Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more of an art than a science, given the proprietary nature of various search engine companies' tightly guarded internal algorithms that index and rank websites to display in search results shown by Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
The starter guides below are for nonprofits seeking to improve their website's overall traffic and the number of keywords that visitors might use as a way to find a nonprofit's website.
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.
Frontstream offers The Ultimate Guide to Nonprofit Fundraising as part of the software company's resource library.* The resource offers considerations for conducting virtual fundraising events such as a charity auction or peer-to-peer fundraising, how to cater to donor personas, and best practices for online or mobile donations.
Whether through traditional or digital mediums, nonprofits must tell their stories effectively to garner attention in a crowded media landscape.
How to Tell Stories
The Future of StoryTelling is "a passionate community of people from the worlds of media, technology, and communications who explore how storytelling is evolving in the digital age. Each year we host a two-day summit in New York City that brings together top executives, world-renowned creatives, and cutting-edge technologists to have conversations about the changing landscape of media.
101 Digital Marketing & Fundraising Best Practices for Nonprofits is a blog and webinar series (written and presented by Heather Mansfield) on website design, email marketing, online fundraising, and social media best practices for nonprofits, NGOs, and charities worldwide.
Website & Email Marketing Best Practices
Whether for Facebook, Twitter (X), LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok – or whatever other platform rises to popularity next – your nonprofit will need a coordinated strategy to maximize the benefits from the hard work invested in managing your organization's online presence. Below are resources on conducting an audit of your organization's social media platforms and content strategy, why it can benefit your nonprofit organization, and the tools you can use to complete an audit.
Overviews of Conducting Social Media Audits
How to Succeed at Digital Marketing as a Nonprofit (provided by Mailchimp) discusses why marketing can be challenging for nonprofits; breaks down the steps to create a nonprofit marketing budget; and offers up digital marketing strategies that can be employed along with a list of free marketing tools and marketing grants available for nonprofits.
One of Stanford Social Innovation Review's podcasts series called Inside Social Innovation is composed of "talks and lectures by leaders of social change." Topics range from social entrepreneurship to leveraging technology and digital literacy in the social sector to equity and inclusion.
In Fall 2012, Charity Dynamics and NTEN partnered to develop a first-of-its-kind donor engagement survey, which sought to understand how people prefer to engage with nonprofits across traditional and digital media. The results of the study unequivocally clarify the importance of being a donor's #1 nonprofit of choice: Nonprofits that establish themselves as a donor's favorite charity are more likely to receive greater support from the donor—not just in terms of financial contributions, but also through sharing information, volunteering, event participation, and issue advocacy.