Please join me on Wednesday, May 30 to learn how to stop striking flat notes with your target audiences and join the 16% of nonprofits whose messages resonate and spur action.
80% of seats are already gone, so it’s now or never.

Master the 4 Keys to Pitch-Perfect Messaging
Date: Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Time: 1:00-2:00PM EDT/10:00-11:00PM PDT
Replay: If you can’t make this time, register anyway. All registrants will receive the video recording.

Register Now

You’ve got to connect with your target audience to spur them to action…to give, to sign, to volunteer.

Messages are the way to build relationships. Without strong messages, it’s impossible to connect. And there’s simply no way you’ll build the mutually-satisfying relationships with passionate supporters you need to meet your organization’s overall goals.

But just 16% of nonprofit messages connect. Survey findings indicate that 84% of nonprofit communicators admit their messages fail to connect with the people they need to engage as donors, partner, volunteers and more. And that poor messaging gets in the way of achieving the change they seek.

Now you can close this critical gap, and the sooner you do so the better. But even if you recognize that you need to strengthen your messages, many of you don’t know where to start. I’ll show you how in this free 60-minute webinar.

Register Now

You’ll learn:

• The three things you have to know before you even start message creation
• The four cornerstones of a nonprofit message platform that connects, with real-life examples
• The specific value of each message element, and how to use it for greatest impact.

You’ll finish the webinar with a clear path to messaging that connects with your target audiences and spurs the actions you need to move your cause forward. Messaging for mission!

Register Now

P.S. Messages that connect are a priority for all organizations and the prerequisite for motivating your base to act. Learn how to craft the most essential message — your tagline. Download the Nonprofit Tagline Report and Database for must-dos, don’t dos, case studies and 5,000 searchable nonprofit tagline examples!

(Watch author interview video: Social media experts Melanie Mathos and Chad Norman share their recommendations to power your social media activities, especially useful for small- and medium-sized organizations.)

There are two major paralysis points that detour orgs from putting social media tools to work most productively. Either you have:

1. Been experimenting (sometimes for a few years at this point) with what you think are the right tools—with some successes and some flat lines—but haven’t integrated this work with the balance of your marketing or found a useful way to prioritize your focus and time; OR you have…
2. A  social media plan  (goals, audiences, integration with other communications channels, content focus), have dabbled with a range of social media tools, but haven’t been able to put the right combo of tactics into play to support your plan.

The great news is that no matter what’s in your way, there’s now a practical, accessible guide to getting you and your leadership past your social media paralysis: 101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits (partner link). What’s unique about this guide to social media—and there are so many out there—is the way authors Melanie Mathos and Chad Norman structure each tactic in a clear and doable five-step sequence: Setup, communicate, engage, fundraise, and measure results.

Melanie and Chad are good friends and savvy social media users who built on their experiences marketing for the sector’s largest software vendor—helping organizations like yours engage in true online conversation (two-way vs. megaphone) and fundraising—to create this realistic and accessible guide.

I was lucky enough to be able to sit down with Melanie and Chad at the Nonprofit Technology Conference last month to hear their guidance for organizations on topics like these:

• Your focal point if you can do just the bare minimum
• Keeping up with the evolving social media landscape
• Tying tactics back to strategy.

Invest a few minutes now to listen to their guidance (author interview video) for your organization, then dive into 101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits.  It’s a proven path to tying your tactical activities back to a strategy, or getting that plan off the ground into productive action.

I want to provide you with more of the tools, training and guidance you want to strengthen your organization’s messages, so you can connect more quickly and strongly with audiences to spur the actions you need.

Please take 5 minutes to complete this survey. Your insights and feedback are crucial!

I’m asking:

• Do your organization’s messages (as a whole) connect with your target audiences?
• What messages do you have in place?
• Are your messages used consistently across audiences and channels (print/digital/conversation)?
• Who’s involved in message creation and approval?

Your survey responses will help me identify the messaging and marketing topics you want to master, and the skills you’d like to strengthen. I’ll also use your feedback to assess if nonprofits like yours have made progress in strengthening their messaging since our initial survey in 2009 (you can review those findings here).

