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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Professional Development
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:
- Demonstrate how good marketing makes it easier to raise money, attract news coverage, win grants, and build your online community.
- Tell a better story—highlight your results, use data more effectively, and make it clear that your organization makes a difference in the lives of those you serve.
- Convince your chief executives and board members of the critical role marketing plays in your organization’s success and ensure they invest in your marketing goals.
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!
I’m hosting the Nonprofit Blog Carnival this month, and would like to invite all bloggers to share your “one book” recommendation.
Please blog on:
What single book (not blog, not conversation, not Facebook page) has changed your life as a nonprofit staffer, consultant or vendor? Plus the why and how. Write and submit your “one book” post today, while it’s on your mind. Deadline is May 27.
On May 31, my blog post will feature summaries and links to posts on these “one books,” and a few of the dozens of responses from other nonprofit professionals.
Your “one book” can be focused on a topic far outside nonprofit topics, if it’s moved you forward in your nonprofit work. For an example of a fantastic post on this theme, take a look at this post by Pamela Grow.
WHAT’S YOUR ONE BOOK?
A few weeks ago, long-time colleague Steve Damiano, Director of Professional Development at New York City’s Support Center for Nonprofit Management, asked me to recommend a few marketing books for his nephew, soon to graduate with a marketing degree. Four titles quickly came to mind, a flow that made me realize that this is an ideal topic for the Nonprofit Blog Carnival.
And I’ll publish the compilation as a reading list for our community, based on your posts.
The deadline is May 27.
You can enter your submission in one of two ways:
1. You can fill out the carnival form here
2. You can email a link to the post to nonprofitcarnival (at) gmail.com
P.S. Here’s my “one book” — looks dry as dust but…
I’m hosting the May Nonprofit Blog Carnival, and on May 31 my blog post will feature links and summaries to the best of. Here’s the theme, and how you can submit your post. I’m also interested in hearing responses from the Getting Attention community; please share your recommendation here.
WHAT’S YOUR ONE BOOK?
A few weeks ago, long-time colleague Steve Damiano, Director of Professional Development at New York City’s Support Center for Nonprofit Management, asked me to recommend a few marketing books for his nephew, soon to graduate with a marketing degree. Four titles quickly came to mind, a flow that made me realize that this is an ideal topic for the May Nonprofit Blog Carnival.
And now, I’d like to develop my reading list from your recommendations (other bloggers and the Getting Attention community).
What single book (not blog, not conversation, not Facebook page) has changed your life as a nonprofit staffer, consultant or vendor? Plus the why and how. Submit your one book today, while it’s on your mind.
- For bloggers, please post your response by May 27 then enter your submission in one of two ways.
- Fill out the carnival form here
- Email the link to your post to nonprofitcarnival (at) gmail.com
- For others, share your response here.
The book doesn’t have to be directly about your work but should have generated new ideas, understanding and/or excitement on the topic for you. One book only.
MY ONE BOOK LOOKS LIKE A DRY TEXTBOOK, BUT IS SO MUCH MORE
My “changed my life” book is a classic textbook – Marketing Management (partner link) by Philip Kotler. The text is traditional in its overview approach to the topic and its dense layout – pretty much like the textbooks you’ve known. But it opened up a new world for me, and I live in that world now. NOTE: I’m pointing you to the inexpensive 12th edition, two editions ago, because that will serve your purposes. Turn to this guide for core principles, not updates on innovations and new tools best sourced online.
Kotler’s guide introduced me to all facets of marketing and, most importantly, to the idea that when they are integrated, the product is far more than the sum of the individual components—a holistic marketing system.
But the most critical concept I learned is the difference between marketing and communications:
- Marketing incorporates all steps of the process from research (from your situation analysis to communications audit and focus group), to planning, building leadership support, executing the strategies (communications), measuring progress versus defined benchmarks and revising the plan to reflect what you have learned from previous efforts.
- Marketing includes communications, but communications doesn’t include marketing.
This definition provides me with a clear, accessible framework for what to do when, how and why. And the imperative to take a few steps back and see marketing as a large, interconnected system, rather than a series of communications.
