With 4.5 million views and counting, the Pink Glove Dance is the result of a idea simple enough — and fun enough — that even busy hospital staff could take part in the project. And if they can do it, you can do it.

My ambivalence about the Pink Ribbon industry notwithstanding, the video works. It works not because it’s particularly brilliant, or features inspired cinematography. The Pink Glove Dance works because it’s authentic and it makes us smile.

On top of its stated goal of raising breast cancer awareness, the video is a great marketing piece for the hospital, the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center. The video gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility, and the images of cleaning staff, cooks, lab techs and receptionists getting their groove on reminds us that health care relies upon far more than than doctors and nurses.

Now if a serious, bureaucratic hospital can put together a silly video drawing attention to their cause, so can you. Grab a camera, brainstorm an idea or two, and start rolling!

YouTube is chock full of spoof ads, most of them awful. This morning I watched one that was surprisingly well made, if not particularly clever. The ad was a Toronto Maple Leafs-themed spoof on another Hogtown creation, the award-winning Dove Evolution video that drew attention to the deceptive beauty of the fashion industry.

Around the same time I was catching up on the Ralph Lauren photoshop scandal — what a sick yet well-deserved mess that has become. My morning browsing eventually got me thinking: how am I lying to my audience?

Now, I don’t believe I’ve pumped plus-sized shams out of my MacBook. But let’s not deceive ourselves. Even in the nonprofit world, we are susceptible to acts of exaggeration.

So join me and take this opportunity to review your marketing materials and see what information might be a tad doctored, touched up, or based on truthiness. I hope you’re not telling any whoppers, but don’t be surprised to discover inflated statistics, overstated challenges, or a touch of hyperbole.

Even the most innocent fibs can leave you exposed and vulnerable to criticism, and may jeopardize the trust of your supporters. The work you do is impressive enough without the need to embellish, so focus on communicating with fairness and accuracy. Your audience will thank you for it.

For your entertainment, here’s the slapshot spoof of the Dove Evolution video.

And here’s the original, award-winning spot.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, they say. We’ve all heard this advice before. But should we listen?

Flickr photo by robertpaulyoung.

The problem is, the Small Stuff can make or break your organization. Paying attention to the Small Stuff shows that you take your cause seriously. The Small Stuff shows that you care. And if you don’t care deeply enough about your cause to Sweat the Small Stuff, why should anyone else?

In an age when the public attention span is short—and their purse strings even shorter—you can’t afford to neglect any detail, no matter how small it may seem. Each touchpoint with your audience needs to reflect your brand and communicate your passion to your cause.

Is your copy ever sloppy? Do you always respond to comments on your Facebook page? Is it hard to unsubscribe from your newsletter? Have you tweaked your landing pages?

These rough edges that can distract from your message and represent a lost opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your audience. We can’t always be perfect, but we should strive for consistency.

What Small Stuff can you find to improve upon?

Facebook may have made Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire, but email is still king. Despite the rapid growth of online social networking, email has three times the reach, according to a new Forrester survey.

Even a space monkey could build beautiful newsletters using a service like Mad Mimi.

An email newsletter should hold a prominent role in every nonprofit’s communications strategy. The tools you use to create and send your message have a huge impact on whether it ever ends up in your recipients’ inboxes and how likely they are to read and act on it.

If you’re sending newsletters from your regular email account, the odds of being blacklisted are uncomfortably high. And if you’re building your own HTML newsletters from scratch, you’re probably wasting your time.

Hosted email marketing services are your best bet for quickly producing newsletters that are both pretty and powerful. There are a whack of great features common to many of these services that will help you:

Save time: most hosted services are so easy to use that a space monkey could put together an attractive, easy-to-read newsletter in minutes. Schedule your messages to send in the future, or even set up a drip campaign.

Track your emails: you’ll benefit from stats on open, bounce and unsubscribe rates, and can easily compare your campaigns to gauge effectiveness. Most services often useful charts, easy data exports, and integration with Google Analytics.

Manage your lists: easily add and remove individual subscribers or quickly import entire contact lists. They’ll handle your bounces and unsubscribe requests for you, and offer cut-and-paste forms for your website. Running split tests is a dream.

Be responsible: ensure your messages comply with spam legislation with features like confirmed opt-in, one-click unsubscribe, and removal of duplicate entries.

Have fun: many of these services have a playful interface and are a pleasure to use. You’ll look forward to crafting your messages and tracking the results once they’re sent.

Who’s who in email marketing

Now that you see a hosted service is the way to go, you’ve got a handful of good options. My personal pick is Mad Mimi. Along with a surprisingly intuitive interface and pricing that can’t be beat, they have the greatest customer service of any company I’ve ever done business with. (Thanks Dean and Gary!)

If Mimi ever croaked, I’d hook up with Emma. Her services are bit steeper, but she plants five trees for every new customer she receives, makes microloans to entrepreneurs in the developing world, and gives away twenty five accounts to deserving charities each year.

There’s also MailChimp, who offers a free library of email marketing guides to anyone who’s interested. When it comes to solid marketing advice, these guys don’t monkey around. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Now if you’re looking for oodles of features and full-service support — or your company frowns upon suppliers with funky, unique names — you might want to take a look at the pricier plans offered by Constant Contact and Bronto.

Many of these services offer free basic accounts to get you started, so sign up and start playing around. Once you see how fun and easy email marketing can be you’ll never send a hand coded email from Outlook again!

Disclaimer: I take part in the Mad Mimi affiliate program — but my love for her is true, I swear!