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Use Content You Didn’t Write, and Add Value

March 22, 2021 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

gift

You can share a lot more content with your donors and supporters if you don't have to write it all. Share on X

Giving your donors content that matters to them is a generous gift. It’s also a way to make them value their relationship with your nonprofit even more.

When you share information that make them feel better, or smarter, or more well informed, you are priming your donors to read the next thing you send them–even if the next thing is an appeal for their support! And you are making them more likely to be generous in their turn.

But how do you come up with that content? Day after day, week after week, in your blog, your social media, and your newsletter?

Partly, you adopt an environmental philosophy: “reuse and recycle.” The same idea can turn into a blog post, a newsletter article, a video, and multiple posts or tweets on social media.

But partly, you realize that you can make good use of content that other people have created.

Working with Guest Authors

You might have noticed that I’ve had the pleasure of hosting a bunch of guest posts in the last few months:

  • Mike Barros, of Lumaverse, on Nonprofits and COVID-19
  • Andrew Berry, of Donately, on 5 Modern Nonprofit Trends to Keep in Mind for 2021
  • Life coach Elena Stewart, on How To Get Your NPO Off The Ground

And you will see more guest posts mixed in among my own inimitable prose in the months ahead! That’s not just to make my life easier (although it certainly helps). I host guest authors because they have something valuable to share with you, the readers of this blog.

How can your nonprofit work with guest authors to inform, entertain, and delight your donors? Here’s my advice:

  1. Have a strong sense of your audience, and make sure your guest authors are speaking to that audience. (If they aren’t yet, show them how you do it!)
  2. Promote their guest posts on your social media, and ask them to do the same, on theirs.
  3. Develop a working relationship with the guest author, so they are interested in sending you more good content in the future.

Collecting Content from the Web

Besides the people who write guest posts for you, where else can you get news, advice, perspectives, and information that your donors and supporters will love?

Answer: online.

You can approach the task of collecting content for your audience from the internet in two complementary ways. You can search for keywords you know will interest them, and you can monitor other sites that routinely post the right stuff.

For keyword search, please don’t spend your time manually checking for your keywords over and over. Automate it!

I recommend you set up a Google Alert  for a few keywords related to your donor’s interests. Have Google send you a daily digest by email. Then, you can look at the articles when you have the time and choose the ones that really hit the spot. Schedule them using something like Hootsuite or Buffer, or the tool of your choice.

For monitoring sites you like, the best tool I have found is Feedspot. I add blogs and websites I know produce valuable content for my audience. Then, from time to time, Feedspot suggests other, similar sites.

Again, if you use a tool like this, it’s convenient (because you can look through a list of posts all in the same email), efficient (because it takes much less time than visiting all those sites), and encouraging. Yes, you will be more likely to communicate regularly with your donors if you know it will be easy!

Adding Value and Making It Your Own

Now the work of communicating with your donors consistently has become much simpler. Congratulations! But please make sure that when you curate other people’s work, you a) give credit where credit is due, and b) put your own twist on what you share.

You can give credit by naming the original source and linking back to their site.

You can make it your own by adding something to what they wrote–ideally, something that your organization is in a special position to say. Let me give an example here.

One of my clients is an organization dedicated to helping Black women find the resources that they need to heal, advance, and organize. They work on a variety of issues, because their focus is not the issue but the person affected. Because of that:

  • When they share an article about navigating the medical establishment, they add an intro about the particular barriers Black women face, and strategies to surmount those barriers.
  • When they post items related to Mother’s Day, they relate them to Black women raising children.
  • When they direct their constituents to information about harm reduction, or environmental racism, or policy initiatives, they choose sources that take the experience of Black women into account–and they add thoughts based on their own expertise.

If you get into the routine of choosing content with your audience in mind, and putting it in the context that matters most to them, your readers…

…then those readers (including your donors!) will welcome every email, every blog or social media post, every video,  every newsletter you send their way. Each bit of content will be a gift you send them. And they will reciprocate with their own generosity.

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How Do You Say That in Nonprofit?

March 27, 2017 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Let’s say you work at a nonprofit organization.  You want to improve the agency’s communications: writing, speaking, publicity, social media…the works.  You go looking online for expert advice.

The experts seem to be talking a foreign language! Handheld translator

So much of what you find is written for business. You want to do what Katya Andresen suggests in Robin Hood Marketing and “steal” some corporate savvy for your cause–when it applies or when you can adapt it for your own purposes.  To use expertise, though, you have to understand it.

Here are 13 business terms translated into nonprofit.

  1. Brand.  Reputation, public awareness, visibility.  Your brand is not your logo: it’s the overall impression people have of your organization before and after they’ve met you.
  2. Customer.  In business, the same person pays for a service and benefits from it.  For nonprofits, it’s different.  Funders and donors pay for a service, while clients benefit from it.  When you read “customer,” ask yourself which group the writer means.
  3. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) = Executive Director (ED).
  4. C suite = senior staff.
  5. Return on Investment (ROI) is like what you call “measurable outcomes,” only with some assessment of how much it cost to produce that outcome.
  6. B2B (Business to Business) = communications with your partner organizations, both those you work with now and those you want to collaborate with soon.
  7. B2C (Business to Consumer) =communications with people who use your services.
  8. Entrepreneurial.  Nonprofits call this “innovative.”  In business, it also implies some self-promotion and some degree of risk-taking.  Make sure you’re comfortable with blowing your own horn and trying things that might fail if you’re going to call your agency “entrepreneurial.”
  9. Marketing.  Really, this is just communications with a purpose.  Businesses’ ultimate purpose is to make money.  Your ultimate purpose may be to improve public health, enhance democracy, end hunger or homelessness, or enhance people’s lives through the arts.  Either way, as long as you tailor your communications (outreach, publicity, call it what you will) to a purpose, you’re doing marketing, and you can look for ways to do it better.
  10. Content Marketing.  You may think of this as just “publication.”  Unless you’re publishing anonymously, though, what you write, or post, or video will shape the perception of your organization.  Content marketing means putting content out strategically in ways that benefit the consumer and build your brand.  One of my favorite examples is the Massachusetts Economic Independence Index put out by EmPath.
  11. Thought leader.  A person or organization that provides valuable insights to others in a particular field, or on a particular topic, so that they become the “go-to” source of ideas in that area.  Becoming a thought leader can reap great benefits for you, but it takes time, patience, and communications skills.
  12. Networking.  Yes, this includes all those meetings where you meet people, talk about what they do and what you do, and try to figure out how you can help each other.  You’re familiar with that.  You may even know how to use LinkedIn for networking online.  But I would say that the nonprofit equivalents of networking are coalition building and community organizing.  When you read about networking, instead of a Chamber of Commerce meeting, picture a community forum.  Instead of passing out business cards, picture knocking on doors and asking neighbors to pursue their interests together.

Nonprofits, What’s Your #13?

I have finished my list at twelve because in the nonprofit world, you are an expert.  What’s the thirteenth term YOU’d like to see translated into nonprofit?  Please share the business term that doesn’t quite fit what you do, and if you have a good way to translate it, please share that too!

P.S.  On Twitter, when I see good advice that’s aimed at businesses, sometimes I translate it so it’s more useful to us.  Find it using the hashtag #ispeaknonprofit.

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26 Ways Nonprofits Can Win Friends by Content Marketing

November 14, 2016 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

boredIf you’re a nonprofit organization, blogging is the backbone of your content marketing.  You want people to seek you out–to look to you for expert knowledge and unique insights.  Your blog is where they find what they’re looking for.

 

But are you getting bored with your blog?

You can’t excite people if you’re feeling deadly dull.  If it’s a chore for you to write, it won’t be any fun for your readers to read.

Don’t stop blogging–but there are lots of other ways to do content marketing.

26 Ways to Share Content with Your Readers

Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute lists:

  1. Social media–other than blogs
  2. Articles on your website
  3. E-newsletters
  4. In-person events
  5. Case studies
  6. Videos
  7. Articles on other people’s websites
  8. White papers
  9. Online presentations
  10. Webinars/webcasts
  11. Infographics
  12. Research reports
  13. Microsites
  14. Branded content tools
  15. Mobile content
  16. Print magazines
  17. E-Books
  18. Books
  19. Mobile apps
  20. Digital magazines
  21. Podcasts
  22. Licensed/syndicated content
  23. Virtual conferences
  24. Annual reports
  25. Print newsletters
  26. Games/gamification

If you’re tired of writing short, snappy pieces, then write a white paper or report.  If you’d rather talk than write, then the in-person appearances or the podcasts might be perfect for your personality.  Maybe you’d rather shoot photos–or make videos–or design a game.

Does that get your juices flowing?  I’ll bet you can even think of other content if you try. I thought of comics and graphic novels.  What would you add to the list?

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