Please take two minutes right now to share the most valuable marketing lesson you’ve learned this year!
I’ll summarize the trends, and share the lessons submitted by you and your peers in the field in the 2012 Nonprofit Marketing Wisdom Guide. Your guidance will be attributed to you, by name, title and organization—nice personal and professional recognition.
Free E-Guide
This is a first.
129 of the most respected nonprofit leaders worldwide have contributed the one book that has most influenced their professional lives to The Book That Changed My Life.
Most importantly, this minute it’s a great (last-minute) gift guide for you. Scan it today and grab these gifts that will satisfy now and move your friends, colleagues and family (and organization) forward in 2012: The Book that Changed My Life.
These passionate stories about books that have made a huge difference in the lives of these nonprofit leaders are a thrill to read in themselves, and the reading list produced is a must for everyone engaged with a nonprofit organization.
I’m thrilled to invite you to participate in the Message Focus Project (MFP) (formerly known as the Tagline Focus Project), starting February 14, 2012.
I’ll serve as your guide and coach as you learn to shape messages that connect your organization with the audiences who can help move your mission forward.
Make 2012 your turnaround year!
Join me for this free webinar (December 6, 1pm ET) to learn how to craft your 1-page marketing plan for 2012.
This plan will be a reliable path to motivating your target audiences to act in 2012 and will double as a practical, realistic guide to prioritizing marketing opportunities. These advantages are absolutely crucial for nonprofit organizations like yours in this time of decreased budgets and increased competition. Grab this opportunity now.
A spa for your intellect, creativity and spirit…
Register now for NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) and we’ll finally have a chance to meet in person! More importantly, you’ll have the opportunity to nourish and energize yourself talking with–and learning from–some of the most creative, passionate folks in the nonprofit world!
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I’m slugging down my coffee and getting ready to run to my 9:30 meeting with a new client. I know you’re probably rushing into your day too.
But first, I wanted to quickly explain a few things about how I’m helping a limited number of organizations strengthen their messaging this fall. It’s the second round of a new program I introduced last summer (summer participants loved it — see what Susan Conwell, executive director of Kids Matter, Inc., has to say below). The second session starts November 15. Learn more here. READ MORE
NTEN has a refreshingly open method of designing the program for its annual conference, and the votes of folks in the sector (members plus) are a key part of it. I’d like to ask for your help in shaping the communications agenda at the conference.
I’ve partnered with some expert communicators to propose these two sessions, and hope you’ll to support us by voting them up today.
Voting closes Friday, September 23 so vote now please!
Say it in Pixels: Visual Storytelling in the 21st century READ MORE
Nonprofit Management 101 is a practical, comprehensive handbook for marketers like you, introducing you to key practices throughout your organization. Your understanding of how these other core functions work — from human resources to volunteer management and finance — will enable you to get the full picture, and so to put marketing to work more effectively than ever.
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Please join me and Tara Collins, Communications Director at the Watershed Agricultural Council for this first-time webinar, produced by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The folks at the Chronicle have been generous enough to extend a 15% discount to the Getting Attention community — just enter coupon code “Schwartz” at the bottom of the registration form.
Tara and I will guide you through the smartest ways your nonprofit can engage your target audiences on a tight budget—and how to convince others in your organizations how and why they should invest in marketing. We’ll introduce a bit of theory — to connect what you’ll be doing here to organizational and marketing planning — but focus mainly on practical techniques and case studies. Participants will learn to:
Don’t miss this chance to learn about vital but often overlooked techniques and tools vital to maximizing your impact without blowing your budget. Join Tara, me and Peter Panepento, Assistant Managing Editor, for this fast-paced, immersion learning experience on Thursday, June 23. Register now and enter the coupon code “Schwartz” to get your discount.
P.S. Get more in-depth case studies, templates and tools, and guidance for nonprofit marketing success — all featured in the twice-monthly Getting Attention e-update. Subscribe today.
When I asked nonprofit bloggers—and other members of the Getting Attention community—to share the single book that has most influenced their professional lives, I had no idea what I’d hear back.