Please respond today, while it’s on your mind! Survey closes June 8.

P.S. We’re hoping to hear from 1,000 nonprofit organizations like yours, and would appreciate your help in hitting that mark.

Please share this link with your colleagues and friends at other nonprofit organizations: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/org-messages  Thanks so much!

Please post your nonprofit marketing position here—FT or PT staff, consulting or internship opportunities. 

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

1) Chief Marketing Officer and
Director of PR and Digital Marketing
Horizons for Homeless Children (Boston, MA)

2) Communications/Public Relations Specialist and Website and Social Media Manager
Futures Without Violence (San Francisco, CA)

3) Communications Associate
The YMCA of Metropolitan Washington (Washington, D.C.)

4) Communications Director, Island Conservation (Santa Cruz, CA)

5) Digital and Online Marketing Manager
Women for Women International (Washington, D.C.)

6) Director of Digital and Direct Marketing, Cross-Cultural Solutions (New York, NY)

7) Interactive Marketing Client Manager and Senior Interactive Marketing Consultant
Beaconfire Consulting (Washington, D.C.)

8) Marketing and Social Media Coordinator, NPower Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)

9) Marketing Fellow, Opportunity Knocks (Atlanta, GA)

10) Marketing Internship (Summer 2012), Wild Apricot (Toronto, Canada)

11) Marketing Specialist, Best Friends Animal Society (Los Angeles, CA)

12) Officer, Marketing and Communications, Calvert Foundation (Bethesda, MD)

13) Online Specialist, ForestEthics (Bellingham, WA or San Francisco, CA)

14) Senior Marketing Strategist, Freelancers Union (New York, NY)

15) Vice President of Communications
The Humane Society of the United States (Gaithersburg, MD)

16) Vice President of Communications & Marketing
Delaware Association of Nonprofit Agencies (Wilmington, DE)

RECENT OPPORTUNITIES

Nonprofit Marketing Jobs—May 11, 2012

P.S. Post your open positions - Submit your jobs here, today!

This week has been a tough one. Barreling back into real life post a great Australia trip to work with nonprofit folks there, but doing it without mobility and with pain due to having broken my foot by running from a saltwater croc missing some stairs while away. More on the many wonders of the Australia trip later.

Right now, everything takes too much thought, maneuvering and time. Being the impatient person that I am, that’s really tough. And the fact that my office is the third floor of our very vertical house, and I do stairs crab-style right now, makes life exhausting on all levels. But enough complaining—this is minor and temporary, and I’m so lucky in that.

What I really want to tell you is about two nonprofit communicators who made my day today. I just finished back-to-back calls, both with folks had contacted me on possible consulting work (always a positive) but the upside goes way beyond that…

The first call was with a staff member of a young organization that is determined to find an effective way to quickly convey its focus and impact in a compelling manner via a messaging that connects. This org works at the systemic/policy level, which makes connection even tougher. But I was amazed by the level of thought, realism and heart the staff clearly invests in their work, including their approach to this search for the right messaging expert. That might sound commonplace but these folks stand out, and the conversation was a professional and personal pleasure. Thank you!

That was followed by a soul-stirring conversation with the dedicated founder of an innovative grassroots org in New Orleans. Mr. X had just moved back to NOLA and purchased a house when Katrina rolled in, demolishing his neighborhood including his new home. He quickly mobilized a response based on some previous disaster response experience as a volunteer, and has nurtured a productive, innovative organization that continues to make an impact today (while so many other Katrina-spurred orgs have collapsed). The challenge is that Mr. X has put heart and soul into this work for nearly seven years now, and needs to take the org to the next step to ensure long-term sustainability, possible replication and to enable him—in the long-term—to return to his primary career. So he contacted me for help in shaping an ambitious but realistic marketing plan to move the org from the “tomorrow” mindset to one that sees further ahead and acts accordingly!

The gig sounds great, and I hope it happens. But what I found really stirring is how Mr. X took the bit he knew about disaster response—plus a ton of energy, passion, native smarts, and people skills—and parlayed it into this organization that, although it needs to progress in terms of organizational structure/approach/planning, has diverse income streams (earned income plus donations/grants), is the only one of its kind in NOLA and has made tremendous impact in a city that needs its help!

