Once upon a time, “mobile-friendly” just meant one thing: making sure your website and emails were on templates that were responsive so that they looked as good on a smartphone as they did on your desk or laptop.

But, really, it’s so much more. 

With more than half of all Internet users accessing websites, emails and more through their phones, it’s also about making sure your content is tight and easy to consume. That means text that’s easy to read and...

A question for nonprofits right now is what we can do as marketers to shore up our organization’s financial position as we weather this prolonged crisis. 

One option is to seek out new donors, but that can be an expensive way to go - about 10 times more expensive than retaining a current donor. But you’ve probably reached out to your current donor base (possibly more than once) during this challenging time. 

Where else can you turn? 

Well, there is a group that...

Right now it feels that we’ve come to a shift, a tipping point long overdue in the fight for equity and social justice for Black Americans. Out of the horror of the killing of George Floyd (and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and too many to list here) we may see a sustained effort to combat racism and recognize white privilege. 

How can non-black’s in the nonprofit community help? By becoming allies to the cause. 

Doing that and working towards systemic changes...

Right now, during this confounding and troubling time, your nonprofit has a dual role.

The first is the stated goal embodied by your mission statement. Whether you’re promoting education, fighting food insecurity, sheltering the homeless, protecting animals, raising the next generation of entrepreneurs, curing disease or providing culture to the masses, you’re helping to heal the world. 

But you’re also providing a space where people can take a stand. At a time when we...

As we tentatively make the shift from crisis response to economic recovery, it’s time for nonprofits to get back to the basics of building relationships with their audiences. 

And that means working on building relationships and some variation on that dreaded term “increasing engagement.” Engage more donors, have more engaging content, build more engagement strategies. 

What the heck does it all really mean? Why is it so important? And how do you do it? ...

As we slowly (and safely) emerge from the shadow of this pandemic, there’s a big question facing us: 

What is the world going to look like for our clients, our supporters and our nonprofits?

There has been a lot of gloom and doom - about the length of this crisis, about our economy’s ability to recover, and about whether nonprofits will be able to survive these changes. Loss of revenue, loss of volunteer hours, cancellations of major fundraisers are all a very legitimate...

Right now might not seem like the time to try to get publicity for your nonprofit.

If you are serving in an organization that’s in the middle of the pandemic storm - nonprofits that are dealing with homelessness, food insecurity, financial assistance or public health - you probably aren’t looking for earned media, because the reporters are coming to you.

But even nonprofits who are not front and center right now shouldn’t abandon outreach to the media. One of the ways we...

To paraphrase the old Virginia Slims campaign, email has come a long way, baby. 

Gone are the days of sending a generic email blast to everyone on your list, just because you had their email address. 

From personalization to automation to segmentation, each technological advance of an email platform like Aweber, Constant Contact, MailChimp, and the like means that you can target your emails and make sure that the right message gets to the right people at the right time. 

And...

For two months now, we’ve focused on topics to help nonprofits deal with the challenges of the coronavirus, with an eye on coming out stronger on the other side of this pandemic. And in the spirit of emerging with more confidence in marketing our missions, I wanted to take a small dive into the M+R Benchmark Report. 

Because this report, released just a couple of weeks ago, is telling me that the steps we have taken during the era of COVID-19 are actually what we might want to be...

#GivingTuesdayNow is right around the corner and your nonprofit should be there. This day of global giving and unity is the financial and feel-good event we have all been needing during the coronavirus pandemic. 

It’s got big backers (Bill & Melinda Gates, PayPal, and Ford among many others) and lots of media coverage (NBC is a big sponsor) so you know awareness is going to be high. And it’s very different from the traditional #GivingTuesday right after Thanksgiving that...