Thanks to co-guest-bloggers Amy Sample Ward and Allyson Kapin. Allyson is acclaimed for her leadership role in technology and social media, and runs Rad Campaign. Amy is the Membership Director for NTEN and blogs for Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Getting the attention of your supporters and engaging them in your campaigns on one platform is hard enough. But the key to campaign success comes in engaging people across platforms—email, social media, your website, and even offline. In the just-released Social Change Anytime Everywhere: How to Implement Online Multichannel Strategies to Spark Advocacy, Raise Money, and Engage your Community, Allyson Kapin and Amy Sample Ward guide nonprofit staffers through developing and powerful integrated approaches to asking for money, time or support.

To start, Amy and Allyson recommend you take these four simple steps to ensure your next multichannel campaign generates the most attention (and action) possible:

1. Coordinate messages across channels to track response

For example, if you’re releasing an email appeal, post the same call to action on one of your social media channels for a short time after the email goes out. Make sure to measure any change in response to see whether that’s worthwhile for your organization.

Caveat: Since each channel has a different tone, style, and posting length, it’s important that you repurpose calls to actions that are appropriate for each channel.

2. A/B test your email subject line before sending

Even if you aren’t using a sophisticated email marketing tool, A/B testing is something you can and should do regularly. Say you are launching a national campaign and you have 10,000 email addresses on your list. Take 5,000 of those names and split that list in half, sending the same message with different subject lines to each half. Check results in 24 hours, then send an email to the balance of the list with the subject lines that generated more opens and completed action rates.

Remember, you can learn only when you test variations on one element at a time.

3. Privately invite community members to participate

You know who they are—those community members who are always the first to engage with you on Facebook, retweet you on Twitter, and share your campaigns and events to their friends. Start reaching out regularly to these superstar fans to encourage even more engagement. If they’re on Twitter, send them a Direct Message thanking them for their retweets. Or even email them sample social media content that they can share on different channels, plus a huge thank you.

4. Set up a Campaign Calendar

A campaign calendar is one of the most important parts of multichannel planning. Laying out your timeline with a calendar helps you shape an engagement ladder for your constituents and highlights required staffing and resources.

A productive calendar outlines a schedule for drafting, editing, and implementing each campaign element and considers the goals, audiences, and channels for each component, including:

• Email appeals and graphics
• Welcome series for new activists and donors
• Website action and donation landing pages, graphical callout boxes, and homepage hijacks
• Direct mail
• Telemarketing
• Social media strategies and messaging
• Text messaging if appropriate
• Online or print advertising to promote the campaign, if appropriate.
• Fun interactives that don’t ask donors for money
• A/B testing (version a vs. version b) of a subject line,  webpage, appeal, or message to see which is more effective
• Segmenting your list by state, issue area, donation amount, etc.
• Thank-you messages and campaign updates

Looking for more multichannel campaign tips? Social Change Anytime Everywhere is packed with the latest resources, case studies, and best practices to help you achieve your campaign goals.

Thanks, Amy and Allyson.

Please post your nonprofit marketing position here for full-time or part-time staff, consulting or internship opportunities.

New Opportunities

Associate Director of Integrated Content Management, The American Optometric Association (St. Louis, MO)

Campaigns Communications Manager,  Free Press
(Florence, MA)

Chief Marketing Officer, Malaria No More (Flexible)

Communications Director, The Pachamama Alliance (San Francisco Bay Area)

Director of Online Fundraising, Sierra Club (San Francisco, CA)

Director of  Web Development & Strategy, Applied Research Center (New York, NY or Oakland, CA)

Marketing & Communications Internships,  U.Va. Innovation Marketing & Communications (Charlottesville, VA)

Marketing Data Analyst, American Red Cross (Washington DC)

Media Relations Manager, Global Policy Solutions (Washington DC)

Operations Director, Berskshire Taconic Community Foundation (Sheffield, MA)

Parent Marketing & Communications Associate, Poly Prep Country Day School
(Brooklyn, NY)

Senior Associate for Public Health, Burness Communications (Washington, DC)

Web Editor/Producer, Care2 Causes (Redwood City, CA)

Web Producer, UNICEF (New York, NY)

Writer, NeighborWorks America (Washington DC)

RECENT OPPORTUNITIES

Nonprofit Marketing Jobs—May 13, 2013

P.S. Submit your open positions here!

