You know you need to increase your nonprofit communications capacity when . . .

• You always feel rushed and rarely strategic.
• The workload always grows with little to nothing coming off the list.
• You can see how you’ll burn out eventually if you aren’t approaching that point already.

And yet, it’s often really hard to articulate to people who don’t do communications work for a living why you need help! (“Can’t you see my hair is on fire?!?” should be enough, but isn’t, unfortunately.)

Here are three ways to talk in more concrete language about your nonprofit communications capacity:

• the number of communication channels your team is managing
• the frequency of communications in those channels, e.g., how often they are updated
• the skill level in producing content and the sophistication level of the content

We know these three levers are essential to communications capacity questions based on our annual Nonprofit Communications Trends Report research and on our personal experiences in coaching nonprofit communications teams through both communications team growth and right-sizing their marketing strategies.

How Many Communications Channels Are You Managing?

As teams grow, they frequently add more channels, especially a social media channel or two beyond Facebook. Are you trying to share content in too many places right now given your staffing? What would you add if you did have more help? What do you think you should drop if you don’t get more help (X/Twitter will be the most popular answer, by the way, trust me and our data!)

How Frequently Are You Sharing Content in Those Channels?

Team growth also leads to more consistent and frequent posting of content. So if you are overworked, you might need to back down your posting schedule until you can meet the best practices in how often to post content.  If you are growing your team, consider if that means moving from monthly to weekly, or weekly to several times a week, or even to daily.

What is the Skill or Sophistication Level of the Content?

This factor — the sophistication of the content — may be even more important than the other two, given our current media environment.

Do you have the nonprofit communications capacity to produce highly visual content with great photography and video? Video is time-consuming and requires more skill and practice than other forms of content.

Think about all three of these together. Where are you strongest and what needs to give?

You are probably familiar with the project management triangle of Time, Budget, and Quality. You can only have two of the three under normal circumstances. So if you want it fast and cheap, quality goes down. If you have the budget for high-quality work, it takes time.

The same applies here . . . How will you balance the number of channels you are managing, the frequency with which you are posting, and the sophistication of that content? As you wrestle with your nonprofit communications capacity issues, know which two are most important to you.

Want to talk with others who have gone through these capacity-building conversations? Join our free community!

In the last few weeks, several nonprofit communications directors told me their programmatic teams are growing, but their communications teams are not. Let’s look at five ways to make the case for growing your communications team.

Plan for Growing Your Communications Team Now, Even Without an Agreement to Hire

Nonprofits often need to plan for hiring new staff over a couple of years as they work the new position into the budget. However, we also see many instances where nonprofits are growing rapidly in response to various external factors, including the pandemic, a renewed emphasis on social justice, and new funding availability. With that rapid growth often comes additional investment in communications teams.

When you get word that growing your team is possible, BE PREPARED! We strongly recommend that you create a plan for what another person (or two) would do now. Project what kind of work products your organization can expect from that growth. Be ready with at least a basic job description for those new positions so you are prepared to jump quickly on any opportunities.

If you wait until you are sure there is funding to begin your planning work, don’t be surprised when someone else in your organization swoops in and snags that funding for another purpose.

If your leadership doesn’t understand that the communications team should grow with programmatic growth, focus on the following arguments!

Emphasize the Return on Investment and What Becomes Possible with a Larger Team

What can your organization expect to happen if you expand your team? It’s usually some combination of

• creating more content (especially around new programming!),
• increasing your communications frequency,
• adding new communications channels or more intensive strategies with existing ones,
• or reaching out to new audiences.

For more specifics about how these changes often roll out as teams grow, see Growing Your Communications Team: How Much More Work Can You Do? In that post, I share how the workload and communications team expertise change with each additional full-time hire.

If programmatic growth will require additional communications work, tie those changes together! Though many variables go into the equation for right-sizing your communications team, we recommend a ratio of 1:5 as a default, especially in smaller organizations. That means one communications team member for every five programmatic team members who might need communications support.

Emphasize Workplace Wellness, Employee Satisfaction, and Preventing Burnout

If your nonprofit’s leadership cares about the wellbeing of its employees and is genuinely interested in building a happy, healthy workforce, then you may want to emphasize how growing the team will reduce the stress on you and prevent you from burning out and leaving. (Unfortunately, that is a big IF in the nonprofit sector.)

