Testimonials for nonprofits can’t provide the “main meal” of your marketing messaging about your cause. By themselves, they don’t illustrate how you are meeting needs, and they don’t offer the important details concerning your programs or how they work. They are too brief and, honestly, too subjective for that.

Instead, I think of them as the seasoning for your meal - the salt or pepper or hot sauce of your marketing efforts. 

They lend credibility...

There is one big hit that many nonprofits are facing right now - the cancellation or postponement of events that they were counting on to raise needed support to continue their missions.  

From Spring Galas, to fundraising walks and runs, notices of postponements and cancellations keep pouring in. Nonprofits are being forced to make what might feel like untenable decisions. 

But the good news is that there is a Plan B - a way to fill the fundraising gap digitally.

There are...

You and your nonprofit are needed more than ever right now.

Whether you are on the frontlines of the coronavirus battle, providing basic needs as lives are being upended by COVID-19 or the fundraiser for a school that has been shuttered by the virus, you are needed.  

So now is not the time to shy away from marketing and fundraising. 

The focus of this podcast is to get you comfortable with moving forward in marketing your mission and asking for support. You’ve got to...

Times of uncertainty - like the one we are all going through right now -  are exactly when your nonprofit should double down and reach out more to your audiences and supporters. 

• To clarify what you are doing. 
• To connect with your various audiences. 
• To build on the relationships you have. 
• And, sometimes, just to share some good news during a time of adversity.

Today’s bonus podcast is about doing just that - keeping the lines of communications open during...

I often get asked whether smaller nonprofits really have a chance when they try to secure corporate sponsorship for their cause, that kind of deep-pockets support that can be transformative for a nonprofit.  

These nonprofits often compare themselves to larger organizations, which often have a dedicated development staff pursuing big grants and gifts. “How can my cause compete?” they ask. 

Starting out you might want to begin with smaller, more local levels of...

As a small nonprofit, you have a big mission, big plans, big dreams, big goals and big problems that you’re working hard every day to address through your organization. Sometimes you might be tempted to wish you had some of the assets of larger organizations to accomplish more.

But one of the biggest assets you have at your small nonprofit is the very fact that you are small.

It makes you more nimble to address problems in real time. It lessens the amount of red tape you have to go...

Are you using Instagram as part of your regular social media outreach for your nonprofit? And if so,  is it a once-in-a-while thing, or a big part of your social media strategy for 2020? Or have you not taken the IG leap at all? 

Wherever you are on your Instagram journey, this podcast talks about why you should take the IG plunge - or the recent trends and strategies you might not be aware of even if you are a dedicated Instagramer. 

Here are the highlights:

• [9:40]: Is...

What the heck is content anyway?

This comes up a lot when I work with my nonprofit clients as we create their marketing strategy. Often it’s because they think content is only one thing - the written prose used in their blogs, e-communications or social media posts.

But content is so much more. At its most basic, it’s anything that you create in any format that educates, informs or inspires people about your nonprofit.  

This episode goes into what content is and my...

In this podcast, I interview the amazing Laura Gisborne - a serial entrepreneur who has started nine different businesses in the past 30 years. Her current passion is Limitless Women, a community of business professionals who are also raising funds to heal poverty around the world. Last year alone, this community raised $300,000 towards that cause.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk to Laura is because she’s been highly active in the nonprofit sector and understands the many...

M+R’s highly anticipated “Benchmarks” report won’t be out for a few more months, but they have provided some insights about end-of-year giving, basically from a couple of days before #GivingTuesday right through New Year’s Eve.

These preliminary numbers are important because they confirm the effectiveness of many of the smart and savvy strategies we have been talking about this past year on the podcast. If you haven’t tackled these items yet, it’s...