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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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People Will Pay Attention If You Help Them Solve Their Problems

October 6, 2015 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Phoenix Hospital Car Seat Helper“What’s the right car seat for my child?”

I know a lot of parents who’ve wondered about this question.  Some have done extensive research online to figure it out.

The Phoenix Children’s Hospital created an app for that. According to Jay Baer in his book Youtility, “Parents enter the height and weight of their child, and it instantly recommends the appropriate type and size of car seat.”

The Car Seat Helper is free, and it solves a pressing problem for parents.  But what does it do for Phoenix Children’s Hospital?

  • Answers a question that would take too much time to answer case by case.
  • Prevents injuries, which is part of the hospital’s mission.
  • Creates a glow around the hospital that leads parents to choose it for their children.
  • Shows the hospital’s expertise and commitment to grantmakers and donors.

Nonprofits struggle to reach through the murk of messages people receive to make our own message heard.  But there’s a simple answer.

Solve people’s problems and you’ll get their attention.  Solve a problem that’s related to your organization’s mission, and you may win a friend.

 

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How Your Nonprofit Can Use Twitter–Even If You Don’t Tweet

August 13, 2015 by Dennis Fischman 3 Comments

What are people saying about your nonprofit?  Who lives in your area and cares about your cause?  Who’s looking for your help right now?

You can find out.  You won’t have to hire a private investigator or ask the NSA to give you secret data.  What you need is Twitter search.

Is Your Constituency on Twitter?

You may be surprised at who’s using Twitter these days.  “For Black Americans, the social network of choice may very well be Twitter, as 25% of Twitter users are African Americans (approximately double the U.S. population),” says marketing expert Jay Baer.

In fact, a Pew study reveals, “The typical Twitter user is an 18-29 year-old educated minority with a well-paying job, and slightly more likely to be male than female…Use of Twitter across all age demographics is on the rise.”

Listening In to Conversations

Twitter offers you the chance to be a fly on the wall when the people you care about are talking.  As Tao of Twitter author Mark Schaefer points out, “If you search Google, Bing or Yahoo, your results will be articles, videos, and websites. But if you search Twitter, the results are real-time conversations.”

What could your nonprofit find out by listening in to conversations on Twitter?  Let’s say your mission is to create affordable housing.  You could find:

  • People living in your town who have expressed positive sentiments about affordable housing
  • Tweets that mention your agency by name
  • Elected officials who have (or noticeably have not) addressed the issue
  • Media personalities who take an interest in the issue
  • Donors to your organization and what’s on their minds

Getting In On the Conversation

Even if you never send a tweet yourself, this information could be highly valuable to you.  You could add like-minded people to your mailing list, or recruit a public figure to speak at your next event.  You could find out how you look to your community.  You could do donor and prospect research that produces more gifts.

But if you tweet, you make yourself part of the conversation.  Imagine:

  1. Building a relationship with that high-powered donor who’s too busy to have a meeting, but always answers his tweets.
  2. Answering questions about affordable housing so that people know you’re the thought leader in the field.
  3. Lobbying a public official and having many of your supporters join in.
  4. Finding someone who needs housing right now, helping them obtain it, and watching them sing your praises online.
  5. Getting on the radar screen of people who might never have seen your name any other way.

Whether you use Twitter search to gather information or also tweet to take part in a conversation, it could be a powerful tool for your nonprofit.

Are you already using Twitter at your nonprofit?  What advice would you give an agency that wants to start using Twitter?

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