Your supporters and partners are one of the most productive marketing channels you have, and one of the least expensive. But I see so few orgs that ask supporters to spread the word on vital asks, and even fewer who make it easy (and far more likely) for them to do so.

This “spreading the word” strategy has been top of mind lately for, as it’s core to the program launch we’re marketing for a huge and complex New England human services org. I was  surprised to learn that these folks had NEVER asked supporters to serve as marketing messengers. A huge opportunity missed but one to be harnessed a.s.a.p., and we’re doing just that.

So the pump was primed when I received an email from Aaron Bramley, CEO and Co-Founder of Lights.Camera.Help.

Aaron’s warm, brief email (full email here, with my annotations) covers all the bases, as he asks me to get the word out on the submission deadline for the Lights.Camera.Help Film Festival. He:

1. Rekindles our connection in a flash, by referencing a digital storytelling contest we’re both judging. If you don’t have an established connection, make one!
2. Reminds me about the subject at hand—the submission deadline for the Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival which I’ve previously spread the word on—and current goal (to boost submissions by COB today).
3. Asks—clearly and directly—for my help in spreading the word to generate more submissions.
4. Makes it easy for me to spread the word by providing cut-and-paste content for tweets, facebook and LinkedIn posts and a full press release.
5. Thanks me!

So go ahead and ask your donors, volunteers, friends, colleague organizations, even staff and freelancers/firms. People like to help, especially when it’s easy. And when you ask right, you’ll exponentially expand your reach AND your supporters and partners will feel great about helping you do so. Win-win!

Take a close look at Aaron’s email to me, and use it as a model for your ask to spread the word. Please let me know how it goes.

What works best for you in asking your network to spread the word, and what doesn’t? Please share your experiences and guidance here. Thanks!

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.

Nonprofit Storytelling #1-8

I’m a sucker for stark contrast. It’s one of the best learning tools ever, and today I’m drawing on examples from  Mass Mentoring Partnership (MMP).

The Challenge
MMP supports and strengthens mentoring programs in Massachusetts and faces this marketing challenge common to every organization that doesn’t provide direct services:

• How to show the org’s unique value to current and prospective:
  • Mentoring program partners—call to action (CTA) “strengthen your programor”
  • Funders—CTA “get involved”
  • Mentors—CTA “be a mentor”
• But differentiate MMP from what mentoring programs do
• And demonstrate how MMP helps strengthen programs and, in turn, how that growth benefits the children served by MMP partner programs.

This is a classic connect-the-dots challenge, and you’ll see in a moment how story trumps description in achieving all three goals.

MMP’s Original Approach—Purely Descriptive
Here’s how MMP was conveying its impact (and the need for its work) to prospective and current funders, mentoring programs and mentors (full-size image for easy reading here):

It’s no surprise that this approach wasn’t motivating target audiences to care or act.

The Solution: 5-Star Storytelling That Is Meaningful, Memorable & Motivational
How does this approach—focusing on Christina, the mentee, and backing up to connect the dots to United Way and then MMP—strike you?

Talk about compelling. This story strikes me hard and makes me want to 1) know more and 2) do what I can to generate more success stories like this. Same for you? Thumbs up for this 5-star people story MMP. You’ve done a great job of connecting the dots.

What a week it was! Among other adventures last week, I met and learned with famed fundraiser Roger Craver at the fabulous Engage Conference.

Roger is a guy who doesn’t hold back. He shares what he knows, sees and suggests with absolutely no restraint.

You may agree with him or not, but his bold, evidence-based recommendations are a huge gift to the rest of us. Roger always gives you something that’s worthy of consideration. Whether you follow his guidance or not, the process of consideration itself will move your fundraising forward.

