Don’t be shy! Getting personal in your communications is key to strong relationships with prospects and supporters.

Here’s how to get personal, with techniques that are doable for you no matter what’s on your to-do list. A small effort here, and that’s all it takes, will make a huge difference.

Personal Is  a Two-Way Street

Most nonprofit communicators I know consider getting personal  as a one-way street. Your organization learns all its can about the folks whom you want to act—donate, volunteer, participate, petition or…—and uses those insights to:

• Personalize communications to bond by integrating the first names of your community members in salutations, subject lines and the like
• Customize communications to increase relevance  by:
  • Segmenting your list, breaking out members by special interest, wants, previous actions, location or any other combination of selections
  • Using this understanding to deliver focus, content, frequency and tone that fits best with each segment’s  profile

Take It One Step Further—Get Personal Personally to Get More Relevant

It’s been proven time and time again that sharing some of oneself speeds relationship building.

Think of a recent conversation you had, personal or professional. When you share something of yourself—an experience related to the topic of conversation, or that of a friend or family member,—that strengthens your growing bond. Your conversational partner gets you a bit better, feels special that you shared something personal, and is much more likely to do the same. That’s how relationships deepen.

Here are some easy ways to put personal to work in your communications:

1. Include your name (or your org spokesperson’s name) in your email “from line” when you’re sending bulk emails from your organization. It’s a must for  bulk advocacy and fundraising emails, recommended strongly for e-newsletters.

Just take a look at the examples here. Which approach draws you in more? Name plus org is even better than just a name, which isn’t enough context, especially if it’s from a celebrity (Ashley Judd, I mean you).

It’s always good to know that there’s a human being there on the other end, and this simple change will make your emails more recognizable in the daily onslaught. Caveat: Let list members know if you make this change.

2. And make your name more personal in your own professional email “from line”—make it Kathy Dempsey rather than Dempsey, Kathy or kathy@infolib.org

3. Be yourself in the tone and style of your writing. You want to ensure it’s a person-to-person communication, rather than institution-to-person.

Of course, you’ll have to sound like yourself within the framework of your organization’s voice (make sure that’s clearly-defined, shared and practiced organization-wide) for consistency’s sake, but a robust organizational voice enables individual personalities to flourish.

Here’s a powerfully-crafted email from Becca, an intern at Corporate Accountability International. It sounds genuine, just like I know she does in person even though we’ve never met! That’s what you want to replicate, in your own voice of course.

4. Share more of yourself in than you currently do, in keeping with the culture of your organization and the preferences of your community. Here are a few ways to do so:

• Include a mention of your passions or family in your professional bio, and make sure your colleagues do the same (more on strong organizational bios here).
• Feature your photo in your email (like Becca does above—I can’t forget this wonderful photo), letter or Facebook page. You plus beneficiaries, volunteers or program participants (with caption) is a refreshing variation.
• When you are at a face-to-face event, introduce yourself (no hovering in the back) and follow up on those brief conversations quickly via email. Let blog readers and Facebook likers know your professional travel schedule and plan a casual get-together (go dutch) over a coffee. Face-to-face remains unequaled for strengthening connections.

5. Close your communications with a memorable goodbye, featuring your signature (a low-res graphic is easy to pull into emails or letters) and a photo where it makes sense. Try it in some emails, it’s less of a fit in letters.

______________________________

Let’s get personal. Take as many of these five steps  as you can.

If you get push back from colleagues or leadership, find personal campaigns from organizations competing for the same attention, dollars and time and show them to the dissenters, along with these examples. This approach tends to work wonders!

How are you getting personal? If you’re not, what’s standing in your way? Please share your story here.

________________________________________________________

Download a Word copy of the template here for your own use (.doc).

Part One: Your Organization

a.    Goals—What you want to accomplish

• What are your organization’s main one to three goals?
• What are your one to three marketing goals—how marketing helps get to those organizational goals?

b.  Situation Analysis—Conditions inside and outside your organization        INSIGHTS 

• What is the environment in which you’re working—competitors, marketing audit, policies, colleagues…?

c.    Calls to Action—What you want your audiences to do

• What do you want your target audiences to do to achieve your marketing goals? Be specific.

 d.    Target Audiences and Segments   

• Who are the 1-3 top groups of people whose help you need, AND are most likely to help?

Part Two: Your Supporters

a.    Point of View—Who are they and what do want and do?      INSIGHTS

• Wants: What are your supporters’ wants, habits and preferences, so you can connect with them?
• Segments: How do people break out into groups, each with shared perspectives, habits, wants?

 b.    Framing the Message—Benefit Exchange and Barriers to the Call to Action

• Benefit Exchange:  Why should your supporters care? What’s it in for them?
• Barriers:  What’s in the way of you motivating the actions you want supporters to take?

 c.    Best Methods—To achieve your marketing goals

• How can you best motivate your supporters to act? Options are: Branding / Positioning, Message Development, Content Creation, Training, Relationship Building, Community Building and Organizing

d.    Best Tactics—How you put your methods into action

• How can you connect with your supporters via these methods, e.g. the nitty-gritty?

