Nonprofits produce communications products, online and in print, from web pages to social media to brochures. Whether that product is designed by a professional designer or is designed by someone who has never had a design class, there are certain qualities those products MUST have. And while there are a plethora of online resources that provide excellent guidance on accessibility and usability for online products, like web pages and apps, there is a lack of guidance for how to make print products and graphics associated with social media relevant / necessary, complete, informative, legible for a majority of viewers / readers and understandable for a majority of the target audience.
This new page on my web site provides simple, easy-to-understand guidance for both designers and those who have the final say on something being published.
And before I get the comment – yes, it’s pretty clear from the simple, almost primitive design of my web site that I’m not a professional designer. But when you work in communications for nonprofits, you often have to design flyers, posters, brochures, web sites, etc. My designs are plain and blocky. My designs won’t win any design awards. However, my designs adhere to all of the aforementioned suggested qualities, and that means they work: I am amazing at recruiting volunteers, at getting attendance to an event, at getting participation in a program, at getting traffic on a web site, and on and on.
Even if you are NOT a professional designer, you know what your nonprofit needs. You know your audience, which likely includes seniors and people over 40 who do not like to be called seniors but also can’t read 9 point fonts.
If you have benefited from this resource, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
With so many newspapers and local radio stations long disappeared, with so many TV stations serving only an urban population an hour’s drive away, I’ve long come to rely hugely on a variety of online tools to promote whatever nonprofit I’m working for. That shouldn’t be a problem, according to so many media stories that tell us that everyone is online in one way or another, and that all young people are whatever the Social Media Platform Flavor of the Month is, right? I should have no problem getting my information out about events, volunteering, helping the community and more, because we’re all so networked.
But, in fact, it’s never been harder for me undertake public relations and marketing to reach a diversity of people, especially local people in the region where I live.
Once I start working with someone in their mid 40s or younger, or on the oh-so-rare occasion I talk with a teenager, I will, inevitably, ask, “Are you on any social media with your friends, like Instagram? Which platforms?” And most of the time, the answer is that they are not on whatever platform that’s the hot new thing; they might look at videos on TikTok, but their interactions with friends are on messaging apps, like WhatsApp or Signal. Or they do old-fashioned text messaging. I don’t even bother asking if they are on Facebook – they aren’t. Many listen to Spotify, but they pay for a subscription specifically so that they never hear any advertisements.
I’ll also ask “How do you get news?” And the answer is usually that they don’t. They listen to podcasts and gets LOTS of opinions. Lots and lots of opinions. But they don’t listen nor read actual news.
They don’t know if the high school has a soccer team or not, even if they went there as a student, let alone if that team won a state championship. They don’t know what production the local community theater is mounting because they didn’t even know there was a community theater. They don’t know that there’s a Habitat for Humanity affiliate in the area and they could volunteer there. They don’t know if the nearest firehouse is staffed by career people or volunteers or a mix of both. They don’t know who the mayor is. They don’t know about the giant data center being built in that field over there.
And how would they know any of this local information without a local newspaper, a local radio station, even a local podcast, or if they aren’t following a variety of local organizations on social media?
Back in the late 1980s, I worked at a theater that had tremendous success with advertising shows by paying to put a notice in the pay stub envelopes of some of the largest employers – but with most people doing direct deposit, that’s no longer an option. Putting a notice in a newsletter that they city sends with a utility bill is still a good option in some places to reach some people, but most young people sign up for paperless billing.
I live in a community that has no local TV and no local radio. It has two struggling semi-print newspapers which people under 50 here have never heard of. How do I reach these folks about events, volunteering opportunities, and legislative issues they need to know about and care about?
Direct mail, via traditional post? That’s an expense far out of reach for most small nonprofits.
I’ve noticed a LOT of businesses are back to using great big banners and other signage outside their properties to let people know about events and special deals. The town where I live has two places in town where it strings a banner over the street to announce various events, that everyone entering may notice. If your nonprofit can afford it, consider doing the same. Be sure to keep the messaging simple: people are going to see it as they glance up or over while driving, and have just a few seconds for the message to get through.
I wrote about this trend two years ago in this blog, Social media is losing its influence for nonprofits – what to do? In that blog, I suggested that cities revisit the community bulletin board model of the 1990s, which flourished in places like Cupertino. I believe those models could still work if they had essential information on them – not just when the next city council meeting is, but also where to find a role-playing game meetup, or a basketball pickup game.