Few executive directors understand the stress level involved in nonprofit communications and marketing work. They woefully underestimate the time it takes to do good work and the increasingly technical nature of the job, which requires using numerous kinds of software every day.  Educate them about the realities of your work. Tell them what you need to succeed in your work and be satisfied as an employee.

Emphasize Growing Your Communications Team to Create Space and Time for Strategy

Overworked communicators are doing, doing, doing all the time. There is so much to do. But in all that activity, you crowd out the time you need to think, solve big problems, and be strategic. You need breathing room to do all of that. Growing the team allows you to make strategic decisions so that the “doing” has meaning and produces results.

Emphasize How Building Internal Capacity Creates CALM (Collaboration, Agility, Logic, and Methods)

If your organization is farming out a lot of pieces of the communications workload to freelancers, it may make sense to build some of that capacity in-house instead. There are certain situations where hiring outside expertise makes sense, but if you are outsourcing core communications functions, odds are that work is taking too long or isn’t quite on point. By bringing that work together in-house, you can create focus, consistency, and expertise that is hard to reach with freelancers. That, in turn, results in better decisions and work products because it creates more opportunities for internal collaboration, agility, logical decision-making, and smoother workflows and methods.

What’s worked for you in building your nonprofit’s communications team? We’d love to hear your experiences in the comments. 

Nonprofits need people to do things. That’s the only way we can achieve our mission of changing the world. And if you need someone to do something, you need a good call to action (or CTA). Calls to action are our instructions for what we want people to do.

And yet, nonprofits sometimes make what should be simple, clear instructions too complicated and vague.

Let’s use the 5 W’s and H to improve your calls to action.

Who

The who is always the person you ask to do the thing. Speak directly to them as an individual. So, if you need to use a pronoun, that pronoun is always YOU.

What

Be specific! Words like support, help, and a dozen other common nonprofit words are not good enough because they include too many possible actions.

Don’t be sheepish. If you seem embarrassed or guilty when asking, that’s a clear sign to your volunteers or donors that they might feel embarrassed or guilty themselves by following through. Remember, asking is about giving people an opportunity, not taking something away from them. We often mirror emotions in these situations, so if you want someone excited to volunteer or donate or register, you should show a little enthusiasm yourself.

When

One of the most essential elements of conversion copywriting (all the words around your call to action) is a sense of urgency. If we can do something later, most of us will because we are too busy now. So, a good call to action will also include urgency. Even adding the word now can help.  Donate Now is stronger than Donate.

Why

We always need the why. We especially need the Why when asked to do something new, different, or hard. Always be clear about your why in your conversion copywriting around your ask. Please (Insert Call to Action) so that (Result Will Follow). 

In some cases, you can even turn the call to action into the results you are seeking:

• Feed a family
• Rescue 10 kittens
• Find a cure

Where

In a presentation I saw by Dan Heath, co-author of Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, he said, “A jerk with a map is better than a saint without one.” 

In other words, with clear directions, even people who are otherwise labeled as selfish will give more than good-hearted people who aren’t told how to help.  When you obsess about the path, you greatly increase the odds that people will follow your call to action. That’s why it does matter how many clicks it takes to get to your donation page or register for your event.

Be sure to prioritize your call to action so people can see it and that path very clearly!

How

Dan Heath also said that most people think the change process goes like this: Analyze > Think > Change.

But it doesn’t. It’s much more like See > Feel > Change.  This is precisely why you should tell stories and set the context for what you are asking people to do. Help your supporters see the problem, feel empowered to help fix it, and then learn how to follow through quickly.

Here’s more advice you might like:

40 Nonprofit Call to Action Examples that Drive Engagement

Perfect Your Nonprofit Call to Action in 3 Steps

As we enter the fall season, many nonprofits are starting their annual planning processes. With that comes the need to set communications goals for the coming year. And with that comes the need to work with the programmatic teams in your organization and how you will collaborate. (Note that the annual goals we are discussing here are actually what we would call objectives in a larger communications strategy.)

Use the Three Stages of Engagement to Set Communications Goals

One helpful approach to discussing and setting communications goals with others is to structure the conversation using our definition of engagement.

Engagement has three stages: Awareness, Interaction, and Participation.

Think of participation as completing the call to action. So, what do your program folks need people to do? Do they need people to RSVP, sign up, volunteer, donate, attend or what?

But before they participate, people have to be aware and then they typically need some kind of interaction to warm up or prepare. 

Let’s look at awareness goals first. Are you growing your email list or getting more followers on social media? Is getting more traffic to your website through organic search or paid advertising important? These are all ways to build awareness that require investing time and money.

Next is interaction. Are people opening emails and clicking on the links? Are they liking or commenting on specific social media posts? Are people returning to your website or spending a reasonable amount of time on certain pages? These are all forms of interaction that have a higher level of engagement than just awareness.

At the interaction stage, you also present your calls to action for consideration and make the case for them.

Hopefully, those who have been made aware and are interacting with your content will follow through and become participants. 

As you create your plans for the coming year and try to set communications goals, consider using this framework in discussions with other teams. It should help them understand how your communications and marketing work can get them closer to their programmatic goals.

We love to see nonprofit communications teams grow! I always do a little dance in my chair when someone in our community says they’ve been approved to hire a new comms team member. But then the question becomes, what should that new communications hire do? How should we write that job description?

In other words, what’s the vision for how your nonprofit communications team should grow?

There’s no right or wrong answer, but there are a few ways to think about this.

Don’t Try to Clone Yourself

This is an easy mistake, especially if you’ve been working as a team of one for a while. You need another person like yourself!

But that’s a trap for you and the person you hire. They will never meet your expectations, and honestly, you probably won’t even be able to define those expectations well. It also robs you of the most significant benefits of growing your team: adding diverse skills and insights that will hopefully balance you out rather than trying to duplicate you.

Instead, Think of Additional Roles or Specialties

First, consider what you and any other team members already do well. Then, think about where you and any others hope to grow professionally. Then, consider what gaps that leaves in your team.

Next, consider whether these approaches make sense for your organization.

Hire By Communications Skills

Do you need someone who is good with words and can take on a lot of original writing and editing of work drafted by others? Is the amount of written work your organization produces overwhelming current staff?

Or do you need someone who is at home with visual communications, like photography, graphics, and video? We can all make do with tools like Canva, but it may be time to hire someone who really knows what they are doing and can produce much higher-quality design work faster than everyone else who has learned on the job.

Hire by Communications Channel Management

Do you need your new communications hire to understand email marketing from start to finish, for example? This person might need to know about email list building and segmentation, crafting good conversion copy for emails, and creating the right graphics, too. The same could be said for a media relations/PR position, which requires particular skills and relationships.

Hire by Roles on Projects

In other cases, you may be looking for someone to fill a role within a project management framework like MOCHA, RACI, or CALM. You may need more helpers or contributors to many different projects (more of a utility player), or you may need people who can lead projects and make final judgment calls.

Hire by Internal Service Lines

I’m not a huge fan of this approach because I think it often leads to too much fragmentation of the communications and marketing strategy. Still, you could also hire team members who work for the comms team but are essentially embedded within programmatic teams, too. So, if you serve both children and elders, you might have a team member who focuses on comms related to children’s programs and another who focuses on comms for programs serving elders.

Hire to Fill Gaps in the Marketing Strategy

Yet another approach would be to look at where your team is missing someone who understands and can implement work on a core part of your marketing strategy. For example, do you need people whose job is to focus on the people you are communicating with, such as market researchers, data managers, or “business” development folks? Do you need a brand manager? Or a content strategist who drives messaging decisions?

You can’t expect someone to do all the things. I hope this post helps you sort through your options!

Want more? Big Duck has helped many nonprofits grow their communications teams and shares advice on their blog. 

It’s a top goal for people who sign up for the Communications Director Mentoring Program and probably for most nonprofit communicators: How do I make time to be more strategic? How do I make time to plan? What they are really asking is, how do I make time to think? 

Thinking, problem-solving, and strategizing are called deep work. They go hand in hand with finding more peace at work.

Here’s my suggested approach to making time to think: Consider how you’ll do that annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily. What you do at each of these intervals will be different, but they will all get you closer to feeling like you do, in fact, have time to think, plan, and problem-solve regularly.

This is not unlike our suggested agendas for weekly, monthly, and quarterly editorial meetings.

Annual Time to Think

Most organizations reserve time once a year for annual work planning. Unfortunately, it’s often a challenge for the communications team to develop their work plans until they know what the programmatic staff are doing. So, it may be that your annual time to think needs to come after everyone else’s on the calendar.

But regardless of when it happens, this is a great time to think deeply about the strategic role of communications within your organization. Where is marketing support required for mission success? Where is it simply nice to have? What are the big communications objectives you are trying to reach? What’s the why of your work for the coming year?

Try to set aside several days for annual thinking.

Quarterly Time to Think

Once a quarter, give yourself time to consider the big picture. What have you accomplished in the previous 90 days, and what are the top priorities for the next 90 days? What trends are you seeing at work? Should these trends be supported or prevented from continuing? This is really about recentering yourself on your work and making sure your energy is going into the right places.

Try to set aside a full morning or afternoon for your quarterly thinking time. If you need to include others in these conversations, you might need a whole day.

Monthly Time to Think

Once a month, look at your editorial calendar and your to-do list for the next 4-6 weeks. Can you put your priorities in order, one, two, three, etc.? This is a great time to think about what you need to be successful. Do you need to meet with certain people? Do you need to set or reaffirm deadlines with others? Clarify any processes for how the work will get done?

Do you need to block off bigger chunks of time for deep work on specific projects, especially those requiring more creativity? Blocking those out now is also a good idea.

Give yourself an hour or two per month to do this work.

Weekly Time to Think

Some people like to do this at the end of the week (Friday), and others prefer the beginning of the week (Monday). But give yourself 15-30 minutes each week to set your course for the next several days. This is where you can adjust your monthly priorities based on what’s actually happening in your organization.

Daily Time to Think

Finally, give yourself at least five minutes at the start of your day to set your intentions. You might also check in with yourself mid-day to see if you need a course correction. At the end of the day, simply review where you are.

Reserving Time to Think

Calendar or time blocking is one way to approach this. You literally block the times on your calendar at each of these intervals and do your best to keep that time sacred on your calendar. You do not let yourself or others schedule over that thinking time.

Calendar blocking is a great start, especially for blocks longer than an hour or two. But it has limitations.

Stuff comes up. People need you. The time you need doesn’t magically match up with the time you blocked. You may find yourself too tired or distracted during the time you reserved actually to accomplish any deep work.

Instead of blocking minutes or hours, some people work better by half-day or day-long blocking, where each larger chunk of time has a theme. That theme could be thinking time. You don’t have to spend the whole afternoon or day on it, but you could, if you got on a roll.

Another approach is to treat “time to think” as a high-priority activity on your to-list. It’s less about reserving a specific time block and more about saying to yourself, I must do this, and it must be done this week. Don’t treat it like an afterthought that you will get to when you can. Force it to the top of the to-do list.

Also consider the tools you use for your thinking time. I personally find that this work is best done with a paper notebook and pen. All of the rest of my work, including writing this blog post, is done online with my hands on a keyboard. I use paper to reinforce that I am not just doing the same old tasks but actually setting a different kind of time aside for thinking.

Similarly, you may decide the place is important. Maybe you do your best thinking alone while walking. Instead of thinking of it as time-blocking, you need to consider physically placing yourself in the right spot at the right times.

No matter how you go about it, you have to create habits that give you the space and time to think. Being consistent is more important than how long you block on your calendar.

It’s getting pretty exciting on the U.S. national election front, regardless of how much you love or hate the candidates. Have you started to think about your election year messaging?

According to our 2024 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, only 17% of nonprofits expect the elections to have at least a moderate influence on their messaging. Less than a third (29%) said they expect the elections to interfere at least moderately with their ability to communicate effectively.  Communications teams with fundraising responsibilities were somewhat more concerned.

Honestly, I think these results reflect a naivete in our sector about just how hard it will be to break through the coming-soon onslaught of political noise with meaningful messaging. 

It’s like the first year of the pandemic . . .  nonprofits that put their work into the context of what EVERYONE was experiencing fared better than those that either stopped messaging or just tried to ignore what was happening.

So what should you expect? What does that context look like for you? What should you do? 

Every nonprofit in the U.S. will need to sort through its own election year messaging strategy. Even those outside the U.S. may need to think this through, especially those with large U.S. donor bases and those working on international issues where the U.S. has great influence on policy.