Roger’s main message today is that organizations like yours are losing 7 of 10 donors every year due to fairy-tale fundraising. Here’s what you should do about it:

Escape from what’s holding you back
Shift your focus away from these time- and budget-wasters. They are the greatest threats to successful fundraising:

• Relying on the cost of fundraising/overhead to assess organizational success
• Perfecting the old, old thing (like the renewal envelope teaser and email p.s., ugh!)
• Testing in an improper or half-a___ way—Sloppy testing will lead you in the wrong direction every time, but there’s lots of guidance on doing it right
• Isolating key players in silos—No wonder supporters get confused by divergent (sometimes conflicting) messages and look and feel when the disconnect is built into your organization.

Pivot towards your donors
Your only chance of getting to happily-ever-after fundraising is 24/7 focus on donor loyalty, says Roger. Here’s his list of key success factors:

• Consistent donor communications—possible only when silos are blown to smithereens
• Investment in donor services
• All-org fundraising team—everyone sells, all the time
• Staff training and appreciation—to ensure team success, and minimize the dismal turnover rate in the field (40% of development directors plan to escape from fundraising within the next two years).

Are you trapped in fairy-tale fundraising? What’s keeping you there? Or, if you’ve escaped, what was your escape route? Please share your questions or your pathways to freedom here.

Next up—Roger drills down into the fundamental changes in mindsets, methods and metrics essential to your organization’s survival and growth.

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 for full-time or part-time staff, consulting or internship opportunities.

New Opportunities

Communications Assistant-AmeriCorps VISTA, Rising Tide Capital (Jersey City, NJ)

Communications & Development Volunteer, Donors Forum (Chicago, IL)

Communications Director, New Profit (Cambridge, MA)

Communications Intern, New Yorkers for Parks (New York, NY)

Communications Manager, Equal Justice Works (Washington DC)

Design Associate, Public Interest GRFX (Philadelphia, PA)

Digital Communications Manager, Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice
(New York, NY)

Director of Communications/Media Strategist, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (New York,  NY)

Director of Marketing Communications and Marketing & Support Coordinator, Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (Philadelphia, PA)

Marketing & Communications Director, Association of Performing Arts Presenters (Washington DC)

Media & Communications Editor, Society of Architectural Historians (Chicago, IL)

Social Media and Content Manager, Breast Cancer Research Foundation (New York, NY)

Staff Writer, Ocean Conservancy (Washington DC)

Temporary Web Content Manager, Union of Concerned Scientists (Cambridge, MA)

RECENT OPPORTUNITIES

Nonprofit Marketing Jobs—May 7, 2013

P.S. Submit your open positions here!

Guest blogger, Chapin Cole is a proud Millennial who works in nonprofit development in the California Bay Area. She blogs on getting successful (yet stress-free) as a nonprofit staffer.

Lately, there’s been attention on the idea that nonprofit organizations should take more risks. There’s a stigma against risk in the sector because of a myriad of reasons, including discouragement from funders, the stereotype that nonprofits don’t have sophisticated operations, and the important services that are at stake.
As a Millennial, I just want to say, wake up! I’m not going to pay attention to you if you’re not doing anything innovative.

Big problems will not be solved by maintaining the status quo. Inventions, movements, and ideas come by having a vision for a better world and thinking creatively about how to get there. Nothing new is achieved by doing the same thing over and over.

As a Millennial, I’m not interested in you repeating what’s worked in the past. While I appreciate working smart, I don’t appreciate doing the same thing over and over when everything else around you changes. I don’t appreciate wasted resources and time spent on what worked before for the sake of maintaining. I’m interested in you having that vision and doing something new to get there.

The only way I will support you is if I feel you are the expert on the issue you are working on. And experts don’t just do what the person before them did. They bring their fresh perspective to the table, and they make change. Through innovation.

So how do you prove you’re an innovator? If you don’t have the capacity to demonstrate your innovation in programs, innovate in your fundraising, marketing, operations… anything. This proves to me that you can think outside the box about solving problems, too, which is why I will support you.

What are some ways that you have seen nonprofits prove their willingness to innovate? Did that make you more or less inclined to support them? Please share  your ideas here.

P.S. Get more in-depth guidance from Nancy and your peers in the field,  in the twice-monthly Getting Attention e-update. Subscribe today.

Just trying to keep you on your toes—our job post series will return to its regularly scheduled slot next Monday!

Please post your nonprofit marketing position here for full-time or part-time staff, consulting or internship opportunities.