So I thank both of these folks for inspiring me, for redirecting my attention from the immediate annoyances in front of me to the larger opportunities ahead for all of us. You made my day!

I was struck hard by this cartoon honoring superstar children’s author Maurice Sendak, who passed away last week. Sendak was an fearlessly innovative storyteller, who introduced previously taboo topics and tone into his work beginning with Where the Wild Things Are. It’s no surprise that the childrens’ publishing establishment didn’t welcome his innovations with open arms, but Sendak persisted with game-changing results.

“When it was published in 1963, the book was hated by critics and banned in libraries. Wild ideas always attract naysayers. But wild ideas are the ones that make a dent. Where the Wild Things Are is one of the most awarded and influential children’s books in history. But too often wild ideas are smothered or diluted before they’ve really had a chance,” says Marketoonist Tom Fishburne.

“IDEO founder Tom Kelley once called the devil’s advocate the single greatest threat to innovation,” continues Fishburne, “because a devil’s advocate encourages idea wreckers to assume the most negative possible perspective. Once those floodgates open, they can drown a new initiative in negativity.”

Here’s what works best when a devil’s advocate surfaces in one of our client organizations:

1. Depersonalize the difference of opinion, staying calm and confident. Devil’s advocates tend to pounce when they see weakness.
2. Pick your battles.
3. For those that really matter, ensure that you have more than just you and the devil’s advocate battling it out. An odd number of discussion participants (three or more) eases decision making.
4. Thank the devil’s advocate for testing the feasibility of your idea.
5. Ask the devil’s advocate for their alternative solution to the problem they’re voicing. It’s far easier to punch holes in someone else’s idea than to come up with a good one of your own, but they might come up with something great.
6. Have proof points ready—models from competitive and colleague organization, stats, stories from peers in the field. Validation trumps opinion every time.

What are your strategies for dealing with devil’s advocates? Please share them here.

P.S. Get more peer guidance on strengthening your organization’s marketing impact with the free Getting Attention Nonprofit Marketing Wisdom Guide.

Please post your nonprofit marketing position here—FT or PT staff, consulting or internship opportunities. 

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

1) Associate Director, Media Relations and Communications
Save the Children (Washington, D.C.)

2) Chief Marketing Officer, buildOn (Stamford, CT)

3) Communications Associate, The Food Trust (Philadelphia, PA)

4) Communications Director, Savory Institute (Boulder, CO)

5) Communications Specialist, EAH Housing (San Rafael, CA)

6) Digital Marketing Manager and Director of Marketing & Communications
National Aquarium (Baltimore, MD)

7) Director of Marketing and Community Engagement, Food Lifeline (Shoreline, WA)

8) Director of Marketing and Development
Catholic Charities of Northwest Florida, Inc. (Pensacola, FL)

9) Manager, Media Strategy, Rainforest Alliance (New York, NY)

10) Marketing & Audience Services Coordinator and Media & Communications Manager
The Virginia Opera (Richmond, VA)

11) Marketing Manager, Jewish Community Center of Chicago (Skokie, IL)

12) Media Relations Specialist, Polaris Project (Washington, D.C.)

13) Officer, Online Communications, Nothing But Nets
United Nations Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

14) Senior Communications Associate, PolicyLink (New York, NY)

15) Senior Manager for Marketing and Outreach
American Institutes for Research (Washington, D.C.)

16) Special Events Specialist, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (New York, NY)

17) Strategic Communications Director, MASCO Inc. (Boston, MA)

18) Web Manager, Housing Works (New York, NY)

RECENT OPPORTUNITIES

Nonprofit Marketing Jobs—May 4, 2012

P.S. Post your open positions - Submit your jobs here, today!

Guest bloggerRobert J. Rosenthal (@volmatchRobert) is VP of Communications & Marketing at VolunteerMatch, the Web’s largest network for volunteer engagement. Their new guide (free), 101 Volunteer Recruitment Secrets, showcases the insights of dozens of volunteer recruiters to share what works.