Kotler’s text is definitely worth an initial read, and is a great resource to keep around for ongoing reference. Get it today – for marketers, it’ll reshape your outlook and refresh your execution; for other nonprofit staffers, it’ll give you the insight you need to put marketing to work most effectively for your fundraising campaign, programs or other initiative; and to work most productively with your marketer colleagues.
PLEASE SHARE YOUR LIFE-CHANGING BOOK NOW
What single book (not blog, not conversation, not Facebook page – as if) has changed your life as a nonprofit staffer, consultant or vendor? Plus the why and how. Submit your one book now, while it’s top of mind.
- For bloggers, please post your response by May 27 then enter your submission in one of two ways.
- Fill out the carnival form here
- You can email a link to the post to nonprofitcarnival (at) gmail.com
- For others, share your one book here.
I’ll post on bloggers’ “one book” on May 31, and incorporate those recommendations with those from the Getting Attention community in a future article! Thank you.
NOTE: I read Marketing Management only because it was assigned reading for the core marketing course in my MBA program. The back story – I fell into marketing, as most of us do, rather than having planned for this career but, several years in, wanted to get the firm grounding that I knew would enable me to make the right marketing decisions, generate the buy-in I’d need to execute them and more. I embarked on an MBA (at night, five long years!) and this course was one of several that grew my perspective and skill set.
P.S. So many of you have told me my recent e-book is your “one book” that I want to mention it here.
Learn how to strengthen your nonprofit’s marketing impact with the 2011 Guide to Nonprofit Marketing Wisdom.
It’s so good to be back with you.
We arrived home from New Zealand last weekend but, of course, I brought home some evil plane germs (among other souvenirs) and between fighting those and jet lag have been in slow mode! I’ll share more on the trip soon.
But today I want to invite those of you attending this years Nonprofit Technology Conference (a.k.a. 11NTC, which is sold out, but you can still participate online) to join me in the following sessions:
1) Nonprofit Marketing Affinity Group: Thursday, March 17, 11-12:30, Lincoln West, Hilton
100 folks are already signed up for this so we’re going to have some fantastic networking! Don’t miss it.
The Nonprofit Marketing Balancing Act: I have so much to do but have no idea where to start. Join me and my friends and colleagues Katya Andresen, Sarah Durham and Kivi Leroux Miller in this facilitated discussion on competing priorities/balance/time management in nonprofit marketing — where there’s just never enough time or focus at hand.
- See how your peers are balancing competing marketing priorities
- Identity what tools or techniques will help you achieve nonprofit marketing nirvana
- Learn how to succeed at your own nonprofit marketing balancing act
But most importantly, this is a fantastic opportunity to meet others who do what you do (wear the marketing hat, or partial hat), share experiences and forge some great new brainstorming relationships you can carry through the conference and beyond!
2) Weaving Your Marketing Loose Ends into a Strong, Tight, Powerful Plan (11NTCweave): Saturday, March 19, 1:30-3, Georgetown West, Hilton
If your marketing and fundraising campaigns are a big pile of loose ends, or just too many loose ends that are a barrier to marketing impact, you aren’t alone. That’s how most nonprofits operate.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the right approach or one you have to live with. Join us — Tara Collins, Communications Director, Watershed Agricultural Council; Kivi Leroux Miller; Karen Secular, Director of Communications, Arnold Gold Foundation; and me — to learn how to knit all the pieces of your marketing and fundraising — online and offline — into a strong, tightly-woven plan that produces concrete results. We’ll begin the conversation then open it up for Q&A, counting on drawing on the wisdom of the crowd!
Session Takeaways:
- See what pieces of your plan need be tightly knotted together, and what’s okay to leave hanging on its own.
- Review a tested marketing plan template that you can start filling out right in the room
- Explore how other nonprofits are making their websites, email, social media, direct mail, word-of-mouth, and PR work together to become far more than the sum of their individual parts.
Hope you’ll join us. Successful integration of all of your marketing efforts – cross-channel and with fundraising communications — is the first step to connection, which is the path to conversion!