 Part Three: Put It Together

a.     Resources—What it takes

• Roles and Responsibilities: Who does what? Existing or new staff? Outsource? Social capital (board members, volunteers, other connections)? How much time will it take? Training needed?
• Budget: How much does your plan cost? What budget can you invest?

 b.     Benchmarks and Measurement—Get to goal & stay on the path to move supporters

• Benchmarks: What are three to five concrete, specific and measurable (when possible) steps to complete en route to achieving your marketing goals?
• Measures:  How to measure if you are moving at the right speed down the right path?   INSIGHTS

 c.    Step-by-Step Work Plan—Start with a 30-day plan, then extend it to cover 90 days

• What do you need to do to build understanding, approval and participation in house? Then what?

Does this mission statement—names deleted to protect the guilty—remind you of the messages you use to connect with your supporters?

If so, you have some work to do.

Because instead of connecting you with your supporters (that’s the goal of all communications, right?), gobbledygook messages like this generate a huge disconnect.

Neuroscience tells us that when we don’t understand something, we feel stupid. When we feel stupid, we feel everyone else gets it, but we don’t—that something is wrong with us.

That’s an awful feeling, and we flee it as quickly as possible. So your unintelligible jargon actually pushes people away, rather than moving them to help in any way.

This Is Getting in Your Way, But…You Can Do Better

Clear messages shaped to the wants and habits of your audiences, wrapped in stories that hit the heart then head, and are easy to remember and repeat, are the most reliable path to persuasion.

Strong Stories Are Worth $1,000,000 for Your Organization

Back-of-the-napkin storyteller Dan Roam says it best—stories are a memorable way to convey the essence of our issues, impact and calls to action. Here’s why:

1. Our mission statements rarely generate that “lean forward” moment you get in reading a great story or watching a fantastic show.
2. Frequently, a personal story, told well and briefly, does what the mission statement cannot—makes people lean forward, so you have the opportunity to persuade them.
3. And strong stories are easy to remember and repeat, extending your reach exponentially.

Through well-told stories, your organization:

• Sounds experienced and expert.
• Presents your content in a way that makes people enjoy reading it and remember it more easily.
• Avoids overwhelming them with what’s not vital— no excess information.
• Pulls together many independent facts and figures into an easy-to-absorb whole.
• Shows (and not tells) your reader what you’re really delivering.
• Makes your message more manageable.
• Gives your audiences an easy way to understand (even visualize) and explain and rationalize their participation decision (to volunteer, to give, to serve on the board) to themselves and others.

You already have the stories, and you can build the confidence and skills to tell them effectively. Here’s how:

Four Ways to Make People Lean Forward

1. Build you story around the time-tested story arc (think Noah’s Ark) with a:
   • Clear beginning introducing the characters and what they’re up against
   • Tense middle where the leads are sent out into the world and face the challenge head on
   • Believable and motivational resolution.
2. Aim for the heart, so you engage your audiences at an emotional level first. Then you can share more information.
3. Feature “stand in their shoes” characters that your supporters can easily relate to.
4. Give story listeners/viewers a clear, reasonable and do-it-right-now way to help resolve the challenge (as a donor, citizen advocate, volunteer)

Jump in right now and craft a story that connects! Can’t wait to hear it.

What’s getting in your way of sharing great stories or, if your storytelling is going great, what helped get you started? Please share your thoughts here.

Now that you know what happens when control of your nonprofit’s message passes from your organization to your audiences, you’ve got to do something about it (see They Said What? for details). Here are three strategies that will ensure your organization works this all-voices-have-equal-weight conversation to its advantage:

1.  Start To Monitor All Channels, All the Time

Your nonprofit may have once counted on a clipping service to capture print and broadcast coverage of your organization. But what’s equally – if not more – and comments on your org – on websites, Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other channels.

Effective listening will help your org: (hat tip to WeAreMedia.org)

• Be able to better serve your target audience by knowing what they’re saying to others and to you.
• Be able to respond to and/or engage critics.
• Stay on top of the latest development in your area of work.

Here’s how you can automate a process to monitor online coverage – of your org, key leaders and issues, and the issue area in which you work:

>>Set up Google Alerts to alert you – via email – to content on your org and leaders.

In addition, you can use these alerts services for updates on coverage of keywords and phrases in your issue areas, and of partner and competitive organizations. Google Alerts does miss some mentions, but picks up a huge amount of relevant content.

>>Search Twitter every few days to see what’s tweeted about your org and other key terms.

>>Use Technorati - a search engine of blog content – to check for blog coverage of your organization.

Not all blog content is indexed by Google or Yahoo. Technorati is as comprehensive as it gets, at this point.

>>Check your nonprofit on Wikipedia.  If you haven’t already searched for your organization, on the Internet’s open source encyclopedia, do so today. Wikipedia allows users to research a subject and add their own information.

I just researched several nonprofits, and it quickly became apparent that there’s a lot of content here that didn’t come from those organizations. For example, the Sierra Club entry goes into detail on the battle of a reduction into its mission. The article’s accuracy been disputed but the main Sierra Club has not joined the conversation.

Look up your organization, and check back frequently (once every two weeks). If there’s something missing that people should know about, add it. You’ll have the option of registering as a contributor which allows you to remain an anonymous poster.

Wikipedia is a popular place. You can be sure that some prospective donors, volunteers, members and clients are learning about your nonprofit here. Make sure you know what they’re learning.

>>Use Google Reader (Or Use Another RSS Reader) to synthesize content from the blogs (and some websites) that cover your nonprofit or issues regularly.

Who has time to dive into a hundred sites or blogs on a regular basis? Tools like Google Reader enable you to easily read key content from blogs (and more and more websites) that you need to know about.

Once you identify the sources that cover your organization or field, Google Reader synthesizes all the new blog posts and website content on a single web page. You just read it, clip content (for later use) or email it to a colleague.

2.  Build Internal Support For User-Generated Content, Listening, and Active Participation

Once you start to scan, and find what’s out there on your nonprofit, you’ll have some proofs of the importance of nurturing this conversation (it’s going to happen anyway, so you might as well embrace it). It’s likely you’ll need to convince your boss or leadership why to support these conversations, and you have the data to do it.

But your work goes beyond support:

• Make sure you and your leadership are listening to what you hear. It’s all too easy to dismiss unwelcome comments as unimportant or one person’s opinion. The fact is that, if those comments are online, that opinion is accessible far and wide.
• Focus your communications on strengthening your nonprofit’s credibility. If your audiences don’t trust your organization, they’ll ignore what you have to say.
• Evolve your organizational voice to one that’s warmer and more passionate, so that your audiences will develop a more genuine connection with your organization.

3.  Participate, Participate, Participate – After You Develop a “Conversation Policy”

You’ve got to participate in the online conversations that are important – to show you’re listening, to add your perspective and, sometimes, to set the record straight.

It’ll be impossible for your organization to respond to every conversation about it, and a bad use of your time. Even though it can be so difficult not to shoot back a knowledgeable response to a cutting (and uninformed) remark, you want to ensure your response achieves what you want. And you need to ensure that your responses are consistent with your nonprofit’s values and mission.

I suggest that you outline, and train colleagues on:

>> What your organization will respond to:

• Format wise (blogs, message boards).
• From which organizations or individuals.
• On what topics.

>>Who will respond?

• Many organizations have one person responding, with colleagues alerting her to online “finds.”

>>What to say, in what tone?

>>When to step out of a conversation?

>>Which comments and conversations to report out to colleagues?

When you take these three steps to strengthen your nonprofit’s online presence (beyond your own site), you’ll ensure your org is aware of what’s being said about it, and participates when it makes sense. It’s a no-choice addition to today’s communications to-dos.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T! You’ve worked long and hard to cultivate a strong relationship with your fundraising and/or marketing colleagues (this guidance works both ways), as that’s the only way to unleash your full relationship-building mojo with prospects and supporters. This active collaboration on knowing your supporters is the key to strong and lasting relationships that generate increased giving and engagement on other fronts. And if you haven’t started partnering yet, today’s the day.

Together with your colleagues, you’ve put in the time and effort to build this vital partnership, and you’ve probably seen some pay off. But all too often, in this partnership as in love, this is where partners begin to take each other for granted.

Here are four ways to keep your partnership with your marketing or fundraising colleagues positive, fun and highly productive:

1. Understand the other person’s point of view.

The single worst way to spoil your relationship is to be argumentative because you need to be right. It’s DEADLY.

Argumentative people will argue to the n^th degree until they “win” about everything and anything. They won’t consider their partner’s viewpoints and rarely, if ever, compromise. Any criticism, even if justified, is met with a defensive and sometimes angry response as the need to be right overrides the need to compromise and improve the relationship.

Effective relationship building stems from understanding the other person’s point of view. Put the same effort into doing so with your fundraising or marketing partners as you do with your prospects. Avoid futile arguments and remember that the objective is not winning but what’s best for your partnership (and your revenue).

2. Be prepared to work hard.

John Lennon told us “all you need is love” and while it’s a memorable song, it just isn’t true. Look what happened to famous lovers throughout time, from Anthony and Cleopatra to Gone With the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Successful relationships require hard work.

Scarlett and Rhett are never quite in sync. They experience passion (but not permanence) throughout their epic love affair, and their stormy marriage reflects the surrounding Civil War battles. The flirtatious Scarlett can’t make up her mind among her many suitors and when she finally decides to focus on Rhett, her fickle nature has driven him away.

We all have quirks and habits that can grate on our colleagues. Fundraising in a climate like this one is taxing, and that’s the time many relationships flounder. Stay alert to keep your relationship smooth and jump on the bumps as they surface, because you need more than love.

3. Encourage each other to grow.

Respect for each other is absolutely fundamental. This means appreciating and accepting your fundraising or marketing partners for the wonderful, unique human beings they are. And vice versa.

I see so many love relationships in which one partner expects the other to conform in the way they deem appropriate. This is more like slavery than love, and not conducive to a mutually-satisfying, lasting relationship.

Your fundraising or marketing partners may want to grow in ways you may not like, or team up with you on strategies or experiments you’re not comfortable with. But preventing their growth will stifle them and you—because your partner will treat you in the same way.