I also think every city needs to think about creating a podcast. If starting a community radio is out of reach, then why not a daily or weekly or bi-weekly 30 minute podcast? Use it to:
List upcoming nonprofit and community events that week.
List events at the local high school that week (games, performances, fairs).
List events at the local senior center.
Remind people of important deadlines (for registering to vote, for submitting a ballot).
Remind people of local government meetings.
List obituaries.
Does your local high school have a speech team or drama club, or does your nearest college or university have a drama club or political studies? Recruit from those students to record the information. Sell a sponsorship for each broadcast to a local business. The most popular podcast platforms are Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and any online search will provide you with a plethora of guides on how to get your podcast on those channels.
If you are leveraging young people to produce the podcast, you’ve already got a built-in group of marketers who will share the podcast with friends on whatever app they are using these days. You need to also market the podcast in your usual ways: social media posts, web site announcement, flyer in your lobby, press release to media outlets, etc.
And don’t be surprised if podcast success leads to serious discussions about starting a local community radio station…
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
I had never used Canva before August 2022. I’m not much of a graphic designer and would never be hired for such, but since I work mostly for nonprofits, I also usually don’t have a budget for a professional graphic designer, so I have to make due on my own. But my primary employer these days has an account with Canva and I’ve been able to use it.
Canva is really amazing and I use it often. BUT, I am also noticing something: a lot of graphics on social media produced by nonprofits and independent bloggers is starting to look the same. The drawn human images on Canva look very similar in style. And I live in a small community and I’ve seen one particular Canva design used by three different nonprofits for their galas – same image and colors.
Here are some tips for making your products produced via Canva unique:
Never use a template without a LOT of alteration. Add or change the graphics, change colors, change fonts, etc. Otherwise you risk having an image that looks almost exactly like someone else’s.
Never use photos from Canva. Use your own photos. Make sure your volunteers and staff have all signed photo releases, and use photos of them. Same for clients: make sure you have photo releases and, of course, that using their photos publicly is allowed.
Alter any ready-made images in your own designs. Flip some horizontally. Change the clothes colors for what the people in the drawings are wearing, for instance. Change skin tones. Change hair colors. If you can’t do this in Canva, use whatever graphic design software that came free on your computer to do it.
Follow nonprofits in your area on social media and read their posts regularly. This can help you avoid using similar designs.
Canva images tend to not be as diverse as you might need. It can be hard to find a family image with diverse members, for instance, or a family that might better represent a Latino family, a black family, a family where the mother is wearing a hijab or chunni, a family where the men are wearing a dastaar, etc. Or to find a classroom drawing with a diversity among students. I sometimes search for images representing a cultural group specifically so I can make sure my imagery of a family scene, a crowd scene, a classroom, etc. better reflects the community served by the local nonprofit I work for.
Standards in graphic design still apply when using Canva: you need to have excellent color contrast for text versus the text background, you need to have an overarching word, phrase or image, one that is bigger than everything else so that it draws in the viewer, you need to think about how you want someone’s eye to move across the graphic, the image should be easily and immediately understood, you need to make sure the graphic has all of the information needed or will be accompanied by the text of all that is needed, etc.
I’m not at all saying don’t use Canva. But don’t get complacent and confuse ease of use with good practice.
Hot take that I will stand by until the end of my career:
If your job listing has Canva as the only, or one of two, design software requirements, you do not want a true professional. You want free, fast, and cheap. And you know what you get when you order free, fast, and cheap? Sub par quality work.
And stop with the requirements of 2-5+ years experience for Canva. As a technically trained designer, I learned Canva in about 30 minutes. It is a great tool, but should NOT be the only design software you list.
Canva is an entry level software. Stop saying they need 5+ years.
Respectfully, Professional Designers
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For the last decade – maybe the last 15 years – the web site home pages of nonprofits, corporations, even news outlets, were rarely the focus of most people’s regular attention; these organizations’ outlets relied on social media to distribute their information. Users read the information they wanted because they subscribed or followed or “liked” the entities or messaging they wanted to stay up-to-date about, and got more recommendations through algorithmically personalized recommendations. As The New Yorker put it:
News articles circulated as individual URLs, floating in the ether of social-media feeds, divorced from their original publishers. With rare exceptions, home pages were reduced to the role of brand billboards; you might check them out in passing, but they weren’t where the action lay.
But Twitter, now X, has imploded and is bleeding users. Facebook is overrun with ads and push marketing, burying the pages and accounts a user wants to see under a mountain of paid messaging. Social media infrastructure is crumbling, having become both ineffective for publishers and alienating for users. Social networks are overwhelmed by misinformation and content generated by artificial intelligence.
Surrounded by dreck, the digital citizen is discovering that the best way to find what she used to get from social platforms is to type a URL into a browser bar and visit an individual site. Many of those sites, meanwhile, have worked hard to make themselves feel a bit more like social media, with constant updates, grabby visual stimuli, and a sense of social interaction.
Large language models, or LLMs, are trained on massive troves of material—nearly the entire internet in some cases. They digest these data into an immeasurably complex network of probabilities, which enables them to synthesize seemingly new and intelligently created material; to write code, summarize documents, and answer direct questions in ways that can appear human…. Just as there is an entire industry of scammy SEO-optimized websites trying to entice search engines to recommend them so you click on them, there will be a similar industry of AI-written, LLMO-optimized sites. And as audiences dwindle, those sites will drive good writing out of the market.
I believe that web sites still matter. I believe domain names still matter, because so many people, and so many organizations, and so many cities and regions, have these same name, so search engine results aren’t always all you need.
Back in 2012, I wrote a blog called Why Your Organization Probably Doesn’t Need A Facebook Page. I added in 2017 that I still believe 90% of what was proposed in that blog, and reading it now, I still believe that. That doesn’t mean you should NOT have a Facebook page, but you should think very seriously what you want it to do. For the Habitat for Humanity ReStore I support, Facebook outreach has been fundamental to sales; take it away, and I think sales would drop at least 25%, maybe more. But I also work for a nonprofit that is much larger, that is focused on technology and nonprofits, and if their Facebook page disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice.
Your organization, your program, your city – it needs a permanent home on the web, a place that all your other online activities point back to, the place that’s there when the latest social media trendy platform fades. When I join an organization, it’s so easy to become well-versed in what that organization does if they have a web site: I not only read that, I go back on archive.org and read past versions of their web sites. I find out if the ReStore is traditionally closed on a particular holiday. I find photos from past events featuring a former board member who I have learned has died and I need to create a tribute. I double -heck the dates of an event I will attend. A web site is also for your employees and volunteers, not just potential new supporters.
I have an entire section on my web site about nonprofit web sites: what should be on a nonprofit’s web site and how that web site should be designed and managed. I started it back in the 1990s and have updated it regularly. There was a time in the early part of this century when I thought maybe it was time to take the section down, that web sites weren’t needed anymore. I’m so glad I didn’t – the material is needed as much now as it has ever been.
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
A gala charity event is a sophisticated, upscale party hosted by a nonprofit. At a gala, guests dress up in formal clothes, enjoy what is supposed to be very good food, socialize and are entertained in some way. Gala guests pay a lot of money to attend and then are further solicited for donations or to bid on auction items, many of them high-end, with the money raised going to the nonprofit.
Most galas are considered successful if they break even financially – galas that raise large amounts of money after expenses are paid are quite rare. So why have galas if they don’t bring in much money? Because most board members and other supporters may want to socialize with each other and celebrate – they’ve sat through many meetings, they’ve shouldered a great deal of leadership responsibility, they’ve discussed and debated all year long, and now they want to have an enjoyable time. It’s a time to renew, reflect, and reward themselves for work well done. And it can also be an important social event in a community: this may be a chance for aspiring and current politicians to network and an opportunity for business owners to show they are interested in community affairs.
Gala events have been a mainstay of nonprofits for many generations. But galas have also always faced criticism from people who see them as inappropriate, especially for nonprofits focused on issues regarding poverty and inequity. And such criticism seems to be growing among younger people. As one article put it:
Why juxtapose calls to feed the hungry, house the homeless and cure cancer with champagne toasts and caviar hors d’oeuvres? As researchers who study charities, we understand why opulent bashes that raise money for good causes seem puzzling. These inherently contradictory events intended to help people in need double as vehicles for the rich and famous to show off their largesse.
Those feelings among at least some community members can make marketing a gala difficult – something I have been facing as I promote the annual gala for a small nonprofit focused on affordable housing and housing equity. I want to make sure I reach people beyond the board who might attend, but I also don’t want to do anything that reminds this nonprofit’s clients or thrift store patrons that we’re holding an “opulent bash” they probably can’t afford to attend.
Market a gala the wrong way and you could end up with not just a poorly attended event that costs money instead of earning it, but also a public relations problem.
The gala will happen, the board members and others attending will have a fun time and, hopefully, feel re-energized about their volunteering with the organization. We might even manage to introduce some new people to the organization. And we certainly hope to at least break even financially.
While galas may eventually be abandoned, for now, they still have an important role at many organizations, including the one I’m supporting. That’s undeniable.
That said, here are two comments about galas worth considering.
A gala is not major gift fundraising, nor does it really have anything to do with philanthropy… in rare cases, it provides enough net revenue to justify having one. A gala is almost 100% transactional in nature. In other words, it’s not about connecting a donor’s specific passions and interests with the need you’re addressing. To be honest, it’s creating an avenue for you to invite donors and their friends to, for one night, feel good about what you do. That’s not Philanthropy. Can it be useful for cultivating major donors? Yes, in some cases. Can it inspire some folks to become donors? Yes, in some cases. Is it possible to make more net revenue by doing a gala than by cultivating major donors? No. From veritus group.com.
Use your galas as a chance to continue showcasing your work, but be mindful that they may not be the centerpiece of your fundraising strategy forever… Don’t let the changing landscape around events catch your organization off guard. Galas may not be going anywhere in the next few years, but they’re likely to lose importance as millennials take on a greater share of our donor bases. Now is the time to rethink your plan and get ready for those changing dynamics. From Team Kat and Mouse.
Are you also facing difficulties in promoting a gala? Do you face challenges in marketing at a nonprofit because of how certain activities could be, or are, negatively perceived?
And speaking of fundraising:
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
It’s clunky, it needs a design update, it rarely gets referred to any more in articles about social media, but LinkedIn can be a valuable resource for nonprofits and other community groups and they should be using it regularly. Using even just the free features on LinkedIn will increase awareness about an organization’s work and it may lead to better board recruitment, more event attendance, more program participants and more donors, as well as greater awareness of progress among current supporters.
Here’s how your nonprofit or community program should be using the free features on LinkedIn:
Your organization should have a profile on the site and should ask all of its employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to link to it in their list of job and volunteering roles. Your organization should also ask all of these people to regularly “like” the posts by the organization, if they feel comfortable doing so (but emphasize it is NOT a requirement).
Your organization should post public events to the LinkedIn events feature and then share these on the organizational profile.
Your organization should post updates to its organizational profile on LinkedIn – just like you do on Facebook, but perhaps with a more formal tone. Remember: LinkedIn is a web site for professionals to talk about their work and expertise, not for cat memes.
Your organization can ask employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to share your organization’s LinkedIn status updates and to comment on such – but only if they feel comfortable doing so. Remind them that this is not a requirement and there will be no repercussions for not doing it (except for maybe your marketing manager!).
In addition, staff members can also join various LinkedIn groups and participate in such – but it’s their choice what they join and you should never ask them what groups they are on. But you can remind them that they should share info about your organization IF it’s on topic for whatever group they are on. These activities can further create awareness of the organization and a positive image.
You can also use the fee-based features on LinkedIn for paid roles. If you post a job, you ABSOLUTELY should reveal the salary in that posting. You can also use the job posting feature to post volunteering roles – I recommend using it for board member recruitment, but in such listings, making it clear that it’s an unpaid role, emphasizing the time requirements, and being explicit that not all applicants will be accepted.
I’ve been using LinkedIn on behalf of West Tuality Habitat for Humanity. I also used it some years ago to recruit board members for a cultural arts organization that funds nonprofits in the county where I live in Oregon. It has absolutely been worth the time investment – and most of the time, I’m just cutting and pasting info I’m already posting to Facebook or our web site – there’s been no need to create unique content. It takes seconds, not minutes, to keep info up-to-date on LinkedIn.
Is your nonprofit leveraging LinkedIn? How has it been working out for you?
The forum for candidates running for local city council or mayor, or county-level elected office.
The opening of the community farmer’s market.
The Spring musical by the community theater.
The rummage sale by the largest church in town.
The open house at the local mosque.
The Day of the Dead celebrations at the Hispanic cultural center.
The local Juneteeth celebration.
Your nonprofit MUST have representation at community events. Your executive director or a member of your board needs to be there, meeting people, shaking hands, listening to their program, showing your nonprofit organization is a part of the community.
I love the Internet, including social media. Yes, still. Any nonprofit that ignores its Internet presence, or doesn’t try to do something meaningful and collaborative online, is foolish and isn’t going to last. But the same is true for onsite, face-to-face community networking: you have to show that you care as much for other nonprofits as you want them to care for you. You have to look directly into the eyes of elected officials if you want your organization to matter to them.
What does this kind of in-person networking get you?
More donors.
More volunteers.
More and more appropriate client referrals and larger audiences for your programs and messaging.
More collaboration.
More community support, including cross-party political support.
“But I don’t have time!” you whine.
No, the problem is you don’t MAKE the time. Of course, you can’t go to absolutely everything – but you must build a list of key events and decide at which ones someone from your organization needs to be present.
Your marketing director, the chair of marketing on your board, or a trusted volunteer needs to research upcoming community events EVERY MONTH. Get it on a calendar and let the Executive Director, board members, even the entire staff, have a look. Encourage those that could represent the organization to choose what they might be able to go to – some might already have plans to go and hadn’t thought about going as a representative of your organization.
Prep your staff and volunteers that go to events on behalf of your organization in how to present themselves as representatives:
Give them an opening statement, like, “Hi, I’m so-and-so, and I’m a board member of such-and-such organization. Great event!” It’s that simple. Who do they say this to? Anyone they think might have something to do with organizing the event.
Over time, this kind of engagement cultivates a familiarity with your organization. Your organization seems more approachable and collaborative. Someone might tell you about partnership opportunities, a great candidate for your board, even misinformation about your organization that is spreading. You may find out about a local funding opportunity you would not have otherwise. A candidate for office may decide the cause you address – affordable housing, the performing arts, domestic violence, recycling – is worth supporting as a policy or legislatively.
And don’t be surprised if your online followers increase and your online messaging starts to have a lot more reach as well.
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
If you are a nonprofit focused on helping the homeless, addressing hunger or nutrition, helping people with a chronic illness or children or seniors, helping people with addiction issues, your services are still hugely in demand and it’s easy for people to see how your nonprofit is relevant during COVID19 and all that it’s bringing to individuals and the community-at-large, like unemployment, social isolation and being homebound without onsite visits. I’ve noticed many nonprofits trying to address domestic violence have done an excellent job at messaging these days, noting that the requirements to stay at home have created a very dangerous scenario for those they try to serve and what they are trying to do to address that. If you represent such a nonprofit, you may even have seen a spike in donations as a result.
But if you are a nonprofit focused on live theater, artwork, dance, history, recycling or some other thing that isn’t directly, obviously related to the consequences of COVID19, it can feel like you are being lost amid all the calls for continuing to support nonprofits and addressing this pandemic.
ALL NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS MATTER to SOMEONE, at the very least. If a nonprofit doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t exist.
This is not the time to pause your nonprofit’s communications, wait for things to get better and hope people will remember your nonprofit when we’re through this, or to think that relaunching your public activities once public gatherings can happen again will immediately bring people back to engaging with your program and supporting it financially. Instead, your nonprofit, no matter its focus, needs to be thinking about what messages it can send out on its blog and social media channels, linked from its web site, about its work that will be relevant in these times. It needs to strategize about how to get those messages out and how to invite digital engagement on them as well.
Here are some ideas:
Historical societies and history museums need to be posting about what the culture or community they are focused on did in the past regarding an epidemic, a pandemic or other widespread hardship, with photos, any first-person stories they have on file or accounts by others. Did your city experience the so-called Spanish Flu and, if so, what happened in that time? Share stories of hope, courage, sorry, and with each message, remind people what your organization does to preserve local culture. This doesn’t have to be one major online publication – you can publish just one thing once a week, even twice a week. Always invite feedback on such – some people may have photos and diaries they would like to share with you from that time.
Historical societies should be finding free broadcasts of history-related topics (such as on public television) and encouraging home-based live-watch parties, and for everyone in their own community that’s watching to share thoughts as they watch on a Facebook thread or Tweet chat designed for them to share such. At least some of these quotes will demonstrate the power of learning about history and be great in a grant proposal.
History societies and groups focused on specific ethnic cultures should be sharing how people can get started on their own family history and ancestry projects: how to ask for info from family members, how to record that information (scanning, how to use a smart phone to record, etc.,), options for sharing that information with just family, or with the public, etc.