Part One: 101 Secrets to Great Volunteer Recruitment

Great communications is at the heart of many of the secrets of the most effective volunteer recruiters. In my last post at Getting Attention I featured two such tips – Target your audience where it is and Being responsive can help turn a spark of interest into a flame. So what are some of the other communications tips from 101 Secrets?

Getting to the “Why’s” of a Volunteer Prospect

Even the best volunteer matches on paper might end bailing out mid-project, leaving your organization high and dry. That’s why more than just matching skills, you need to know the greater context of your target audience’s interest.

That is, you need to learn the “why” as much as the “what”. One you know the why’s of your volunteers, you can create Craigslist ads, Facebook status updates and VolunteerMatch listings that speak to the inner goals of likely volunteers.

Jennifer Berry, a volunteer recruiter at Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles, says getting to “why” means trying to find out what’s at the core of a prospect’s interest.  “If a volunteer comes to me because they ‘want to give back,’ it is important for me to find out why that is,” she said. “If they had a specific experience that is bringing them to us, then I want to try and recreate that experience the best I can. If they want to get experience in a particular area, then I do my best to get them plugged in to that area.”

Her secret: Use good listening to align your organization’s volunteer needs with the deep motivations of your volunteers.

Praise in Public

Of course, the best way to engage great volunteers is to keep more of your current volunteers! According to many of our recruitment pros, one tip for rocking retention is to be outspoken and frequent in your recognition of great volunteers.  That’s because public praise fuels volunteer retention while also showing potential volunteer prospects how fun and rewarding it is to serve at your organization.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange Country, NY goes so far as to make current volunteers the face of the organization.  As their volunteer recruiter told us, “That allows the potential volunteer to think to themselves, ‘If they can do it, why can’t I?’”

Just be sure to sound out your volunteers before turning the spotlight on. Some folks view giving back as a private, personal thing.

Volunteer manager Peggy Bush goes a step further and fuses public praise with impact reporting. “I do a weekly email newsletter including which dogs and cats were adopted, new arrivals, thank-yous to whoever helped out that week, and any other news as a way to keep people connected to the shelter and show them that their volunteering makes a difference,” she said.

Their secret: Use success stories to communicate what it’s like to volunteer at your organization.

Just Scratching the Secrets Surface

These are just a few of the recruitment secrets that point to the need for smart communications. Why not check out the rest? Click here to download a free PDF copy of 101 Volunteer Recruitment Secrets.

What are your secrets to great volunteer recruitment? Please share them here.

 P.S. Get more in-depth case studies, templates and tools, and guidance for volunteer recruitment and other nonprofit marketing strategies in the twice-monthly Getting Attention e-update. Subscribe today.

Register Now to Learn this Vital Skill - Seats Filling Fast
How to Stop Striking Flat Notes with Your Target Audiences and
Join the 16% of Nonprofits Whose Messages Resonate and Spur Action

Date: Wednesday, May 30, 2012      Time: 1:00-2:00 PM EDT/10:00-11:00 PM PDT
If you can’t make this time, register anyway. All registrants receive the video recording.
Register Now

You’ve got to connect with your target audience to spur them to action…to give, to sign, to volunteer.

Messages are the way to build relationships. You need to learn how, now. Register today—50% of seats reserved in first week of announcement.   

Without strong messages, it’s impossible to connect. And there’s simply no way you’ll build the mutually-satisfying relationships with passionate supporters you need to meet your organization’s overall goals.

But just 16% of nonprofit messages connect
Survey findings indicate that 84% of nonprofit communicators admit their messages fail to connect with the people they need to engage as donors, partner, volunteers and more. And that poor messaging gets in the way of achieving the change they seek.

Now you can close this critical gap
You can close this gap, and the sooner you do so the better. But even if you recognize that you need to strengthen your messages, many of you don’t know where to start. I’ll show you how in this free 60-minute webinar.

Register Now

You will learn:

• The three things you have to know before you even start message creation
• The four cornerstones of a nonprofit message platform that connects, with real-life examples
• The specific value of each message element, and how to use it for greatest impact.

You’ll finish the webinar with a clear path to messaging that connects with your target audiences and spurs the actions you need to move your cause forward. Messaging for mission!

Register Now

Please post your nonprofit marketing position here—FT or PT staff, consulting or internship opportunities. 

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

1) Associate Director of Communications
City Harvest (New York, NY)

2) Communications Associate
The Nellie Mae Education Foundation (Quincy, MA)

3) Communications Coordinator
RI Coalition Against Domestic Violence (Warwick, RI)

4) Communications Manager (part-time), Equal Rights Advocates (San Francisco, CA)

5) Communications Specialist, Autism Society of North Carolina (Raleigh, NC)

6) Community Manager, The Communications Network (New York, NY)

7) Digital Marketing & Communications Officer, Global Partnerships (Seattle, WA)

8) Email Marketing Manager, Ithaka (New York, NY)

9) Event Planner and Senior Graphic Designer
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (San Francisco, CA)

10) Events Manager, City Year (Philadelphia, PA)

11) Marketing and PR Coordinator, Arts Rock (Nyack, NY)

12) Marketing Associate, Events and Promotions and Special Events Assistant
Roundabout Theatre Company (New York, NY)

13) Marketing Creative Coordinator, Animal Rescue League of Boston (Boston, MA)

14) Senior Marketing Manager and Marketing Manager, Vibes Media (Chicago, IL)

15) Social Media Intern
The National Society of Collegiate Scholars (Washington, D.C.)

16) Social Media Specialist, StudentsFirst (Sacramento, CA)

17) Writer/Communications Assistant, Justice at Stake (Washington, D.C.)

RECENT OPPORTUNITIES

Nonprofit Marketing Jobs—April 27, 2012

P.S. Post your open positions - Submit your jobs here, today!

Welcome back to guest blogger Holly Ross who leads the  Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), working with community members to identify technology trends that are reshaping the nonprofit sector. Brett Meyer, NTEN Communications Director, co-authored this post.

We write all those email messages for one reason: we want people to read them. To that end, we test subject lines, obsess over which images to use, and wordsmith the text down to the very last letter. All that work, just to increase our open- and click through-rates, one percentage point at a time.

I hate to break it to you, but it’s not enough.

You’ve got a new frontier to confront in the search for more effective emails: mobile. ComScore reports that nearly 90 million Americans use their phone to read email—and that number grew by 28% over the past year. Mobile is now; no longer something we need to worry about at some point in the future.

Here at NTEN, we decided it was time to start practicing what we preach so we developed our own mobile-friendly emails and sent them out alongside the regular emails to over 45,000 email addresses over a wo-week period. The messages went out at the same time, with the same subject line and the same content; the only difference was the template – our new mobile-enhanced code against our old version.

The results couldn’t be more clear. 13 of the 14 messages with the mobile template performed better, by an average of 2% increase in open rate, e.g. if the regular template achieved a 20% open rate, the mobile version was 22%. The spread was from 0.6% to 7%; the median improvement was 1.92%.

Luckily, preparing your email to go mobile isn’t as difficult as you might assume. You’ll need to address two main issues: the content and the template. As marketers, you can tackle the content. As for the preview and the email template, anyone comfortable with HTML and a little CSS can tackle the changes you’ll require. Here’s what you’ll need to focus on.

First: Content
Remember when you learned to write for the web? Jakob Nielson taught us to write in short paragraphs, with even shorter sentences, and as many bullet points as possible. Just when you thought you had brevity down to a haiku-inspired art form, mobile challenges us to bring it down again. Take a look at this screen shot of an email I recently received as I see it in my email client:

It looks like a pretty typical message, doesn’t it? Now compare that to the version I see on my mobile phone:

Not so readable! Look at those giant paragraphs with teensy tiny text! It’s certainly possible to read this message on a phone, but you have to work really hard at it, and we all know that our audiences don’t want to work hard at reading an email.

Second: Template
If you’ve read email on your mobile – and I’m pretty confident you have – you know it can be a cramped experience. NTEN’s messages on an iPhone pretty much required zooming in:

To make it easier to read, we applied some style information, as suggested by Cameron LeFevre of M+R Strategic Services. Essentially, we just hid the (non-critical) information in the righthand sidebar:

Ah, that’s better: no distractions. (As a bonus, you can see how the extra table information that’s generating the preview text looks in the actual message, right up at the top.)