Rather than restricting each other’s freedoms, it’s far better to encourage your fundraising or marketing partner to continue to build his skill set and confidence, and vice versa. You’ll have the opportunity to grow on your own, and through the way your partner grows. This is the only way true love—or a good partnership—can flourish.

4. Do new things to keep the spark alive.

Keeping the spark alive in your partnership with fundraising or marketing colleagues is vital but often overlooked. Don’t let it flicker and die.

I see this pattern all too often: You partner hard with your colleagues to get over past patterns (back in the days you were each grounded in your own silo), develop strategies to work together, start to have some fun and watch early successes come in. You’re feeling confident and engaged. Work is more interesting than ever, but then…

Contentment sets in, you start to take the fundraising or marketing folks for granted (and vice versa) and gradually, you fall into your old ways. Your tone changes, you don’t reach out as much, and most of the collaboration you had gotten into gear slows to a halt.

Keep it alive by making the effort to do new things and to enjoy new adventures. Refresh this so crucial partnership by taking brainstorming meetings off site for a change (this can make an unbelievable difference), bringing a program colleague into the discussion, or collaborating on a working session where together you’ll build your colleagues’ understanding of current and prospective donors, volunteers, program participants or advocates; train them in dialoguing to strengthen relationships; and ask them to share the insights they gain.

Follow these four steps for a fundraising-marketing partnership that breaks records in building understanding of your supporters and engaging them for the long run. And makes your daily to-do list more interesting than ever.

What’s getting in the way of your fundraising-marketing partnership? Or if you’ve nurtured a tight one, how did you get there? Please share your challenges or recommendations here.

Note: This article is adapted from the original published in FundRaising Success.

More message guidance

You have to connect with your target audiences to move them to act…to give, to sign, to participate, to volunteer and more. Your organization’s messages are your greetings—the first step in building these vital relationships and a must-do for keeping them vibrant over time.

But without relevant messages, it’s impossible to connect.

Crafting compelling messages that are easy to remember and repeat is one of the most overlooked—and under appreciated—methods of ensuring you reach your nonprofit marketing goals.

In fact, 76% of nonprofit communicators like you say their messages are irrelevant to the people they want to give, volunteer or take another needed action.*  Their target audiences (like yours?) remain unmoved and their goals unmet.

That’s a huge loss, as effective messages have a significant ROI (return on investment). When your messages don’t connect, you generate just a huge who cares. And who-cares messages alienate current supporters, as well as prospects on all fronts. Who wants to dig into something that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with them?

There’s No Choice—Learn How to Get to Relevant Messages

Creating engaging messages requires a minor (if any) financial investment and a moderate investment of time, and offers tremendous returns. I hear from so many of you who believe in the power of messages, but just don’t know where to start.

In response to your requests, here’s an updated guide to crafting the four cornerstones of your organization’s messages—your message platform.

4 Must-Dos Before You Shape Your Message Platform

Take these four steps to ensure relevancy, the essence of messages that connect.

1. Build your message team of colleagues, leadership, volunteers and supporters. You’ll want their insights to shape your messages, their relationships to test them and access to their networks by training them as fantastic messengers down the line.
2. Clarify your top one to three marketing goals—how will you use marketing to reach your organizational goals, and the actions you want folks to take to get you there.
3. Identify who is most likely to act and/or has the greatest influence (your target audiences; no more than three groups).
4. Get to know what’s important to your audiences (wants, values and preferences) so you can articulate what’s in it for them and ensure no barriers stand in your way to engaging them, and learn how best to reach them.

The 4 Cornerstones of a Relevant Nonprofit Message Platform

Now you’re ready to draft, or refine, your organization’s messages.  These four components are the cornerstones of your organization’s message platform.

Be aware that although these elements are presented in a linear manner here, the message development process is cyclical. For example, what you learn in building out your key messages and related support points may highlight an element that needs to be incorporated into your positioning statement. Design your timeline, and roles and responsibilities, for this process with that in mind.

1. Tagline

Value
Extends your organization’s name to convey its unique impact or value with personality, passion and commitment, while delivering a memorable and repeatable message to your network.

Definition
Running no more than eight words, the tagline is your organization’s single most used message.

An effective tagline provides enough insight to generate interest and motivate your reader/listener to ask a question, without providing too much information so that she thinks she knows everything she needs to and doesn’t want to read more or continue the conversation.

How to Use
Exactly as written in print, online and verbal communications, including business cards and email signatures.

Examples

• Organization: Community Food & Justice Coalition
• Tagline: Food for People, Not for Profit

• Organization: Maryland SPCA
• Tagline: Feel the Warmth of a Cold Nose

2. Positioning Statement

Value
Connects your organization with those you want to engage by 1) linking it with what’s important to them; and 2) differentiating it from others competing for their attention, time and dollars.

Definition
A one to three sentence statement that positions your organization most effectively in the environment in which you work. It conveys the intersection of what your organization does well, what it does better and differently than any other organization (uniqueness), and what your network cares about.

