Strategic Communication

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

The post-election period is an excellent time for nonprofit leaders to build their relationships with newly-elected members of Congress and the NC General Assembly by sending emails to congratulate them on their recent victories. Whether you send a succinct note or add a bit more about your organization and your policy priorities, be sure to avoid making statements that might be interpreted as partisan in nature (e.g., references to political parties).

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.

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 and narrative strategies that both mobilize our base and expand our constituencies by bringing those in the middle toward our cause." The toolkit&nbsp

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.

Anniversary or other milestones can be a golden opportunity for renewing relationships, sharing your organization's impact, and possibly raising some extra funds. Many of the resources below agree: if you want to have an anniversary event or digital campaign, start planning early!

Getting Started with Your Anniversary Plan

Are you a nonprofit trying to fundraise? You have a board – and believe it or not, your board should function as a fundraising machine. If it runs more like a college clunker than a luxury sedan, join this webinar to learn to: