How to Build a Non-Profit Blog Editorial Calendar

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How to Build a Non-Profit Blog Editorial Calendar

A blog is a great tool for non-profits. It gives you control over your own news channel essentially.

Without a blog, you can put out press releases and photos all day long, but if the news outlets don’t pick it up, it feels like the news never happened. If you have your own blog, you can post the press release there, along with photos, links, and more materials, then share all of that on social media, on your website, and in an e-newsletter. But if you’re thinking of starting a blog and don’t have a lot of content, you may wonder how to get started.

A blog editorial calendar will help you with timing, messaging, and management. Here’s how to build one:

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Give button: Add one more to your non-profit website

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Give button: Add one more to your non-profit website

If you’re a non-profit webmaster, you probably look at your website all the time. After awhile, your eyes may begin to gloss over the details, including your Give button. For example, at a statewide non-profit, we had a Give tab in the main navigation of the website and a Give link in the footer of the page. I decided to review every page of text and include a PBS-style request for donations within the content of each page. For example, “This program is support by donors like you…Please make a gift today.”

But my eyes eventually landed on a strip of white space on the left side of our page templates. It included secondary navigation links, but seemed really underutilized. I wondered what would happen if I put a second Give button (and a third or fourth option to give, depending on the page) in that space.

Here’s what happened:

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Case Study: Inbound Marketing for the Vermont Foodbank

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Case Study: Inbound Marketing for the Vermont Foodbank

Inbound marketing is a technique for bringing more fans into your non-profit engagement funnel by providing them with a product, service, or piece of content for which they give you their name, contact info, and permission to contact them in return. It’s an underutilized marketing tool in the non-profit world, but can reap major rewards for the creative organization.

This is a blog post about an inbound marketing technique I utilized at a statewide non-profit, which expanded our reach in terms of both numbers and types of supporters as well as type and topic of content on the web. It eventually got us recognition from the national Meatless Monday campaign and was a fun project to work on.

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How to Build an E-News Editorial Calendar

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How to Build an E-News Editorial Calendar

Most non-profits and small businesses know they need to send out regular e-newsletters, but for many it can be a daunting and overwhelming task. If you’re not running an e-news program already, it might seem like a huge new responsibility. If you already have an e-newsletter, it might seem like a drag on your week or month.

I understand the limitations non-profits and small businesses have, like finite staff and resources, but e-newsletters are the #1 way to reach out to your fans, even above social media. To clarify: storefronts and websites are the #1 and #2 ways to be found, but e-newsletters are the #1 way to reach out to your core audience, and social media is the #2 way to reach out to your core audience, given that social messages can easily be buried in the News Feed of time. If someone gives you their e-mail address, they’re inviting a conversation and indicating some level of commitment to your cause.

So how do you reach out to these folks without diverting too much time from your other work? And how do you prevent it from becoming a drudge?

The answer is: utilize an editorial calendar.

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Case Study: A Website Redesign for the IMPACT Conference

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Case Study: A Website Redesign for the IMPACT Conference

I’ve been told I could/should be a professional organizer. So when the Board Chair for the IMPACT Conference came to me wanting a website redesign, for a website with nearly 100 pages, it became a fun marriage between my organizing and WordPress skills. By the end of the process, we went live with 20 pages and a look that better expressed the youthful activism of the national conference.

Here are the details of how that happened.

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Determining the purpose of your non-profit e-newsletter

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Determining the purpose of your non-profit e-newsletter

Many non-profits have e-newsletters, but they’re often thought of as something that just “must” be done. Maybe you inherited the e-newsletter from a predecessor or your marketing team has decided to “keep in touch” with donors and supporters. But there are many purposes a non-profit e-newsletter can have and it’s important to identify the primary and secondary purposes so you can evaluate the success of your e-newsletter program.

So let’s take a look at three possible purposes for an e-newsletter and ways to improve given those purposes.

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