#ADVOCACY: Make Sure Pitch Has Call To Action, Not Just High Concept
What happens when you get corporate assistance to launch a new campaign, or pro bono development from a commercial ad agency? You can get some fabulous ideas and some valuable insights on establishing your brand. You can get your materials into some of the best publication and on some of the most visited sites on the web.
But as some of our colleagues at Sofii.org have discovered, you can also get a good deal of expensive nothing. The commercial backer or ad agency might not be sensitive to the constituents who want to be involved with various types of nonprofits. They might encourage outreach through channels that are quite unlikely to reach the people your charity traditionally reaches. They might give you a fabulous product on the design board (Indeed, I think it’s safe to say that they certainly will give you a fabulous design.) that falls flat in the real world. Let’s look at a couple of examples from Sofii.
Popularity: 1% | Category Advertising, Advice, Advocacy, Blogs, Campaigns, Case Study, Cause Marketing, Communications, Copyrighting, Crowdfunding, Design, Development, Donor Acquisition, Fundraising, Graphic Design, How-to, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Media Review, Newspaper Article, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Publications, Publications Design, Resource, Reviews, Sponsorship, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Study, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#TECH: Designing A Mobile App? Design For A Mobile Device!
Who needs an app for that?
The nonprofit world is going mobile. The move might be slower than in the corporate world, but it’s steady, and nonprofits are developing ways to get around software or contractual walls. Mobile apps encourage supporters to stay engaged with your organization and its programs, and the apps also can give volunteers and staff in the field access to necessary information from the home office and/or report developments to that office. Best of all, mobile apps could links developments on projects directly to the mobile donors who can instantly see the link between their support and the progress the charity is making.
But before you get all buzzed about the synergy, you should be aware of the challenges of developing an application for mobile devices, including the fact that there are so many kinds of mobile devices.
Popularity: 2% | Category Blogs, Communications, Design, Desktop Apps, Graphic Design, Hardware Review, How-to, iDevice, iPad Apps, iPad/Tablet, iPhone Apps, Marketing Skills, Mobile, Nonprofit, Resource, Reviews, Site Administration, Software Review, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits, Web Design | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#interview: Tom Ahern — Author, Award-Winning Journalist, and Communications Consultant
Tom Ahern is the author of four books on fundraising communications, with a fifth on the way. An award-winning magazine journalist, he has written case statements for numerous campaigns and is a popular communications trainer and consultant. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: You’ve written four books. You’ve trained hundreds, maybe thousands of communicators, and by now you’d expect everybody knows what to do. Yet you’re still in high demand! How do you explain this?
TOM: How fast can you actually change the characteristic habitual behavior of communications in an industry as big as the nonprofit industry? At one point there were 1.6 million charities in the United States alone, and we’re not the only mature philanthropic market.) Some of the models that are well entrenched are just, I think, wrong. Yet everybody borrows from each other, they copy each other. And so you’ve got widespread bad practices, not best practices.
Popularity: 5% | Category Communications, Community, Conference/Congress, Cross-Post, Design, Donor Acquisition, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Graphic Design, How-to, Interview, Major Gifts, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, Publications, Publications Design, Social Media, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Interview: Howard Adam Levy, Principal of Red Rooster Group
Howard Adam Levy is Principal of Red Rooster Group, a New York City-based branding, marketing and design agency for nonprofits. Howard, who began working with nonprofits as a graphic designer in 1991, founded the agency 10 years ago. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVEnonprofit blog.
MKC: What is most challenging about branding nonprofits?
HOWARD: Nonprofits face a wide variety of constituents, from clients, referral sources, donors, partner organizations, board members and others. So a lot more is involved in reaching out and developing messages and strategies for each of those audiences.
Businesses, especially small businesses, can make unilateral decisions on their marketing. Nonprofits are typically more consensus oriented. And particularly when it comes to the brand, you really want to get everyone’s input and have a feeling that everyone is contributing to the process of what we’re all about. So you need a process that can build consensus in a politically neutral environment and get everyone feeling really good about the brand and their role as brand ambassadors.
Popularity: 6% | Category Blogs, Branding, Campaigns, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Design, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Graphic Design, Interview, Major Gifts, Marketing, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Perspectives, Publications Design, Slide Presentations, Social Media, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Web Design, Writing | | 1 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Interview: Rob Wu, Founder of CauseVox, On Building Online Tools For Nonprofits (Part 1 of 2)
CauseVox offers a unique combination of online tools to nonprofits. It acts as a website building Content-Management System (CMS), a social-media platform with built in connections to a nonprofit’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube… accounts, and a system to track donors’s contact information and their relations with your organization (for example, how much they have given over time). Though other developers have built each of these modules, CauseVox is the first to bring them together precisely to give smaller and mid-sized organizations the opportunity to reach online audiences with the same robust tools usually available only to their larger brethren.
Popularity: 5% | Category Campaigns, Communications, Community, Crowdfunding, Design, Development, Donor Acquisition, Facebook, Fundraising, Graphic Design, Interview, Marketing, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, Public Relations, Site Administration, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Web and Print, Web Design | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#interview: John Burke of VisABILITY and owner of the “Nonprofit Branding” Blog
After distinguished careers in a variety of nonprofit organizations, John Burke and his wife, Janice Gavan, founded VisABILITY in 1985 to supply logo-imprinted branding products to public radio stations for on-air fundraising premiums. Today their company is the primary source of promotional items for public radio programs and stations nationwide. John is the primary author of the Nonprofit Branding blog. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
Popularity: 4% | Category Blogs, Branding, Communications, Cross-Post, Design, Development, Donor Acquisition, Fundraising, Graphic Design, Interview, Marketing, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Public Media | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Tech: QR Codes Offer Easy And Appealing Access To Your Nonprofit
You’ve probably seen a growing presence of QR (‘Quick Response’) Codes in your daily life: they can be found on price labels at numerous ‘big-box’ stores, they are often included on public boards and advertisements (like at bus stops or outside sports stadia), and they are starting to show up in traditional print media like newspapers. QR Codes are, in fact, gateways to a wealth of e-information, and your organization should be using them too.
Though its presence seems really to have expanded only in the last 2-3 years, the code was developed in 1994 in an effort to pack greater information into the traditional bar code. The bar code can hold up to about 20 numbers, whereas the QR Code can hold over 7 thousand numbers, and letters, in its hypnotic black-and-white cubes.
How does one gain access to its treasures? What makes the QR Code useful? And how might nonprofits benefit from a technology designed to assist packaging warehouses and logistics?
Popularity: 5% | Category Advertising, Advice, Branding, Communications, Design, Graphic Design, How-to, iPhone Apps, Marketing, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Media, Public Relations, Publications Design, Social Media, Technology, Web and Print | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD