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GUEST POST // Creating a Digital Style Guide: 4 Tips for Your Nonprofit
In order for your nonprofit to engage supporters and bring in funds, crafting a solid marketing plan is essential. While your organization’s exact content strategy will vary somewhat based on your audience, you’ll likely be able to reach large numbers of supporters through digital marketing channels like your website, email, and social media.
Online engagement with nonprofits has been increasing in recent years. But with the amount and variety of information that potential supporters have access to on the internet, your organization will need to work harder to stand out from similar nonprofits and promote your cause.
To make your marketing reflect your nonprofit in a cohesive, memorable way, you’ll need to establish a distinct brand, which encompasses the messaging you use across all platforms as well as the look and feel of your marketing materials. Putting together a digital style guide will help keep your organization’s branding consistent from one platform to the next and tie each piece of content you create back to your overall digital strategy.
In this article, we’ll walk through four tips for creating an effective digital style guide:
Define your nonprofit’s messaging clearly.
Understand your organization’s audience(s).
Highlight visual elements of your branding.
Take all your marketing channels into consideration.
GUEST POST // 5 Year-End Virtual Fundraising Ideas
The end of the year is the perfect time to amp up your fundraising strategy. With so many holiday-themed opportunities and giving days, your nonprofit can significantly increase its revenue and finish out the year strong.
As a nonprofit professional, you understand how much work and planning can go into an event fundraiser, from booking a venue to coordinating catering. Plus, with so many people traveling during the holidays, it can be hard to nail down a time when the most people would be able to attend. But, did you know that you can make the process much easier by planning a virtual campaign?
A virtual fundraiser can be just as—or even more—engaging than an in-person event and offers your supporters the flexibility to participate from anywhere in the world. This way, you can expand your nonprofit’s reach and make the fundraising process more convenient for you and your donors.
GUEST POST // 4 Donation Tools to Maximize the Donor Cultivation Cycle
The donor cultivation cycle is a model that represents the continuous process of identifying new prospects, turning them into donors, and launching stewardship strategies to retain them and bring them closer to your nonprofit.
Essentially, donor cultivation is an exercise in relationship building—and the art of effective relationship building depends on a variety of tools and best practices. For example, a robust donor communication plan is one of the cornerstones of donor cultivation and, subsequently, continued success for your nonprofit.
Fortunately, you don’t have to tackle the tough task of donor cultivation without help. There are plenty of software solutions you can leverage. In particular, we’ll focus on the following donation tools that will help streamline cultivation for your nonprofit:
Nonprofit Payment Processor
Online Donation Page
Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Platform
Matching Gifts Database
These donation tools will allow you to more effectively bring in online donations. Additionally, you can leverage their unique benefits to strengthen your cultivation strategies, steward donors, and retain support.
GUEST POST // How to Use Your Website to Engage Supporters: 3 Tips
Your website is a core location where supporters will take action, whether they’re donating, signing petitions, or attending virtual events. Every single time someone lands on your site, it’s a conversion opportunity.
But is your website working as well as it can to meet your supporters’ online engagement expectations and to inspire them to take action for your cause?
In this guide, we’ll consider aspects of the supporter's digital experience, including finding your site, exploring engagement opportunities, and taking action. We’ll also cover the following tips for engaging supporters at each step in the process:
Use SEO strategies to help supporters find your content.
Share a variety of engagement opportunities.
Make it as easy as possible to take action.
GUEST POST // What Goes Into an Effective Nonprofit Branding Strategy?
Many people believe a nonprofit’s brand is simply their visual identity. Although visuals play a key part in your brand, it’s important to recognize that your branding strategy goes deeper. It impacts your fundraising strategy, internal and external communications, and overarching identity.
At its core, your nonprofit brand strategy plays a role in how your organisation expresses your purpose and values.
For example, on your nonprofit website, you’re likely making a conscious effort to use your brand to communicate with your audience about your mission and programs. But when you send an email to your coworker, you probably don’t notice how your brand is incorporated. The reality is that, no matter what channels or forms of outreach you use, your brand shines through everything you do because you are essential to the brand.
For those with a previously narrow view of nonprofit branding, this idea naturally leads to the question: What is a nonprofit brand?
GUEST POST // What does a virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) do and why would you want one?
The Nonprofit vCIO
The term virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) has been around for well over a decade now, but even today, if you ask ten different people what a vCIO does you may well get ten different answers.
This article does not claim to be the definitive answer to the question of what a vCIO does, but we will do our best to explain:
How the vCIO role emerged
The kinds of things a vCIO does
What value a vCIO can provide to a nonprofit
Why a nonprofit might want to engage a vCIO
What qualities to look for in a potential vCIO
GUEST POST // Looking Forward: 4 Fundraising Tips for 2022
2022 is upon us! Everyone is working toward their New Year’s resolutions to make this year brighter and better than ever before. During this time, your team is also working hard to use the data you have on hand to create a strategic plan for a more successful year for your nonprofit.
It’s important to understand both where nonprofit professionals have been the last couple of years as well as how the nonprofit sector will evolve in order to be sure you’re making the most of the new opportunities the year can bring.
This year, you can expect to see both new and continuing fundraising trends from the last several years. By acknowledging these trends, your organization can raise more money and make the most of its fundraising efforts.
With that in mind, we recommend incorporating the following fundraising tips into your nonprofit’s fundraising strategy:
Plan hybrid fundraising events.
Develop new partnerships with for-profit businesses.
Leverage new connections through your board.
Focus on your mid-level donors.
Ready to learn more about the tips we’ve listed above and see how they’ll help your organization? Let’s get started.
GUEST POST // Nonprofit Advocacy: How to Plan Your Next Campaign
Advocacy campaigns are effective tools for raising awareness about your organization’s mission and driving positive change. Plus, these campaigns have the added benefit of strengthening your nonprofit’s relationships with supporters, helping you to acquire new ambassadors for your cause, and ultimately empowering you to be more successful in all your efforts.
Advocacy campaigns require extensive forethought, planning, and the right tools in order to succeed and help you reach your goals. After all, they require the mobilization and organization of a broad range of people with different levels of experience in lobbying and advocacy.
Before you launch an advocacy campaign, it’s important that your organization has a clear idea of where you are, where you want to go, and how you’re going to get there.
GUEST POST // Donation Page Optimization: Best Practices and Design Tips
Your donation page plays an important role in how successful your nonprofit is with online fundraising. This page is more than just a form for donors to input their financial information into. An optimized donation page can effectively increase donations, while one that’s visually overwhelming or difficult to complete can turn donors away.
Whether you’re setting up your nonprofit’s donation page for the first time or looking to revamp your current page to improve completion rates, your donation page can always be improved to maximize each supporter’s visit. Supporters who reach your donation page are likely already familiar with your nonprofit and are at a critical point in their engagement. Make the most of their attention to turn one-time donations into the beginning of long-lasting relationships.
GUEST POST // Digital Waivers for Volunteers: 5 Things to Consider
Whether you’re planning a fundraising event or a regular form of your nonprofit programming, you likely rely significantly on the time and labor donated by your dedicated volunteers.
Those volunteers are important to you and your mission, so it’s imperative that you consider any risks that they assume every time they come to an event or your office to volunteer.
That’s where waivers come in handy—many nonprofits have their volunteers sign a waiver at the beginning of their volunteering engagement. A waiver protects both you and your volunteers, which helps to preserve your relationship and enables you to continue working with each other far into the future.
GUEST POST // Hybrid Board Meetings: The Future of Board Operations
The past two years have certainly been a whirlwind. Like many others, I’ve found remote work to be a double-edged sword. As much as I’ve enjoyed the freedom it offers to work from wherever, I also really missed the energy of being in the same room as others who are passionate about their work. Leading a nonprofit remotely can be a very similar experience.
Board service is a commitment. That means doing what you can to come together despite the challenges you face — global pandemic or not. Growing a nonprofit during a crisis takes extra energy and motivation. That being said, you don’t want to put anyone in an uncomfortable position by running a fully in-person meeting. People will either not show up or be resentful that your organization is making them come together during a pandemic. Many people are still uncomfortable being around others — vaccinated or not. And that’s alright!
On the other hand, some people really thrive in an environment where they’re working face-to-face. Working remotely inhibits their creativity and stifles their energy. Why not offer the best of both worlds? Hybrid board meetings are a catch-all solution that makes working together enjoyable for everyone!
GUEST POST // 5 Ways to Use Donor Data to Streamline Strategic Planning
Your donor data provides a window into what your donors want and need from your organization. It can help you anticipate their expectations and align yourself with them. Doing so can greatly set you apart from other organizations that only react to data rather than making proactive strategic plans.
Before you can use your donor data to gain insights, you need to ensure that you’re properly collecting and managing it. Good data management is an essential habit for staying organized and is especially important for finding valuable trends in your donor data.
Once you’ve set yourself up for efficient and secure data management by investing in a donor database, you can start improving your strategy with these five unique ways to leverage your donor data:
Improve Communications
Increase Engagement
Secure Major Gifts
Improve your Volunteer Program
Manage Your Finances
Are you ready to build a strong and data-informed strategy? Let’s get started!
GUEST POST // Delegating Work to Volunteers: A Guide for Nonprofits
Over the past year, many nonprofit organizations have struggled to secure funding and keep important programs going amid the ongoing effects of the pandemic. This has resulted in a greater appreciation and reliance on volunteers.
Reliable and dedicated volunteers can be one of the greatest assets for your nonprofit, and with that comes the responsibility to ensure that each volunteer is placed in a role where they can make the most impact.
Creating a dedicated strategy for delegating volunteer work can help set your organization up for long-term success. With the help of effective tools and strategies, you can collect and store valuable information about your volunteers that will help you match each volunteer to the right role to ensure they can thrive and maximize their positive impact.
In this guide, we’ll explore the best practices and strategies for delegating work to volunteers in the following sections:
The Essential Steps of Delegating Work to Volunteers
6 Tips for Delegating to Volunteers