Strategic Communication

Caroline McDowell, Marketing & Communications Manager, North Carolina Center for Nonprofits

Lisa Hazirjian, Ph.D., Win Together Consulting

Fundraising should be easy, and it should work. But most nonprofit leaders struggle to come up with an effective fundraising strategy. They spend a ton of money on websites that don’t bring in new donors. They need to send fundraising emails, but are not sure where to start. When leads slow down, they’re at a loss for how to get them going again. The secret to solving these problems is an email marketing funnel.

Participants will learn practical and realistic tips on:

As a nonprofit professional, if you're scrambling for a way to communicate your accomplishments to your supporters but instead finding yourself putting out fire after fire, read this. With fewer resources to go around, it's no longer about demonstrating that programs are being accessed by those they aim to support. The pressure has now shifted towards showing that social impact objectives are being met…and because there is not a ‘one size fits all' approach to evaluating impact, it’s a more technical and difficult calculation to navigate.

Storytelling is the most powerful tool we have as changemakers. By sharing our authentic personal stories and those of the community we serve (with permission, of course), we can stand out as we stand up for our mission. We attract and inspire an audience that is ready to roll up their sleeves and help us make shifts happen at our nonprofit organization. In this session, we will explore the dynamics of storytelling and create each member of your team’s individual 'elevator pitch' – also known as a verbal business card.

Whether you’re applying for funding, pitching a new program initiative, lobbying for a policy solution, or asking for a raise, your success hinges upon your ability to make your case. In this session, you'll get back to the basics of how to get what you need and want for your nonprofit. Using real-world examples shared by participants, we’ll walk through the steps of clarifying your goals and desired outcomes, understanding your audiences, mapping your resources, and choosing the strategy and tactics that make sense for your organization.

You work hard and wear a lot of hats (with no time to buy the matching shoes). Changing the world can be time-consuming and stressful! Let us lighten your workload and preserve your sanity with this free webinar that’ll help you put your nonprofit website to work for you and make it multitask as well as you do. Go beyond the basics with Molly Coke as she talks about how to leverage technology to help support your mission and make your life easier.

Participants will learn:

The Opportunity Agenda designed the Vision, Values, and Voice: A Communications Toolkit to help organizations "be effective in moving hearts, minds and policy over the long term...[by] integrated messaging

Instagram (IG) has a monthly active user base of one billion and has continuously added peer-to-peer fundraising features to its platform in recent years. The resources below help you evaluate whether setting up a business account on Instagram to use for visual storytelling is appropriate to your nonprofit's social media strategy.

Venable LLP, a private law firm, produced a free video Lobbying Considerations for Nonprofits: What Your Organization Needs to Know, which gives a good overview of acceptable and prohibited activities for nonprofits who have or have not taken the 501(h) election, as well as reporting lobbying-related expenses in Schedule C of Form 990.