Community theaters should be posting stories about places and pieces related to any discussion of disease, or noting the ways past epidemics or pandemics have affected live theater in the past. Share these stories with the intent to say, “And live theater SURVIVED!” A group of online volunteers, recruited from your current home-bound volunteers or newly recruited, could help you compile enough information to share something every week – even twice a week. Maybe even every day.
There are art museums that are having a field day with social media during this crisis, such as the Getty, which has asked people to recreate famous painting scenes using whatever they can find in their own house. Check out a few of the Getty’s picks on its Instagram, and don’t forget to take a peek this hashtag. It’s a campaign that’s not only gone viral, it’s reminded people of just how images from art influence our lives and kept that museum relevant.
Operas could post people performing songs in operas, like La Traviata or La bohème, where a character is singing while dying and talk about how the performing arts have never flinched from portraying human suffering, and how that art can help people handle the horrors around them.
All performing arts groups – theaters, operas, dance companies, choirs, etc. – should be finding free broadcasts of performances by ANY group related to whatever art they themselves produce and encouraging home-based live-watch parties, and for everyone in their own community that’s watching to share thoughts as they watch on a Facebook thread or Tweet chat designed for them to share such. At least some of these quotes will demonstrate the power of performing art and be great in a grant proposal.
All arts groups should be posting messages regularly now about the links between producing art and experiencing art and the positive effects on such regarding mental health.
A nonprofit that produces a farmer’s market or artisan market should ask its clients to make short videos about what they are doing now – both challenges they are facing and what they are still producing and ways people might be able to order it online or pay for it in a safe exchange that involves a lot of physical distancing and no close contact whatsoever.
Many animal shelters and rescue agencies have done a brilliant job promoting now as a great time to foster an animal from the shelter, since families and individuals are homebound anyway, and it’s resulted in a windfall of great foster families for many shelters.
If your nonprofit promotes sports, the outdoors or an outdoor activity, this is a time to be interviewing people online who have benefited from your programs over the years, and sharing those stories online, to say, “This is why sports / this activity matters. This is how we have impact.” If you don’t need to do fundraising for activities, you could fundraise for equipment you will use once your operations resume. You could also be sharing with people how to clean and repair whatever equipment is associated with the sport or outdoor activity, or an at-home exercise that could help build strength or balance to help in engaging in that sport or outdoor activity.
Your volunteers would love to come up with their own ideas about what your nonprofit should be saying and doing to stay relevant now. You can bring them all together in a conference call or put one volunteer in charge of gathering their ideas, calling and emailing each one. Emailing is great – but calling someone is even better, in most scenarios. This doesn’t have to be a one-time ask: they should be given multiple opportunities to share their ideas with you, and opportunities to help bring those ideas to fruition.
Always invite feedback on what you are sharing, and track this feedback. You can use this to show the impact of your COVID19-related activities to potential funders.
And a reminder that there has never been a better time for your organization to launch activities and roles for online volunteers. How they could help you with the aforementioned activities should be obvious. Here are even more ideas, from my last blog.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
I get these questions fairly often from nonprofits, NGOs, charities and small government offices.
Tweets have a text limit. Facebook posts have a limit on the amount of text you can post that will be seen in your timeline at a glance, without someone having to click “more.” But other communications products, in print and online, don’t have such strict character limits. So, how long should they be when it comes to their text?
A lot of communications professionals will tell you to make web page text, blogs, brochure text, etc., no longer than what would fit into a social media post. I am NOT one of those communications professionals.
I’m hearing people say, “People don’t read. Don’t write long bodies of text EVER, especially online.” I am NOT one of those people.
People have different learning styles: some prefer learning by engaging in an activity, some prefer learning by listening, some prefer to learn by watching, and some prefer to learn by reading.
People have different reading styles as well, even just online: some prefer reading short bits of text and seeing some short videos. But some do still like prefer – and WANT – to read comprehensive text, even if it’s “long.” What is great about a website is that your organization can easily cater to both of those groups: you can have a web page with introductory, summary, “catchy” text, or a video that’s just a minute long and gives the overview you think certain groups want, but that page or video can then link to the more in-depth information for all those many other people that want more information.
It’s worth noting that some people may want a bit of information today, but may come back later for more in-depth information. People rarely stay in exactly the same categories when it comes to how they want to access or consume information.