Cameron’s already written up the step-by-step for that, so I suggest you follow his advice.

So, are you ready to start improving your open rates by 2%? Of course, your mileage may vary, but we guarantee that going mobile is an investment worth making.

 More mobile email guidance here:

• Our Son Trayvon: Make your email subject lines as powerful as this one
• Email Subject Lines: 6 Cardinal Sins to Avoid

 P.S. Get more in-depth case studies, templates and tools, and guidance for nonprofit marketing success in the twice-monthly Getting Attention e-update. Subscribe today.

Please post your nonprofit marketing position here—FT or PT staff, consulting or internship opportunities. 

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

1) Communications Coordinator
International Center for Transitional Justice
(New York, NY)

2) Communications Director
Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (Berea, KY)

3) Communications Director
Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast (West Palm Beach, FL)

4) Communications Manager, The Alliance for Health Reform (Washington, D.C.)

5) Communications Manager, My Heart My Life
American Heart Association (Dallas, TX)

6) Database and Online Communications Manager, TransForm (Oakland, CA)

7) Deputy Communications Manager and Social Media Campaign Specialist
Advancement Project (Washington, D.C.)

8) Digital Content Manager, Washington Trails Association (Seattle, WA)

9) Digital Marketing Manager and Director of Marketing Analytics
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (White Plains, NY)

10) Director of Advocacy Media, The Future 500 (San Francisco, CA)

11) Electronic Communications Specialist
Maryland State Education Association (Annapolis, MD)

12) Manager of Marketing and Events
Big Sister Association of Greater Boston (Boston, MA)

13) Marketing and Social Media Coordinator
Jewish Federation of Cleveland (Cleveland, OH)

14) Online Communications Manager, NPower Inc. (Brooklyn, NY)

15) Recruitment, Marketing and Communications Coordinator
Adoption & Foster Care Mentoring (Boston, MA)

16) Social Media and Partner Outreach Manager, Just Label It (Washington, D.C.)

17) Social Media Intern (Summer), Food and Water Watch (Washington, D.C.)

RECENT OPPORTUNITIES

Nonprofit Marketing Jobs—April 20, 2012

P.S. Post your open positions - Submit your jobs here, today!

Guest blogger Robert J. Rosenthal (@volmatchRobert) is VP of Communications & Marketing at VolunteerMatch, the Web’s largest network for volunteer engagement. Their new guide (free), 101 Volunteer Recruitment Secrets, showcases the insights of dozens of volunteer recruiters to share what works.

If you know the fundamentals of your work but it still feels like you’re missing out on a secret to effective volunteer engagement, we understand.

It can be lonely being the one responsible for volunteers. All around the organization the rest of your colleagues are dug in doing their work, setting program goals, delivering services, raising funds. Meanwhile you’re trying to figure out the best way to align a prospective volunteer’s need with your own program goals.

You may also be an “accidental expert” on volunteer engagement whose people skills have been recognized but not necessarily rewarded with resources.

Recently VolunteerMatch asked our network of 80,000 nonprofits about their secrets to effective volunteer recruitment. Many tips tips later, we have this guide – a wealth of volunteer recruitment knowledge gathered from nonprofit volunteer managers and local experts all over the world.

Readers of Getting Attention won’t be surprised to see just how many secrets are about communications best practices! Here a few of my favorites:

Go Where the Volunteers Are

Most nonprofits can’t afford billboards or TV ads to advertise volunteer needs. Fortunately you don’t need to. To get the attention of great volunteers, your message merely needs to be in the right places at the right times.

For volunteer coordinator Marjorie Williams, her best prospecting doesn’t start at her organization’s website or Facebook page, but out in the community. “We put bulletin announcements in the local church bulletins,” she said.

Likewise, Tanya Munro Erway says her creative recruiting includes a blurb in her realtor’s newsletter which goes out to thousands of area resident and posting flyers at ethnic gourmet food stores for a specific language need.