Key components of your positioning statement are:

• What you do.
• For whom (whom do you serve).
• What’s different about the way you do your work.
• Impact you make (something tangible, like a stat, is compelling here, see example below).
• Unique benefit derived from your programs, services and/or products.

Most, importantly, this is not your mission statement. Your mission statement is internally oriented and serves as your organizational road map. Your positioning statement connects your mission with what’s vital to your network, so must be externally oriented.

How to Use
Exactly as written in all print and online communications (with the exception of the occasional narrowly-focused flyer or mini-site).

Examples

• The Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) builds grassroots campaigns to combat the unjust consequences of toxic pollution, discriminatory land use, and unsustainable energy policies. Through leader development, organizing and advocacy, EHC improves the health of children, families, neighborhoods and the natural environment in the San Diego/Tijuana region.
• The Rural Women’s Health Project (RWHP) designs and delivers health education training and materials to help rural women and their families strengthen their understanding of critical health and family issues. By blending innovative techniques with a collaborative approach, RWHP has built a record of success in improving the health and well-being of the communities they serve.

3. Key Messages or Talking Points

Value
Succinctly elaborate on your positioning statement and provide the necessary proof required for validation, while enabling you to tailor your messaging to specific groups within your network.

Definition
A set of four to six key messages that build on the information conveyed in your positioning statement and respond to most common questions asked by your current and prospective network.

Most talking points should run no more than two sentences. Develop a set at the organizational level first; and follow (if needed) with sets for specific target audiences, programs and/or campaigns.

Be prepared with supporting points (a.k.a. proof points) for each talking point.

How to Use

• Use in both written and verbal conversation.
• However, talking points do not represent the exact words that must be used (especially in conversation), but rather convey the essential ideas to be conveyed. They can be customized for greater impact–to the specific interchange, the interests of the person you’re speaking with or emailing, and/or the topic of conversation.

Examples
Note proof points associated with the talking points in some of these examples.

• Advancing Equality (see pp. 13-16)
• Beverage Container Recycling
• Walk to School

4. Elevator Pitch Catch

From the moment the first elevator sped upwards in 1853, people have been polishing their elevator pitches. The idea was that if the big prospect ever strode into your elevator, you’d be able to dazzlingly explain your organization and your role there by the time you reached your floor.

But that traditional elevator pitch is dead!  Here’s why, and guidance on how to persuade people to give, volunteer and support your cause today:

1) Today, we work constantly to move people, not just the prospect and not just in the elevator.
We’re working to persuade fans, colleagues, our children and friends—who are all overwhelmed by media and messages—all the time. It’s a tough sell.

2) Your conversational partner—or child, program participant, colleague or board member—doesn’t care what you want. She cares mainly about her own needs, wants, passions, habits and dreams, and those of her near and dear.

It’s not selfish, it’s human. We have to filter somehow.

If your pitch relates, great. If not, nada. And the only way to find that match—if there is one—is to a) get attention, b) learn about what’s important to your partner.

Value
Enables you to listen and learn from any social contact (not just those that take place in an elevator). If there’s interest in your issue and/or org, you can turn it into a “first step” conversion opportunity (asking for more information, scheduling a call, etc.) in 60 seconds or less.

These are the four steps to get there. Start with step one and end with step four, but the order of steps two and three can vary:

1. The lead-in. This is where you introduce yourself and your role in your organization to set up the conversation. It’s intended to spark the interest of the person you’re speaking with.
2. The question. This is the hook, an open-ended conversation that allows you to assess the interest level of your conversational partner. Remember to pause after you ask, to wait for an answer.
3. The differentiator. Proceed here only if you get interest in response to your question. Your differentiator identifies your organization as providing a unique resource valued by the person you’re speaking with (build from what you’ve heard), one that deserves immediate attention.
4. The first-step call to action. This is the request to schedule a follow-up call to discuss the matter further, make an online contribution or participate in a meeting on the issue, thereby making the conversion. Make it specific, clear and doable (e.g. don’t ask too much, especially in an initial conversation).

NOTE: It’s vital that the “pitcher” is adept at following the lead of his conversational partner to make the most of the short period he has. Role playing is a proven way to build this skill.

Examples

Hi, I’m Mora Lopez. I’m a senior at Santa Fe High School and a volunteer with Open Door. We host workshops at our school so that adults can learn English. We’re the only free adult ESL class in town.

Do you know that out of the 30 million adults who are below basic reading and writing levels, almost 40% are Hispanic? PAUSE, continue only if there’s clear interest.

Our participants report back that learning English has made a remarkable difference in their lives, both professionally and personally, and we want to grow the number of students we can handle.

Would you like to share your email address? That way we can keep you posted on the program as it continues to grow.

Now It’s Your Turn—Next Steps

Your next step is to inventory your organization’s current message platform against this checklist:

• What elements are in place as defined above (or near enough)?
• For those that are in place, were they created based on the four “must-dos” outlined at the beginning of this article?
  • If yes, you have some of the four cornerstones already in place.
  • If no, you’ll need to start at the very beginning, with your positioning statement.
• For those cornerstones you need to revise, or create for the first time:
  • Start with clarifying your communications goals.
  • Identify those you need to engage to meet those goal, and get to know them.
  • Start shaping your cornerstones based on this framework.

What’s holding you back from effective messages? Please share your message challenges here.

*Findings from our 2012 survey of more than 1,500 fundraisers and nonprofit communicators. Just 24% of respondents said their messages connect with their target audiences. 

Effective marketing is rooted in strong relationships with the right target audiences – those with whom your organization shares wants and/or values. No contest on that.

Assuming that’s so (it is!) content marketing—creating and distributing relevant, mission-based content to your target audiences—is the best way to strengthen those ties and raise the engagement level of your target audiences. It’s nonprofit marketing par excellence this year and going forward.

Content marketing is being used by nonprofits as diverse as The Arthritis Foundation, Environmental Working Group and Feeding America to 1) strengthen existing relationships and 2) acquire new donors, volunteers and other supporters.

Content Rules Rules – Your Core Guide to Content Marketing

I just finished reading Content Rules (partner link) by Ann Handley (Marketing Profs.com ) and C.C .Chapman. It’s a terrific how–to guide to shaping and maintaining a stream of content that is right for your organization, engages your target audiences, establishes your organization as an expert in your field and provides a reason for them to share your name and site, and come back themselves again and again.

That’s what the Environmental Working Group does so well with its safe cosmetics database, consumers guide to pesticides in produce and cell phone radiation guides; Feeding America has released two extensive research studies Hunger in America and “Map the Meal Gap.” These studies educate readers about the growing presence of hunger in America and detail food insecurity rates for each county, according to the Nonprofit Times. They show how crucial the organization’s mission is, engaging current audiences and opening the door for new supporters who might not have responded to more traditional marketing and fundraising outreach.

The Arthritis Foundation in Atlanta increases its membership appeal by offering a free guide to arthritis medication with a subscription to its Arthritis Today magazine. And the Nonprofit Times reports that The American Diabetes Association membership package includes a buyer’s guide to diabetes supplies, a subscription to Diabetes Forecast, and recipes for healthy eating.

Win-win-win-win.

That challenge is this – without a systematic approach – implementing effective content marketing is an overwhelming challenge.

Handley and Chapman lay out 11 rules for organizations to follow for content marketing success. Here are the 4 steps you need to start strong:

1) Build a Campfire

But put away your matches.

In the context of content marketing, a campfire is a metaphor for developing your content library. To build a successful campfire, you need to begin with ignitable tinder and gradually add more and more wood until you have a roaring fire. It’s the same with content.

But before you even start that campfire, you know what your goal is – to build a fire. You’ll need to set clear goals for your content marketing program, so you know where you’re trying to go with it—and the target audiences you must engage to meet that goal.

Most importantly, with so many channels, formats and types of content options “it is essential to establish a solid foundation for your content strategy rather than randomly gathering content and hoping it all ignites in the end.”

2) Keep the Fire Going

Starting the campfire is just the beginning. Now you have to keep it going.

So rather than thinking of your content creation/release process as a one off, consider it an ongoing process. Here’s how:

• Develop a broad theme, such as guides to environmental health or accessible summaries of the latest research on the disease your nonprofit funds research on.

And/or

• Work from existing content – particularly if your organization is producing content already on an ongoing basis, like the Environmental Working Group’s guides to healthy personal care and cleaning products or the Peak Performance performing arts series at Montclair State University’s program notes and recordings of post-performance discussions with the artists.

Then, rather than release the whole report or series at once, break it down into more digestible chunks that you drip out over time.

No matter which approach you take, always be on the look out (and ask – and train – your colleagues to do so too, this is an all-org effort). Look for relevant content generated by programs, audience feedback, research and other sources. That’s the content that your network will share with their networks, offering huge potential to grow your organizations base of supporters!

What information or story can you share with your network that shows your value and impact, rather than telling it?

3) Sparks are Meaningful – Do Something Unexpected

It’s important for your organization to be able to shake things up a bit with your content, as long as you stay within the comfort level of your leadership.

For example, if all your content is written, then make a few short videos or podcasts, or upload a photo slideshow. If you tend to write long, experiment with writing short.

When you make an effort to be more creative (without going overboard), your network will appreciate it greatly and are likely to pay more attention to these sparks. It’s human nature to be more engaged by variety than by repetition.

Content Rules shares a great example–Agilent’s “Puppet Chemistry” video. The company is actually one of the world’s premiere measurement companies, making products such as atomic spectroscopies, bioanalyzers, and liquid chromatographers.

You’d think that they would have a hard time trying to come up with engaging and creative content for their products. But, in creating this video, Agilent (which realizes that their products are not that accessible or interesting to most) showcases that understanding and its sense of humor. It worked!

4) Speak from the Heart—Be Human

It is absolutely crucial your voice is human, not corporate-speak or robotic. But in far too many cases, nonprofits reach out with inaccessible or off-putting content—whether it’s in a website, conversation, emails or letters.

So much content is jargon-heavy, depersonalized and/or just horrible. Here’s a example featured in Content Rules:

Communicative Health Care Associates (CHCA) specializes in full speech-language diagnostic services, therapeutic care, and hearing screenings and through our division, Allied Rehabilitation Associates (ARA); we offer comprehensive, multidisciplinary rehabilitation services including physical and occupational therapies.

Oof. Where’s the personality, tone and voice that’s so critical to engaging target audiences? Those essential building blocks have been replaced by jargon that most people—including parents who must be one of CHCA’s target audiences—might not understand and definitely won’t relate to.

Ann and C.C. suggest a great way to ensure you stay human—let your target audiences talk for you. There’s nothing more engaging than a peer, talking in her own words (slightly modified if necessary). Your voice—whether it comes from your organization or your network—should be natural, loose, and direct. That’s what makes rich and memorable conversation!

What are you doing to create truly compelling content?

Creating engaging online content is a must for any marketing-savvy company that wants to get the most from their online endeavors. Please share your strategies, challenges and successes here.

P.S. Here’s Beth Kanter’s terrific summary of Content Rules.

Dear Nancy,

Over the past year, our organization has developed several communication channels – website, print newsletter, mailed funding appeals, print outreach materials, phone system on-hold messages, an annual report, advertising in local papers, etc. As our communications grow, our need for a style guide is increasingly apparent.

We don’t have a guide at all now, and are challenged by the fact that we operate five sites in a total of three municipalities. In addition, staff members – from health educators to social workers – occasionally create their own outreach materials because they need the materials ASAP. We don’t want to hold them up by going through a huge administrative process but we do need to be consistent.

Thanks for any tips.

Debbie Grammer, MPH
Development Specialist
WHSI – Wake Health Services, Inc.:
A Community Health Center
Raleigh, NC

Dear Debbie,

Thanks for asking. The challenge you describe – how to make the most out of your organization’s marketing outputs, from different sites and staff members, conveyed via a range of media – is a common one. My advice? Create a strong organizational brand and make sure it’s used consistently across departments, site and marketing outputs, both print and online.

The challenge of course is how to create that high-impact brand and make sure that it is applied according to defined standards in print and online marketing materials to diverse audiences, by all marketing material creators without inhibiting the power of personal voices. The solution goes much beyond a traditional style guide (which is usually focused on writing style and grammar) to encompass these four steps:

1. Make sure that there’s agreement, within leadership and key departmental staff, on what WHSI’s brand is. The brand portfolio includes:
   • Positioning statement.
   • Key messages for WHSI and for each of your programs or services.
   • Design guidelines on use of logo and WHSI colors.

   Remember that WHSI may need to implement audience research to develop a brand that resonates with all of its key audiences. Brand management (reviewing materials, ensuring consistency, brand application) has to be added to an employee’s job. That’s the only way to bring it to life.

   Many nonprofit staff members perceive the notion of brand as being far too “commercial” to be put to use in their organizations. Beware of this attitude! It is your greatest barrier to marketing success.

   Brand is simply the core marketing elements (both graphic and narrative) that, when used consistently, ensure that your nonprofit is quickly recognized and understood by your key audiences. Every nonprofit needs a strong brand.

2. Discuss the communications creation process with your colleagues and, with input from representative staff departments, create a process for creation and review of marketing materials.You mention that most, but not all, communications come through one person. What happens before and after that person?
3. Design and implement additional tools to make it easier for WHSI colleagues to develop or generate communications that do convey the brand.
   • Select a standard style guide (Chicago Manual of Style, Words Into Type or AP Stylebook) and dictionary as your standards.
   • Create a WHSI style guide on grammar conventions (whether to use serial commas or periods within acronyms), as well as specifics on writing about WHSI (when to use the acronym, if at all) and its work.
   • Create templates (in Word or the word processing program used by WHSI staff) for the most common communications materials. These may include a one-page flyer, tri-panel brochure on services, and a press release.Make these available for download so that your colleagues have a quick-and-dirty way of creating ASAP communications that are aligned with WHSI’s brand.
4. Hold a training session, in which you explain what the brand is (messages, design standards, style guide, processes, and templates) and why it’s important to be consistent in using it.Include scenarios to illustrate how the communications creations process works, rather than just distributing the guide.Most importantly, make sure you convey that individual insights and voices are prized, but that they have to complement core messaging that’s crafted to enable WHSI to meet its organizational goals.

Debbie, I think this approach will work for WHSI. Sorry that I have no five-minute solutions but there are just no shortcuts with brand. Once you do invest the time in this process, WHSI will see the payoffs immediately in terms of response to its marketing initiatives.

Let me know!

Best regards,
Nancy

Marketing and fundraising are two halves of a whole. But when they don’t operate that way, the outcome of each team’s efforts is far less than it could be, undermining an organization’s ability to engage its base.

Unfortunately, that’s the situation in most nonprofits where a single person doesn’t wear both hats. As fundraising expert Mal Warwick told me recently, when marketing and fundraising teams stand firm in their respective corners, the disconnect becomes a huge obstacle to raising money, particularly in today’s challenging fundraising environment.

But there are ways to surmount this obstacle. Fairleigh-Dickinson University (FDU) succeeded in doing so via a deliberate, well-articulated re-structuring. Read on to learn more about their strategy and the results, and my recommendation of a four-step process to bring marketing and fundraising into a productive partnership, supplemented by insights from some of the best fundraisers and nonprofit marketers I know.

4 Steps to Connecting the Left Hand with the Right

Put these four strategies to work to strengthen the marketing-fundraising collaboration in your organization:

1. Start at the top. It’s the only hope for a strong marketing-fundraising partnership

If bridging the marketing-fundraising gap is the goal, the pathway to getting there has to be spearheaded by your leadership. Your organization’s executive director, supported by the board, must be the one to guide the two teams into active collaboration and ensure they stay there.

Put more bluntly, “the heads of development and marketing have to accept that they are oxen pulling the same wagon, a wagon labeled ‘increasing community support’,” advises Tom Ahern, a leading authority on donor communications.

If your executive director isn’t focused on bridging this destructive gap, here’s a way to move her along that path, from Kivi Leroux Miller of NonprofitMarketingGuide.com:

• Ask the leaders of your organization to outline the top three actions an ardent fan of your cause would take in order to support you in a given month. Odds are that at least one of those steps, but not all three, will be related to fundraising.
• Discuss how your marketing and fundraising staff can work together to encourage that big fan to follow through on those three actions. This moves the conversation away from traditional to-do lists and toward a more holistic view of how you are relating to your supporters and encouraging them to be a part of your organization’s community.

2. Articulate shared priorities to serve as the core of a common agenda

As long as your marketing and fundraising teams have distinct goals, they won’t be effective partners. How could they be, each pointed in its own direction?

But if tasked with a common agenda, the landscape changes. A marketing-fundraising partnership is the only way to get there.

• At the HealthCare Chaplaincy in New York, the marketing and fundraising teams each have specific responsibilities but work closely together to advance their shared priorities—building and strengthening relationships with key supporters, and generating revenue. “This ethos starts with the directors and permeates our staff,” says Jim Siegel  Director of Marketing & Communications.
• The advancement leadership at FDU made a radical change in mid-2009 as it merged the development and marketing teams. The teams had worked together in the same room for many years, but pre-merger did so side-by-side with distinct goals and paths of activity, says Dina Schipper, Director of University Public Relations. The merger shifted the entire team’s reporting to the Senior Vice President for University Advancement. But most importantly, “the shift introduced a tri-fold charge to the newly merged team—supporting fundraising, recruitment and overall institutional branding, which, in time, significantly enriched its donor profiling strategy,” says Schipper. The results are strong, even at this early stage. Schipper describes a greater awareness among her colleagues of what outreach is underway and increased ability to coordinate themes and timing. “Nothing says more about the success of this merger than the fact that we’ll be closing out our large and successful capital campaign within the next year,” she says. In addition, Schipper cites the unified team’s single focus as the source of its increased impact in transitioning University’s board members, alumni and other supporters as potent ambassadors. Lots to learn from here.

3. Identify what’s working—from each “side”—and do more of it

I learned this sage strategy from Switch authors Chip and Dan Heath, who advocate this (surprisingly) unusual focus as the most reliable pathway to positive change.

A proven strategy of doing so is to ask your marketing team to identify the top three successes from the fundraising team, and to integrate those approaches into its own work. And vice versa.

Don’t forget to identify what isn’t working, and do less of it. Kivi LeRoux Miller suggests that each team give the other a “free pass” to make any single change to each other’s work, without protest or arguments, for a week. If your marketing director can make only one change to a fundraiser’s direct mail letter, what will it be? And what single change will the development director make to the marketer’s website copy?

This exercise forces each team to focus on what is truly most important to them, gives each some level of control and encourages them to better understand each other without arguing over the merits of the requested change.

4. Build on real, compelling success stories, well-honed and widely shared and discussed as the glue of your fundraising and marketing conversations

Here’s a fact you might not know: When the same strong stories are used by both marketing and fundraising teams, your organization wins via increasing awareness, building engagement and boosting positive responses and actions (e.g., we want to be a part of a winning organization.) Showing via stories works; repetition does too.

Janet Levine, one of my favorite fundraising bloggers at Too Busy to Fundraise, recalls the pattern that emerged from her years working in advancement in higher education. “Working together enabled us to create a powerful approach—for example, we wrote press releases on key stories; those stories were re-purposed into newsletter articles; shared with our Board members to help them be better ambassadors for us, and served as the focus of our direct mail appeals,” says Levine.

The FDU advancement team had a huge win in making the most of Bruce Springsteen coming to campus as part of WAMFest (Words and Music Festival) to co-present an academic seminar with poet Robert Pinsky. This presented a huge traditional media relations opportunity for the university, which saw its story covered by the Associated Press as well as other venues throughout the world.

But that’s just the beginning. The team is creating “experience packets” with DVDs and transcripts of the Springsteen-Pinsky program and others, transcripts and press clips as leave behinds in visits to grantmakers funding in arts and culture, an area they hadn’t reached out to previously. And, as you can imagine, alumni are thrilled to tell the tale of Bruce on the FDU campus!

What is your organization doing to move marketing and fundraising into a more productive partnership? Please share your experiences in the comment box below and I’ll share these strategies in a follow-up post or article.