It’s also worth noting that by having in-depth information on your website, you create the messaging that everyone on your staff can refer back to, and that better ensures everyone is saying the same thing – that everyone is “staying on message.” It means your Executive Director, your receptionist, members of your board, volunteers – EVERYONE – can find the exact wording to describe absolutely everything about your program.
Catering to just one group of people when you are trying to communicate a message is a mistake. Don’t let any communications consultant or marketing manager pressure your organization into creating communications products only for the people that supposedly don’t like to read. Don’t be convinced that you can eliminate all of your long-form communications – you absolutely still need those.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
Most web masters at mission-based organizations – at nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies and schools – want to do the best job possible in creating and managing the initiative’s web site.
Unfortunately, there are situations where staff at mission-based organizations are intimidated by the people that manage their web site, to the point of being afraid to ask questions, even to ask for a change in the site. All a web master has to say is, “That can’t be done” or “that’s too expensive” or “I won’t be able to do that” and many of these staff members will not pursue an issue further. After all, the web master is the expert, right?
It is unfortunate that there are so many web masters that take advantage of their expertise and will use it to claim certain things cannot be done on a web site when, in fact, they can be done. Perhaps they don’t see it as a priority and don’t want to do it. Perhaps they don’t know how and don’t want to admit it. Whatever the reason, it holds a lot of organizations back from doing all that they should with their web sites, like making them designed for their particular audiences, or making them accessible for people with disabilities.
Here are things staff at mission-based organizations can do to set a tone with IT staff regarding who has input into web-related decisions, including design:
1. Ask your web master what company hosts your organization’s web site, how your domain name is registered, and for all passwords. Your web site should be hosted by a reputable company in the business of hosting web sites, not the web master’s side business or through a company he or she has a “special deal” with. You can look up your domain name registration here and make sure it’s registered in such a way that your organization owns it, not your web master, and that it matches what your web master tells you. You need all of the passwords associated with the web site in case the web master leaves.
2. Ask your web master what the 10 most visited pages are on your web site are. This is a very easy question to get answers for, and there should be no reason for your web master to hesitate to provide this information.
As you review the data he or she provides, ask yourself, the web master, and other staff member these questions:
Is there a page on your web site that is more popular than the home page? Why is that?
Are these the 10 pages you want to be the most visited on your web site? If not, what should you do to increase the number of visitors to the pages you most want users to visit?
Don’t just think about increasing visitors to certain pages. Sure, you could get more people visiting your donate to us page if you made it your home page, but would it increase the number of donations your nonprofit gets? No. Think about what you want to happen as a result of people visiting your web site, what you want users to do as a result of navigating around your web site, and remember that different people will have different wants regarding your web site. Have your web master in on these conversations, so he or she can understand your organization’s communications priorities, which program staff should set, not the web master.
3. Invite volunteers to your conference room and have them navigate your web site with their own laptops and smart phones. Have the web master there to observe. Ask the volunteers to find information on how to volunteer, and quiz them on what they found. Ask them what donations pay for at your organization, based on what they found on your web site. Ask them what difference your nonprofit makes, based on what they found on your web site.
Take notes on their answers and then have a followup meeting with communications staff, including the web master. Talk about what you learned from this feedback, and either develop a plan on how to adjust your web site so that it does what you want it to do, or ask your web master to develop such and then present it to staff.
4. Six months after the changes have been made to your web site, do steps one and two again. Are the top 10 pages visited on your web site the pages you want most visitors to see? Are volunteers able to more easily find information about how to volunteer, what donations pay for, what difference your nonprofit makes, etc.?
5. When you want a feature on your web site, find an example of it on another web site, particularly at a company or agency about the size of your organization. Have this ready to show the web master, to prevent the “that can’t be done” argument.
6. Tell your web master which staff members need to be able to make simple text changes without his or her support. Whomever is in charge of communications at your organization should have this ability. Maybe you want a small group of reliable volunteers with some web design experience who can step in to do such when the web master is not available. And then have your web master show exactly how those staff members should make those changes via whatever content management system he or she prefers. Maybe there is a WordPress interface. Maybe there is another type of interface (I use BlueGriffon). The point is that you should never have to wait for the web master to make time to merely add a paragraph or two to a page, or to correct a typo.
These six simple things will let you take back control over your organization’s web site, and help you have the documentation you need for when your web master moves on – and your web master WILL move on!
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
