Marketing and Social Media

Marketing and PR are essential to nonprofits for promoting your programs and services, as well as your organization as a brand. Marketing and Social Media go hand-in-hand in today’s nonprofit organizations. This page is full of helpful tools and resources to help you with your marketing plan and how to execute it.

Marketing and Public Relations

Does your organization have a marketing strategy and PR position? Kivi Leroux Miller’s blogpost, Marketing Best Practices can provide insight into creating a strategic plan for marketing. 

An annual report is an effective way to let funders know you are serious about providing data and information about how your organization is functioning. With new technology and the desire to cut costs and be greener, nonprofits are looking at more creative ways to report their work.

When you see the golden arches, you know you are at McDonalds. Is your nonprofit’s branding that iconic? Make sure the public recognizes and understands your brand. Check out Creating a Nonprofit Branding Guide: Do’s and Dont’s from Neon CRM.  Need some help with branding? Read 6 Reasons Why It’s Important to Hire a Graphic Designer to learn how hiring a graphic designer can improve your image.

Having a marketing strategy and assessing its effectiveness are critical to your organization’s success. Use this checklist as an on-ramp for planning.
Click here for a pdf of the checklist.

One major barrier to nonprofit success is its inability to tell its story. Julie Brown of Findlay-Hancock Community Foundation tells her story as a guest blogger on Nancyschwartz.com with In The Beginning, Nonprofit Founding Stories.

Is email marketing worth the investment? And are you following these Best Practices?

Marketing Tools of the Trade

  • The Knight News Release Workshop – Provides step-by-step help for writing news releases.
  • Privacy Policy Generator – Create a free privacy policy for your website here.
  • Sample Photo Release Form from C4NPR – Make sure your organization is compliant by having photo release forms available for client/audience/volunteers signatures at events.
  • Tinyurl – Provides short URLs to replace long ones.
  • Google for Nonprofits – Provides charities access and guidance on how to use a variety of marketing tools and resources that Google offers.  Google Apps, provides a free way to host email and provide organization-wide calendar and document sharing.
  • MailChimp – This site provides some free access to email marketing as well as subscription-based services.
  • Constant Contact – This site provides some free access to email marketing as well as subscription-based services.
  • Eventbrite – This site provides event management software for events of all shapes and sizes. The software is free for free events but also offers a low-cost option for collecting funds for those events which require payment.
  • Free Stock Photos and Images – are available through several sites including Morguefile.com, Stock.XCHNG and Unsplash.com
  • Create your own professional images for your organization’s social media sites at canva.com and picmonkey.com

Local Media Outlets that Nonprofits Should Be Aware of

K-100 Radio StationProgram Director419-725-5700
La Prensa Nacional Publications, Inc.Editor419-242-7744
The Sojourner’s TruthPublisher/Editor419-243-0007
The Toledo BladeCity Editor419-724-6070
Toledo City Paper &Toledo-area Parent NewsPublsher/Editor419-244-9859
WNWO NBC 24News Director419-535-0022
WTOL TV-11Assignment Mager419-248-1100
WTVG 13abcAssignment Manager419-531-3858

Websites and Social Media Marketing

Websites

Websites have been around a pretty long time now but are you getting the most bang for your buck when it comes to your site? Mary Joyce uploaded this SlideShare.net presentation.

Trends in Nonprofit Website Design from Mary Joyce

More Ways to Spread Your Message Online

Social Media Strategy,
Guidelines and Policy


Does your organization have a policy on social media use? How about a social media strategy? Beth Kanter, Social Media Guru, brings us these articles and this presentation to get you started. 

Does Your Nonprofit Have Social Media Guidelines for All Employees
Trust is Cheaper than Control

Creating Your Organization’s Social Media Strategy Map from Beth Kanter

More Social Media Policies and Procedures

General social media guides from DIOSA Communications

Policy Tool for Social Media

6 Terrific Examples of Social Media Policies for Employees

Optimal Image Sizes for Social Media Sites

Sites and Blogs You Will Want to Follow

  • Beth’s Blog – started by social media guru, Beth Kantor. She posts the latest and greatest from terrific sites for free graphics to how to get your message across.
  • John Haydon.com – John’s blogs provide ways to get more from your online content and include free mini-webinars.
  • Social Media Today – a collection of the world’s best thinkers in social media.
  • NTEN.org – contains loads of information, how-tos and updates on technology for nonprofits. NTEN is the membership organization of nonprofit professionals who put technology to use for their causes.

 Facebook

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) –

a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.