New Opportunities

Associate Graphic Designer, Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY)

Campaign Communications Manager, Free Press (Florence, MA)

Communications Associate, Sabin Vaccine Institute (Washington DC)

Communications Associate, The Foundation Center (New York, NY)

Communications Intern, The McCormick Foundation (Chicago, IL)

Digital Communications Coordinator, Canyon Ranch Institute (Tucson, AZ)

Digital Content Director, Food and Water Watch (Washington DC)

Digital Director, New Hampshire Public Radio (Concord, NH)

Digital Strategy Assistant, Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research
(New York, NY)

Director of Communications, Students for Reform (New York, NY)

Marketing Coordinator, Autism Treatment Center of America (Sheffield, MA)

Online Communications Manager, Henry Street Settlement (New York, NY)

Online Marketing Coordinator, Gotts Advertising (New York, NY)

Online Marketing Manager, World of Children Award (Pleasanton, CA)

Senior Digital Media Strategist, Advancement Project (Washington DC)

Senior Director of Communications, Presbyterian Church USA (Louisville, KY)

Social Media Intern, AARP (Washington DC)

Web Producer/Online Communications Manager, Pesticide Action Network North America (Oakland, CA)

RECENT OPPORTUNITIES

Nonprofit Marketing Jobs—April 29, 2013

P.S. Submit your open positions here!

What if you were skilled at the most critical marketing process necessary to engage your target audiences with clarity and purpose?

What if you mastered a proven 11-step message development process so you had a positioning statement, key messages and a sparkling tagline that connected with your supporters and energized your staff, board and volunteers?

And what if you could perform this marketing transformation with expert guidance in just 6 weeks?

Well now you can, starting Tuesday, May 7. But there are just three seats left… Learn more here.

Note: No worries if you’re unable to make the first live webinar on May 7. I’ll guide you into the program and webinar recordings (video and audio) including all Q&As, plus the slide deck, will be available for review at your convenience.

Please join me for the Tagline Focus Project— I’ll serve as your coach as you learn to shape messages that connect your organization with the people who can move your mission forward.

Message mastery is within your grasp. You have the mind and creativity, budget and time it takes—you can’t afford not to. And I have a way to take you there via this small group learning program.

You’ll finish the Tagline Focus Project with a tagline ready to launch and the skills, tested process, tools and templates to build out an engaging message platform for your organization, and its programs, services, events and campaigns. This ability is vital to your organization, and to increasing your own professional value!

I encourage you to go ahead and register right now for the Tagline Focus Project. Just three seats remain.

Learn more here.

I was truly moved last week when I stumbled on this wonderful hug-in-a-video created by ONE to thank volunteers during Volunteer Appreciation Week.  This fun but heartfelt four minutes quickly conveys how much the ONE folks value their volunteers. It’s an absolute winner.

“We got very positive feedback from our top vols (so much that we sent it to our high-action takers, offline action takers as well). It’s a [powerful] tactic that we’ve seen other orgs do really well,” says Garth Moore, ONE’s US Digital Director.

What I really respond to here (and I bet ONE’s volunteers did too) is the warmth and genuineness of the featured staff members.  The video opens up the organization to introduce the people behind the scenes. Putting your people  (beneficiaries, current supporters and more) in front of supporters and prospects is the clearest path you have to building long-term, loyal relationships—each one of us relates to other people first, causes and organizations later. In fact, it’s the faces/smiles/voices/gestures behind the thanks is what makes this video so meaningful and memorable.

I urge you to take a radical leap from the staid thank yous most of you are using to try something more personal and inventive. ONE’s approach is a great model for your organization’s thank yous—for your volunteers, but also for the other folks that help you move your mission forward—donors, program participants, staff, board members and probably others!

But don’t wait for next year’s volunteer appreciation week. Start right now with your own conversations (start with your own team), and by suggesting your team members start appreciation conversations whenever they have the chance.

I’ll guide you through building your appreciation campaign in a follow up post. Stay tuned!

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

We’re long-time members of the local JCC (Jewish Community Center, sort of a Jewish Y). Our daughter was there for daily pre-K care but now we’re there mostly for the pool and gym rather than the Jewishly-oriented cultural and learning programs.

Big Change: New members with diverse cultural perspectives
There’s been a big change at the JCC over recent years, as the membership has grown to include many who are not Jewish. When the JCC needed to funded a major facilities redo a few years ago,  the leadership decided to invite the larger (i.e. beyond Jewish)  community to join—focusing on use of the athletic facilities—and made changes, such as opening on Shabbat, to support their wants.

Challenge: How to connect with new members without losing the base
Brilliant idea and it’s worked well, but I watched eagerly for the JCC to revise their core messages (shaped to a shared Jewish context) too.

How could the JCC re-shape those messages to be accessible to members who aren’t Jewish, without losing the foundation of shared Jewish culture on which the JCC is built? Tough task.

Nothing is more basic to the operations of a community center than the process of making a complaint. And the JCC has always had a front-and-center complaint form—displayed at the front desk to be available at entry and exit. That’s what I’ve been watching.

Traditionally, this form has been titled Kvell and Kvetch (Yiddish for sharing joy and pride, and complaining). Great idea to soften a complaint (few of us go out of our way to share our pleasure when things are done well) with a bit of humor.

But that message was absolutely inaccessible to the non-Jewish members. In fact, its very existence sent a “you’re not one of us” message. Ugh!

Solution: Reference the traditional but make it accessible to all, with a smile

I was thrilled to see this revised form (at top) early this year. The JCC team has retained a bit of “the old” in this core message but makes it accessible to new members, all with a gentle sense of humor.

Kudos to these communications artists for a simple but effective message reframing that is a warm invitation “in” to all.

What challenges have you faced (or face now) in matching your messages with your people? Please share your challenges, or the solutions you’ve developed, here.

P.S. Get 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 for full-time or part-time staff, consulting or internship opportunities.

New Opportunities

Chief Marketing Officer, Conservation International (Alexandria, VA)

Communications Director  and Media Relations Manager, Friends of the Earth (Washington DC)

Communications Director, Service Women’s Action Network (New York, NY)

Communications Director, Citizen Engagement Laboratory (Berkley, CA)

Communications Officer, Auschwitz Institute (New York, NY)

Digital Communications Coordinator, The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts
(Hatfield, MA)

Digital Content Specialist,  Planned Parenthood  (Washington DC)

Director of Communications, Center for Democracy and Technology (Washington DC)

Director of Communications, Common Sense Media (San Francisco, CA)

Director of Communications, Education Pioneers (San Francisco, CA)

Director of Marketing, Clean Energy Works (Portland, Oregon)

Interactive Marketing Consultant, Beaconfire (Arlington, VA)

New Media Online Campaign Manager, SEIU.org (Washington DC)

Vice President of Marketing & Communications, National Summer Learning Association (Baltimore, MD)

Vice President of Marketing & Communications, Alliance for a Healthier Generation
(New York, NY)

RECENT OPPORTUNITIES

Nonprofit Marketing Jobs—April 22, 2013

P.S. Submit your open positions here!

Nonprofit Storytelling # 1-7

It’ll take you about two minutes to read this. Do you think you’ll make it? 

Now’s the time to join the Tagline Focus Project…
Launch a motivating, memorable tagline in just 6 weeks for your organization, program, service, campaign or event.  It’ll help you connect quickly to increase donations and other desired actions.

The Tagline Focus Project is a small group and one-to-one online training program that leads you through researching, crafting and launching an organizational tagline (or one for your program, advocacy or fundraising campaign, or special event. You get a personalized learning experience with me and finish with a tagline, ready to use, for just $797—a $200 savings off the normal rate when you register by April 23 at midnight.

You’ll also get:

• The hands-on, expert guidance you need to craft more powerful messages
• Clear understanding of your target audiences’ wants, values and habits
• Mastery of the message development process, and the tested process, tools and templates to help you develop more relevant messages for your organization, programs and campaigns
• A team of effective, focused messengers—your colleagues.

I hope you’ll  join me! It’s an energizing, positive way to use the summer, and I offer a 100% guarantee that you’ll be satisfied with your results.
Register now – seats are filling and the special offer ends at midnight April 23. 

P.S. Here’s what a recent Tagline Focus Project participant shared with me:

Learn more now