Their secret: Target your audience where it already is.

Strike While the Iron’s Hot

I once had the most amazing volunteer reach out to me. A whip-smart former Accenture consultant, she saw one of my ads online and immediately reached out. She was perfect – so too bad I was on a team retreat! By the time I dug her email out of my in-box four days later, her interest had cooled – on my organization and on me.

That’s why Joan Malley, manager of Harbor House in Rochester, NY, has a 24-hour turn-around rule. “This doesn’t allow time for their enthusiasm to cool off,” she says.

Quick response can also turn incidental interest into something deeper. Stephanie Rokich, a volunteer recruiter at a National MS Society chapter in Salt Lake City, follows up with anyone who has expressed interest in her organization because you never know. “When we post about an upcoming event on Facebook and people ‘like’ it, I immediately send them a message asking if they are interested in volunteering,” she says.

Their secret: Use responsiveness to turn the spark of interest into a fire.

OK, 99 Secrets Still to Go!

This is just one of the recruitment secrets that point to the need for smart communications. Why not check out the rest? Download a free PDF copy of 101 Volunteer Recruitment Secrets.

What are your secrets to great volunteer recruitment? Share them here.

P.S. Get more peer guidance on volunteer recruitment and other ways to strengthen your organization’s marketing impact with our no-charge 2012 Nonprofit Marketing Wisdom Guide,

Nothing thrills me more than travel. So what a terrific surprise it was to be invited by the folks at Connecting Up Australia to speak on messaging and train on marketing planning at their annual conference next week. My husband, Sean, and daughter Charlotte are joining me on this adventure so we can spend a bit of time vising with kangaroos and koalas, and we’ve just arrived down under!

Australian nonprofits are facing the same challenges we are: Cuts in government funding, decreases in donations, and a more competitive environment overall. In fact, challenges for Australia’s nonprofits have grown even more dramatically than ours have, as in the past most charity funding came directly from the government, so nonprofit marketers there are still building the skills they need to motivate supporters to give, volunteer and advocate for their causes.

By the way, face-to-face speaking and training is something I’m doing more and more of, and it’s one of my passions. There’s nothing as satisfying as guiding nonprofit communicators and fundraisers like you to build their skills and their confidence. It’s immensely satisfying, and I always learn a lot from the participants.

Here’s more information on my speaking and training services on topics as diverse as marketing planning, storytelling, integrated campaigns, relevance and, of course, message development, plus testimonials of those who have participated and/or listened.  Please email me if you’d like to talk about a speaking or training engagement. Thank you!

Please post your nonprofit marketing position here—FT or PT staff, consulting or internship opportunities. 

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

1) Communications and Events Coordinator
Community of Hope (Washington, D.C.)

2) Communications and New Media Director
The Center for the Next Generation (San Francisco, CA)

3) Communications Associate, Living Goods (San Francisco, CA)

4) Communications Coordinator and Communications Intern
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (New York, NY)

5) Digital Membership Strategist, The Nature Conservancy (Washington, D.C.)

6) Director of Marketing, Lutheran World Relief (Baltimore, MD)

7) Interactive Marketing Associate, Doctors Without Borders (New York, NY)

8) International Online Marketing Manager, Action Against Hunger (New York, NY)

9) Manager, Communications and Events
United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta (Atlanta, GA)

10) Marketing Associate and Marketing Manager
American Association for Cancer Research (Philadelphia, PA)

11) Online Communications Specialist, Bread for the World (Washington, D.C.)

12) Program Associate, Communications and Events
Partnership for Public Service (Washington, D.C.)

13) Public Affairs Specialist, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Herndon, VA)

14) Regional Communications Manager and Web/Graphic Designer
Sierra Club (San Francisco, CA)

15) Senior Marketing Manager, American Heart Association (Dallas, TX)

16) Special Events Director, Common Ground Community (New York, NY)

17) Writer and Editor, Idealist.org (New York, NY)

RECENT OPPORTUNITIES

Nonprofit Marketing Jobs—April 13, 2012

P.S. Post your open positions - Submit your jobs here, today!