Here are a few points to get you started . . .

Know Your Rights

It’s a common misperception that 501(c)(3) nonprofits can’t say anything about election politics. That’s not true. You can absolutely speak to the issues you work on. You can even criticize or praise politicians for their specific activities or policies. For example, you could fact-check the debates on your issues and get your opinion pieces ready.

But you CANNOT support or oppose the candidate themselves. So it’s a fine line and one you need to understand. But that doesn’t mean you should be silent on anything election or policy-related this fall. Alliance for Justice has some great fact sheets to get you started.

Acknowledge the Challenges in Swing States

The election year messaging barrage is not felt equally across the country. Swing states get pummeled with campaign messaging in every conceivable channel now through the election.  That includes Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in 2024 and may also include North Carolina and Florida.

The competition for attention there will be fierce and unavoidable. So think through your calls to action in your election year messaging. You probably want to tightly limit the number of calls to action and expect to repeat them at least three-four times more often than you usually do. Candid offers some advice for fundraising during election years, especially in swing states.

Of course, on the flip side, you could also benefit from “reactionary” or “rage” giving, where people give after getting fired up by a specific issue or concern during election years. Classy talks about rage giving and more here. 

Prep Your Rapid Response Team

Rather than trying to compete with the election year messaging news cycle, prepare to surf in on it when the wave comes your way. Identify the key spokespersons and the key talking points that you feel confident in now, so when the moment arrives, you are ready to respond. That’s called newsjacking.

For example, let’s say a candidate says something you either strongly agree or disagree with. If you prepare now, you can follow up directly with reporters covering the story or be ready for their calls. If you wait to develop your strategy until the issue is actually in the news, you will miss the moment, just like a surfer can’t catch the wave from the beach. You have to be in the water, ready, and watching. Media Cause shares some additional messaging advice for nonprofits during election season. 

Think Beyond Election Day

While we are focused on the “before” now because we are in it, it’s probably even more important that you start thinking about what happens after election day. Regardless of the winners and losers locally, statewide, and nationally, what do you care most about during the “transition period” between the election and when people take office in January? What do you care about during the first 100 days of new administrations? These are also fabulous times to get your values and viewpoints out there.  This is the last point on an Election Outcomes Checklist from Lightbox Collaborative. 

You can see a great example of post-election day messaging from 2020 here: Audubon Nails Post-Election Email Messaging

Want more? I highly recommend the M+R blog. While you may know M+R for their annual benchmarks report, they also do a great deal of work on election year messaging for nonprofits and share advice before, during, and after elections. For example, see We Exist in the Context: The Memeification of the Harris Campaign.  If you haven’t already added your email to their list, now is a good time to do so!

Is it time to refresh your nonprofit’s email newsletter? We recently shared our seven tips for modern nonprofit email newsletter designs.

Today, let’s look at five email newsletter trends that will influence the way your nonprofit’s e-newsletter looks in the future.

1. Movement at the Top

We all know the power of video and animated content. It’s everywhere. So why not at the top of your e-newsletter too?

Here’s an example from Charity: Water.

You can easily make animated gifs from still photos or graphics using tools like Canva or by inserting just a few seconds from a video you are highlighting.

2. Video Newsletters

Why not go all in with video and deliver the newsletter content itself that way? The National Military Family Association does a monthly video newsletter with a very brief text summary. While we don’t see a ton of these, we think it’s a great email newsletter trend. If you can’t pull it off, at least try to add movement at the top.

3. Seeking Feedback in the Footer

We all want to know how the folks on our mailing lists are perceiving our work. Why not ask?

Placing a section in your newsletter footer is another email newsletter trend we love, as Compassion International does. Each icon takes you to a landing page. You can include a form there to collect additional data or just acknowledge the feedback. If you are technically savvy enough, you could also pass this information (which icon they clicked on) into your CRM as another data point about the individuals on your list who do click.

4. Cleaner Event Marketing

Nonprofits market a lot of events. Like a lot. 

All of those details can really clutter up an email and make it very hard to skim.

I love the more visually oriented calendar approaches taken by Insight Memory Care Center and the Triangle Land Conservancy.

We really hope this trend catches on in the sector!

