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Should Your Nonprofit Blog Speak with One Voice?

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Our Executive Director wants us to start writing all our nonprofit’s blog posts in her voice, and address them all to our donors. Do you think this is a good idea?

That’s the question Sarah asked when she attended my webinar on Blogging for Change, part of the course “Your Donor Engagement System” that Pamela Grow and I taught together.

Here’s how I answered her:

Sarah, you’ve actually asked two questions.

Should you write in one person’s voice? Probably, yes. Your readers will feel like they’re getting to know the Executive Director personally, and that will certainly make them feel closer to the organization.

But note: They’ll only feel that way if the writing is actually personal. Just signing the blog with your ED’s name and saying “I” instead of “we” won’t make any difference. You’ll need to put some of your ED’s personality into it: write in her style, tell stories from her point of view. That will take practice.

So, tell your ED you will need to spend more time together on each blog entry if you’re truly going to write in her voice. As you get more practiced at it, you will be able to do more of it on your own–but take the time right now to get it right.

All this is assuming your ED is a good spokesperson for your organization…and that she is not planning on leaving any time soon!

Should you write all your blogs to your donors?  It depends.

What’s the purpose of your blog? Have you made a strategic decision that you’re blogging to build stronger relationships with people who already support the organization? If so, I applaud you: nonprofits don’t spend enough time retaining the donors we already have!

But maybe your blog is supposed to serve a different purpose. Maybe you are trying to burnish your reputation with your funders (government agencies or foundations). Maybe your blog is a vehicle for sharing important information with your clients, or a megaphone for mobilizing advocates working on the same cause.

Have you decided what your blog is for? Do that, and then it will become clear who your audience should be. Share on X

How would you answer Sarah’s questions? What would you add?

The Golden Rule of Nonprofit Writing

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Golden Rule

You know it and I know it: a lot of nonprofit writing is just painful to read.

We donate to our favorite causes. In return, we get newsletters full of jargon, emails full of typos, fundraising letters that sound like they’re written in French because the organization says “We, we, we.”

As people who work for nonprofits, and to ensure their success, we can and should do something about this! Make sure your organization asks itself these five tough questions:

1. Are you listening long enough before you write?

2. Do you think longer and more complicated is more impressive? (Your readers don’t!)

3. Are you writing memos when you should be telling stories?

4. Are you burying the lead? (Does the reader know from the start why he or she should read on?)

5. Are You as Good a Communicator as Shakespeare’s Fools? (Will people invite you to speak truth fearlessly to them because you leaven it with humor?)

None of us wants to cause pain to our supporters. But that means we must think what our supporters want to read! The golden rule of writing is to write unto others the way you wish they wrote unto to you.

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

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

I don’t mean to say that what you write has to be funny.  Although, God knows we could use some humor sometimes!  But jokes have the basic ingredients you need to make people want to read what you write–and then, to remember what they’ve read.

Jokes invite the audience in.  Whether it’s “knock-knock,” or “What did the one say to the other?”, or “A priest, a minister, and rabbi walk into a bar,” jokes get the listeners involved. You can see them lean forward, wondering what comes next.

The next time you write, look for the opening line that makes your reader want to read the next line.

Jokes have a structure.  Human beings like to know where they’re going and how long it’s going to take to get there.  People waiting for a bus or subway are much more content to wait if they see a sign that says “Next train to Alewife Station, 10 minutes.”  When they’re listening to a joke and they hear that something happens three times, they know something unusual is about to occur and they’re waiting to find out what it is.

The next time you write, look for the structure that tells your reader when the main idea is going to arrive.

Jokes have a punch line.  Sometimes people even forget how the story went, but they remember “That’s what she said,” or “I’ll have what she’s having.”  It’s the payoff.  It leads to a reaction: laughter, or a groan, or both…but an emotional response.

The next time you write, figure out the response you want to provoke first.  Then, tell the story that will elicit that response from your readers.

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi went into a bar, and the bartender said, “What is this, some kind of a joke?”

I’ll bet you remember that one.

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