So many of you shared compelling titles and the stories behind them. Thank you
Meanwhile, I’m sharing 15 books recommended by nonprofit bloggers and submitted to this month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival, the inspiration for my query. Consider these top picks for your summer reading list:
Improving the Way You Work
1) Jeff Brooks and Tobi Johnson are both fans of Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon Mackenzie. Orbiting inspired Tobi to find an environment where she could make an impact and change the world in a concrete way, and guides Jeff in solving conundrums and dealing with the frustrations he faces in his fundraising work.
2) Low-risk actions–taken to discover, develop, and test an idea–are the path Kivi Leroux Miller has always taken in her professional life. When she found Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, by Peter Sims, she found validation for her approach and inspiration to continue “finding problems and solving them as you go.”
3) Seth Godin’s Tribes is John Lepp’s book of choice because it motivated him to do the two things he feared the most—lead and challenge the status quo.
4) Denise Graveline recommends Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland, for developing your vision and increasing your confidence.
Understanding and Respecting Your Audiences
5) Fundraiser Pamela Grow roots great fundraising in understanding the psychology of people and how we interact and respond to one another. She recommends How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, as a classic primer to understanding, and using your understanding of, human psychology.
6) Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug, was recommended by two bloggers: Kira Marchenese and Beaconfire’s Eve Simon. Krug’s book shaped Kira’s audience-centered perspective on online communications—you have to understand what they experience, and make it as easy as possible—and Eve’s guiding paradigm for website design, keeping sites simple and effective so they work for their users.
7) Not one but five “one books” are recommended by Katya Andresen as guides to understanding people (which is “the first step to lasting social change,” says Katya. Influence, by Robert Cialdini, is the classic primer to understanding how we work.
The One Book Every Nonprofit Marketer Should Read
8) Robin Hood Marketing, by Katya Andresen, helped Zan McColloch-Lussier understand how his nonprofit could make the leap from doing a fine job at communicating to effectively engaging its audiences and inspiring action for its mission.
9) Joanne Fritz cites Strategic Marketing for NonProfit Organizations, by Philip Kotler, as the book that opened her eyes to the critical role marketing has for nonprofits. “I learned that marketing did not equal ‘selling’ but, as Kotler explains, ‘Marketing and selling are almost opposites. Hard sell marketing is a contradiction…Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. Marketing is the art of creating genuine customer value. It is the art of helping your customers become better off. The marketer’s watchwords are quality, service, and value,’” she writes.
10) Beth Kanter sees content creation as a core role for nonprofit professionals and recommends Ann Handley’s Content Rules as the game-changing guide to do using content to advance your mission without exhausting your team.
11) My life-changing read was Philip Kotler’s Marketing Management which changed my perspective on marketing from serving a support function to an interconnected system of actions—from research to measurement—that should be embedded in every program from the earliest planning on.
Building Movements and Communities
12) Gayle Gifford credits Peter Block’s Stewardship: Choosing Service Over Self-Interest for her current perspective on her relationship to the organizations she works with, and community or organization-building overall.
13) Building Communities from the Inside Out, by John Kretzman and John McKnight, helped shape Jen Austin’s community-building outlook and practice. The core take away is that everyone in society has something to contribute and that by recognizing and tapping into the unique skills of individuals, and working collectively, we can progress in ways rarely imagined.
Career Changers – These titles literally led these bloggers into new careers
14) Fundraising Detective Craig Linton credits Relationship Fundraising, by Ken Burnett, for showing him what a fulfilling, stimulating and enjoyable career fundraising could be (and still is).
15) Reading How to Become a Grant Writing Consultant, by Bev Browning, steered Betsy Baker in the right direction at a tough time.
Most Reading is Good Reading, and Good Reading is the Key to Good Writing
Finally, blogger and grantwriter Jake Seliger sees good writing and linked to reading as the source of ideas, rhythms, structure and vocabulary. He relies on reading to hone his grantwriting skills on an ongoing basis.
Thanks too to the bloggers who submitted the other great posts to the Carnival that couldn’t be included here. Unfortunately, Carnival posts are limited in how many posts are covered. Your posts are a great contribution to the community and will be featured in our forthcoming report.
P.S. How do you handle objections? Blogger, Jason Dick is hosting the next Nonprofit Blog Carnival on this key topic. Please submit your post!
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