       

5. Conditional Content to Increase Personalization

The biggest email newsletter trend of all? Using conditional content to personalize newsletters to each person on your list based on what you know about them.

We’ll share much more about using conditional content as it becomes more universally available in email marketing software, but here’s the basic idea.

Conditional content lets you either show or hide content that will appear in each person’s version of your newsletter in their inbox. As you build the newsletter, you set the rules determining who will see what chunks of content.

So, you could show event marketing to people who have not RSVPd for the event yet, but suppress it or show attendee-only content to those who have.

If you know certain folks like cats and others like dogs because you have them tagged in your CRM, you can show cat images to cat people and dog images to dog people (or whatever makes sense given the topics you work on).

It will look like a bit of a mess on your end because you are adding ALL of the content in the version that you build. But when it is delivered to inboxes, it will look right. We highly recommend testing the variations before sending them!

We would love to see how you are implementing these trends in your nonprofit newsletters!

We recently presented a new webinar on modern nonprofit email newsletter designs. If you missed it, All-Access Pass holders can watch the recording in our private community.

We looked at more than a decade of nonprofit email newsletter designs and compared those to best practices today, which was very eye-opening for many participants. Are you still emailing like it’s 2020, 2017, or even 2012?

Here are seven pointers we recommend for any nonprofit considering a newsletter redesign. Based on the number of webinar participants who said they wanted to implement this change, I’m sharing these in order of importance. Eighty-four nonprofit communicators participated in the polling for reference.  Keep in mind they wouldn’t have voted for it if they had already made the change.

1. Shorten, Shorten, Shorten.

Nonprofit email newsletters are almost universally too long. Shorten, shorten, shorten. If you have that much great info to share via email, consider sending your newsletter more often instead of cramming everything in.  This was the most popular change participants wanted to make, with 65% saying they would like to shorten their nonprofit’s email newsletter.

More: Three Trends That Beg for Shorter Email Newsletters

2. No Paragraphs Longer Than Three Sentences.

One easy way to shorten your newsletter is to stop with the big blocks of text! Shorten your sentences and paragraphs! Keeping your nonprofit email newsletter design short also means making it skimmable, which means shorter blocks of text. A little over half of participants, 54%, said they wanted to try this.

3. Simplify the Header.

Don’t blow the most important email real estate right at the top with a meaningless graphic. Your “from” line should tell them it’s from you, and you don’t need to name your newsletter with an enormous graphic. Keep it small. Forty percent of webinar poll takers wanted to simplify their headers.

4. Add Motion to the Top.

Everywhere you look online, we know video works. But how do you capitalize on that with email? Adding animated gifs to your newsletter can work, whether you use three seconds from a video you link to or a more traditional animated gif you create in something like Canva. Forty percent of webinar poll takers also wanted to add motion to the top of their email newsletters.

5. Use One Main Article Followed by Secondary Teasers.

Here’s another way to keep your newsletters shorter and skimmable: Prioritize the content for your readers. Give more space to the single most important message and follow that with something more akin to bullets or teaser copy. About a third, 36%, wanted to try this approach to their nonprofit email newsletter design.

6. Left Justify Everything.

There’s no need to get fancy. When folks are skimming emails, it’s too much work for their eyes to dart around left, right, and center, trying to figure out what they should be looking at. Left-justify everything so it’s easy to skim. About a quarter, 26%, thought this could be helpful with their email newsletter redesign.

7. Limit the Use of Extraneous Lines and Photos That Don’t Add Meaning.

If it doesn’t add meaning, get rid of it. We reviewed many nonprofit newsletters with extraneous lines and photos that didn’t add any meaning but were just filler. A well-placed icon can often convey more meaning than a vague photo! A fifth, or 20%, of participants wanted to consider this tip when redesigning their nonprofit email newsletter.

See our Nonprofit Email Newsletter Best Practices and Tips for more.

Here at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, we specialize in nonprofit marketing training. We do this in our quest to help you learn your job, love your work, and lead your team.

But we know everyone learns differently. Everyone has a different amount of time to devote to professional development. Everyone is at a different level of experience and learning on the job. Some want hard skills training, and others want to talk it out with colleagues before they make decisions at their organizations.

That’s why our nonprofit marketing training menu offers so many different styles and topics—and we’ve just added a couple more!

