerful having a backlink on their website is for your organization.

Your linking strategy can help spread awareness of your organization and establish your brand as trustworthy and authoritative.

Ultimately, keep your audience members in mind to build a strong nonprofit SEO strategy. What are your nonprofit’s current and prospective donors, volunteers, and other supporters searching for? How can you help connect them with the information they need? If you can appeal to supporters’ interests and help fulfill their search intent, you can effectively improve your search engine rankings.

 

Anne Stefanyk head shotAs Founder and CEO of Kanopi Studios, Anne helps create clarity around project needs, and turns client conversations into actionable outcomes. She enjoys helping clients identify their problems, and then empowering the Kanopi team to execute great solutions.

Anne is an advocate for open source and co-organizes the Bay Area Drupal Camp. When she’s not contributing to the community or running her thoughtful web agency, she enjoys yoga, meditation, treehouses, dharma, cycling, paddle boarding, kayaking, and hanging with her nephew.

https://twitter.com/Anne_Kanopi

https://www.drupal.org/u/annabella

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annestefanyk/

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