For those of you who won’t be at 11NTC, I’ll blog out on key conversations asap! Please share questions you’d like addressed in either session.
Join us at the Total Focus Marketing Plan Workshop
Seattle Early Bird Rate Runs through March 31 – Saves You $100
We’re back! I’m partnering with my friend, Kivi Leroux Miller, to offer you a special opportunity to find the solutions to your 2011 marketing challenges: The Total Focus Marketing Plan Workshop. Plan in a day—blueprint forever!
We premiered the workshop in New York and D.C. last fall, and received great ratings. Here’s what two of our participants had to say:
Would Have Taken Me Forever on My Own
I learned so much about marketing planning today. It would have taken weeks or months to do so on my own.
Now I Know How to Shape Our Marketing Plan and Transform It into Action
As a result of participating in your outstanding workshop, I am re-focused on exactly what I need to do to create an effective marketing plan for our organization. Now I know the steps I need to take to transform that plan into actions that are understood and adopted throughout the organization.
We hope you’ll join us for this intensive, limited-enrollment planning seminar for nonprofit communicators and development staff members, board members and executive directors who do it all.
You see this day is going to be different from other workshops you’ve participated in.
You’ll immerse yourself in marketing planning for a day, as we help you shed the muddled messages and impossible to-do lists that pull you in too many directions and diminish your marketing impact.
And, most importantly, you’ll leave with a clear, focused, practical marketing plan that will work for your organization—one you are fully capable of implementing.
Don’t Miss this Opportunity –
Learn more now! The Seattle early-bird rate runs through March 31 but we expect seats to fill up fast.
Hope to see you there!
Nope, I’m not talking about a spa!
Register now for the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) and we’ll finally have a chance to meet in person! Most importantly, you have the opportunity to nourish and energize yourself talking with–and learning from–some of the most creative, passionate folks in the nonprofit world!
You can still get the regular conference rate if you register by tomorrow, Feb. 11. After that, late fee!
Full disclosure: I’m a board member of NTEN, which runs this conference. But I became a huge NTEN champion through attending this conference — the only venue I know of where program, fundraising, communications folks and other key nonprofit staffers and consultants learn and talk together about common challenges and strategies!
It’s cross-fertilization at its most valuable, and most engaging. You’ll love it.
The program is too extensive to cover here but I promise you you’ll learn, be inspired and meet folks you’ll never forget (in the best way). Please join me there.
Register today to change tomorrow!
P.S. Great tagline!
Thanks to all of you for your interest, comments, questions and support (holiday video here). I hope your holiday season is filled with joy.
We’ll be back at it January 3, 2011! I’m charged up about what we’re going to accomplish together next year.
All the best,
Nothing thrills me more than travel. So what a terrific surprise it was to be contacted by the folks at New Zealand’s Association Resource Trust to keynote the first-time Marketing By Association Conference this coming February (summertime there). My entire family is going so it should be a true adventure in many ways.
Kiwi nonprofits — both associations and charities — are facing the same challenges we are: Cuts in government funding, decreases in association membership and renewals, and a more competitive environment overall. In fact, challenges for New Zealand’s nonprofits have grown even more dramatically than ours have, as in the past most charity funding came directly from the government.
That’s all changing now and nonprofits in New Zealand need to build their skills. Recent research executed by the Charities Commission found that trust and confidence are the main factors in giving and membership decisions, and that sharing tangible stories and results are crucial to building those perceptions. That’s why marketing — effectively connecting with the folks these organizations need to engage to move their missions forward — is top of mind.
When I asked my hosts if they’d be open to participation by staff members of U.S. nonprofits they gave me an enthusiastic yes. Because they, like me, know that learning is always enriched by a range of perspectives.
So let me invite you to join me for the Marketing by Association Conference, February 22, 2011 in Auckland. I promise you it’ll be a great learning opportunity and a fantastic reason to get yourself to one of the most beautiful countries in the world.
P.S. Register now for free access to the all-news Nonprofit Tagline Database and the 2011 Nonprofit Tagline Report. These tools will inspire and guide you to create messages that connect.
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