Grow Your Non-Profit: Marketing and Technology

[av_social_share title='Share this entry' style='' buttons='' custom_class='' admin_preview_bg=''] Episode Summary There are ways that you can raise money, save money, and receive grants to improve your nonprofit’s operations. Google Grants is one of these ways that can help organizations earn up to $10,000 per month in grants. All you have to do is:

1. Select words that are related to your cause.
2. Write short text ads using Google’s online system and choose landing page for each ad.
3. Pay attention to the ad as it shows up in the search results that are related to the keywords you selected before.
4. Encourage people click the ads to donate to your cause. Make sure the ad is compelling.

One tool that fundraisers can utilize to improve their campaign is a funnel. A funnel is a marketing tool that allows organizations to direct their leads toward a call to action, this call to action usually asks for a donation or volunteers (as is the case for nonprofits) and sales (for businesses). If you provide a subscription page for people in your community to sign up and support your organization, and then provide a confirmation page that thanks your new subscriber, then you would have created an email opt-in funnel. Take that email opt-in funnel and add an option to donate to a special campaign on the confirmation page, and then you’re well on your way to creating fundraising funnels that convert website visitors into donors. But, if only it was just that simple... Because here’s the truth... It’s not. In order to convert visitors into donors, we need to nurture them and create trust in your relationship. We need to create a strong connection with our audience through discovering what messaging immediately resonates with them. And, we need to consistently build on their preferences to provide ways to enable them to deepen their involvement and support. One chapter in our book discusses the use of marketing funnels in detail, along with the importance of having an updated website. The principle behind this to make it easy for your supporters to give their support, to guide them at their own pace, so that when they’re ready to give, they do so freely and whole-heartedly. There is no need for subliminal influence, deception, or any of the sort of underhanded trickery. A genuine, honest campaign is what truly gets you support. Our book follows the example of one of history’s most loved figures, Abraham Lincoln, in his quest to eliminate slavery and to ultimately save the soul of the nation. You can build a community that takes action. Remove ANY distractions. Have a clear purpose and no more than ONE call to action... Use messaging that stands out... Create content that is clear, direct and easy to relate to from the reader’s point-of-view. Structure your steps. Organize smaller steps in a logical way that teaches your community members to interact and engage with your content that calls to action... Find what readers identify with... Focus on WHAT matters to YOUR audience and what they base parts of their identity on. For example: create connection, provide ways for your readers to connect by visiting your website, joining your mailing list or following you on social media. All of these strategies will bring YOU and YOUR readers closer... Remember to check out the podcast as we are joined by Jackie Posada-Hess who’s going to help us learn more about raising money, saving money and receiving grants for Your Non-Profit. About Jackie Posada-Hess GEMZ founding member Jackie Posada’s career has been in the marketing, business development and sales for over 25 years with the last 15 years being an online/offline entrepreneur Small business, Nonprofit Consultant. She has been heavily involved with helping the Latino, minority community start and grow businesses and nonprofits as well. She has facilitated marketing bilingual trainings for Building Contractors, local small businesses as well as nonprofit organizations. [av_button_big label='Join the Grow Your Non-Profit Facebook Group!' description_pos='above' link='manually,https://www.facebook.com/groups/growyournonprofit/' link_target='' icon_select='yes-left-icon' icon='ue8f5' font='entypo-fontello' custom_font='#ffffff' color='theme-color' custom_bg='#444444' color_hover='theme-color-subtle' custom_bg_hover='#444444' custom_font_hover='#421c52!important' custom_class='' admin_preview_bg=''] Click here to join a community of non-profit professionals leveraging digital marketing and technology to grow their communities and improve their fundraising systems. [/av_button_big]

[av_social_share title='Share this entry' style='' buttons='' custom_class='' admin_preview_bg=''] Episode Summary In this episode, Marc A. Pitman explains the 4 Quadrants of leadership and speaks about how leaders and fundraisers overcome their personal hurdles to become more confident and impactful in their roles. Then, we talk about how to take it a step further and improve relationships with your donors and community members. Successful leadership stems from your relationship with yourself. As a leader, you need to be credible, confident, and capable of foresight. An honest self-assessment paves the way that helps you fix any flaws. One of the most important aspects of relationships is to be true to yourself. In the case of fundraising, this is represented by your organization’s mission. This not only builds genuine trust, but this awareness and understanding creates alignment throughout your fundraising system and enables you to understand and interact with your prospects much better. If your audience clearly understands and identifies with your organization’s mission and vision, interacts with you, and trusts you, you’ll find that it’s much easier to develop ways to strengthen your relationship with your community members and create more interest in your campaigns by building up your donor relationships. Strong leadership skills develop through self-awareness and honesty. In every problem or situation, the first step toward the solution is “awareness”. An honest assessment of yourself as a leader goes hand-in-hand with successful fundraising. Successful fundraising grows from your relationship with others. As a leader. You represent your organization when you’re dealing with potential donors. You want to be able to present your cause and ask for help in a persistent but pleasant manner. Fundraising is not the same as marketing. There is a different approach to both. Do your donors know who you are? Are you speaking about your organization or are you speaking to an actual person in your content? What’s the difference and why does this matter? Listen in and find out just how important the difference is. About Marc A. Pitman Marc A. Pitman is the author of "Ask Without Fear!" and founder of FundraisingCoach.com and the executive director of TheNonprofitAcademy.com. Marc's expertise and enthusiasm engages audiences around the world and has caught the attention of media organizations as diverse as Al Jazeera, SUCCESS Magazine, and Fox News. Marc’s experience also includes pastoring a Vineyard church, managing a gubernatorial campaign, and teaching internet marketing and fundraising at colleges and universities. He is the husband to his best friend and the father of three amazing kids. And if you drive by him on the road, he’ll be singing 80’s tunes loud enough to embarrass his family! [av_button_big label='Join the Grow Your Non-Profit Facebook Group!' description_pos='above' link='manually,https://www.facebook.com/groups/growyournonprofit/' link_target='' icon_select='yes-left-icon' icon='ue8f5' font='entypo-fontello' custom_font='#ffffff' color='theme-color' custom_bg='#444444' color_hover='theme-color-subtle' custom_bg_hover='#444444' custom_font_hover='#421c52!important' custom_class='' admin_preview_bg=''] Click here to join a community of non-profit professionals leveraging digital marketing and technology to grow their communities and improve their fundraising systems. [/av_button_big]

[av_social_share title='Share this entry' style='' buttons='' custom_class='' admin_preview_bg=''] Episode Summary When it comes to the world of modern fundraising, the rise of search engine optimization and digital marketing cannot be understated. The importance of SEO is that it helps match users with relevant content. When your website is properly-optimized, you are increasing the chances of coming up in the top search results for people who are specifically looking for an organization such as yours. This means that because you are relevant to what they’re looking for, you are bound to get increased traffic from people who are also more likely to respond to calls to action. SEO professionals are experts in increasing the online exposure of your nonprofit. They increase the visibility that your website has amongst the internet. The way they do this is by ensuring that it is accessible by search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Pinterest (to name a few). They do a thorough keyword search in order to increase the chances of your site appearing at the top page of search engines. They also optimize the internal linking strategy so that links that are related to a possible blog post or other phrases within your website can be related to other information available to people on the site. SEO professionals suggest things like taking advantage of your location and making sure that your organization is present on review sites such as Yelp. Being listed in directories allows the search engine to see your website and associate it with the organization’s address and contact information. One important thing to constantly keep in mind is that Google is focused on providing its end-users with the best possible experience. - This includes ensuring that your website is also optimized for mobile devices. Posting content consistently gets search engines excited. Making sure each site has its own metadata and each page has internal pages that link to each other creates a high rating when the search engine is performing its search. Link outreach is a positive way to bring attention back to your site. This can be done by writing guest posts within another blog as a guest blogger (just remember to include a backlink to your site). Our book echoes the importance of having a proper website. A proper website is search engine-optimized, mobile friendly, and loads efficiently. This is discussed within the book by using Amazon.com as a prime example. Its relevance to modern fundraisers is that a website that ranks high in search results is almost guaranteed to attract a vast number of visitors. This easily translates to a substantial increase in potential followers and donors. Your organization MUST have a professional website that is designed with its users in mind. In this podcast episode, we are joined by David Deitrich, who is set to discuss the many ways that we can properly perform SEO. Listen in to learn how you can improve your website’s exposure on the internet. About David Deitrich David Dietrich is the founder of Fair Angle, which demonstrates sone of the many best-practice online marketing strategies that non-profits can benefit from. David is committed to providing the very best in optimized strategic development for non-profits, helping them grow their online audience rapidly and organically. From there, he can help them engage and activate these followers to spread the word and donate. [av_button_big label='Join the Grow Your Non-Profit Facebook Group!' description_pos='above' link='manually,https://www.facebook.com/groups/growyournonprofit/' link_target='' icon_select='yes-left-icon' icon='ue8f5' font='entypo-fontello' custom_font='#ffffff' color='theme-color' custom_bg='#444444' color_hover='theme-color-subtle' custom_bg_hover='#444444' custom_font_hover='#421c52!important' custom_class='' admin_preview_bg=''] Click here to join a community of non-profit professionals leveraging digital marketing and technology to grow their communities and improve their fundraising systems. [/av_button_big]