Nonprofit Marketing Training – Live Formats in Real Time

Webinars

Each month, we offer one or two 60-minute training webinars on topics in nonprofit marketing and communications, covering both tactical and strategic skills. Here’s the current schedule. Anyone can register for these a la carte, and they are also included at no additional charge in the All-Access Pass.  Popular webinars include social media, email marketing, and video trends for nonprofits.

Master Classes

Five or six times a year, we offer a three-hour Master Class on Zoom. This approximates an in-person workshop experience, including training, small group work time, lots of worksheets and resources, and plenty of time for Q&A. Our most popular Master Classes are the “Seven Writing Styles All Nonprofit Communicators Should Master” and the “Communications Planning Master Class.” Anyone can register for these a la carte, and they are also included in the All-Access Pass. 

Jump Starters

Once a month, we offer an hour-long small group workshop on a specific topic to our All-Access Pass holders only. During Jump Starters, you get a bit of training, time to discuss strategic questions with other nonprofit communicators, 15 minutes of quiet time to start on a provided worksheet, and time for open Q&A.  Popular Jump Starters include prioritizing which metrics to track on social media or email, developing personas or journeys, and setting boundaries with coworkers.

And we’ve recently added two new formats– Study Halls and Chitchats — within our free, private community!

Study Halls

Every month or two, we’ll hold a mini-training session we call a Study Hall in our private community. You’ll get a bit of training (5-10 minutes), and you will likely get a worksheet or template. In this way, Study Halls are similar to Jump Starters, but not as intensive. We will also use Study Halls for feedback and fine-tuning sessions where you share your work with others and provide feedback to each other. Many of these will be free for anyone to attend, although some will be limited to All-Access Pass holders only.

Community Chitchats

Chitchats are a chance for us to come together and discuss a certain topic. These will be Zoom-style meetings in our community on specific topics but without a training agenda. It’s more of an opportunity for community members to share their insights and questions with each other, and we’ll simply provide facilitation and relevant resources.

Study Halls and Chitchats will be about 30 minutes long and generally more casual and less structured than Webinars, Master Classes, and Jump Starters.

Check out the full schedule of events in our community.

Nonprofit Marketing Training – At Your Own Pace

Everything above takes place in real-time. Put it on your schedule and join us live! We do record some of these sessions, but not all of them. For example, Master Classes and Jump Starters are rarely recorded.

We do, however, have many resources and recordings for folks who cannot join us live for whatever reason. We know that many members of our community live outside North America, and time zone differences make live participation tough. We also know how busy many of you are during the workday.

No worries –our private community is a gold mine of resources, recorded webinars, and self-paced certificate courses.

Free Resources and Discussions

Start with our Free Resources Library where you will find a vast array of worksheets, how-to guides, checklists, and some webinar recordings. Then connect with other nonprofit communicators in our discussion spaces. If you do it at work, there’s a place to talk about it with others in our community! All-Access Pass holders have an even greater library of materials, including many more webinar recordings and in-depth worksheets, templates, and guides on all kinds of nonprofit marketing and communications topics.

Micro-Credentials and Professional Certificates

We are working this summer to expand our micro-credentialing program and our professional certificate program. We are designing these to be meaningful learning experiences. You can’t just say you read a few blog posts or watched a video and call it a certificate! But we’ll make everything we ask you to do relevant, fun, and meaningful.

Three Books

Kivi Leroux Miller is the author of three books on nonprofit marketing and communications. These books are used as texts for university and certificate programs across the U.S. and Canada. But these are not your average boring textbooks. These were written first as pragmatic guides for working professionals and then adopted later by academics because they are so relevant to working in the sector.

• The Nonprofit Marketing Guide, second edition
• Content Marketing for Nonprofits
• CALM not BUSY

The Communications Director Mentoring Program

The Communications Director Mentoring Program is our premier training and coaching program. With a cohort of up to 16 people in each session, this six-month program runs from January to June and again from July to December. It covers everything a professional communicator or marketer working in the nonprofit sector needs to know. In six months, you’ll gain the knowledge and experience that it often takes three to five years to build in the sector on your own.

Consider yourself invited to join our community of nonprofit communicators working on their own professional development individually and together! We hope to see you in one of these trainings soon.