Marketing & Public Relations

Your nonprofit could be the best organization in the state, but if you don’t know how to market it effectively, you'll remain a "best kept secret". This is why Marketing and PR are essential to nonprofits for promoting your programs and services, as well as your organization as a brand. This page is full of helpful tips and resources to help you form a marketing plan and execute it.

If you have any resources that you’d like to share with the nonprofit community, please email a brief description, and link or PDF to Melissa Harris.

Cause Communications' Toolkit

A guide to navigating communications for the nonprofit world is a comprehensive resource offering practical information in virtually every area of communications -- from how to develop and budget a communications plan to what tools you need to help raise awareness and funds.The toolkit is practical and easy-to-use. Tips, templates and strategy outlines are based on more than 25 years of experience from professionals at Cause Communications, and on information from national qualitative and quantitative audits of what nonprofits need in the area of communications.

Online Resources

Network for Good: Online Fundraising Guides and eBooks -- A series of free e-books, guides and white papers on online fundraising and marketing.

Nonprofit Good Practice Guide

A Nonprofit's Guide to Green Printing

Do more to reach out to constituents and less to damage the earth.

Marketing Best Practices Checklist: The Marketing Best Practices Checklist is a self-assessment instrument that helps nonprofit organizations identify capacity strengths and challenges and establish capacity building goals in the area of marketing and public relations. Results from the checklist can be used to guide the development of an annual workplan and contribute to the establishment of long-term vision. ($10)

Benchmark Against Leading Practice: This bundle of 6 checklists are self-assessment instruments that help nonprofit organizations identify capacity strengths and challenges and establish capacity building goals - information technology, marketing, strategic outcome planning, fund development, & board leadership. ($45)

Brand Identity for Nonprofits: Focused intently on the services they provide, non-profit organizations are often unaware of the substantial asset they have in their brand identity. Not just a function of retailing consumer products, brand identity can offer reinforcement of mission, operating stability, and increased revenue, tying together diverse elements of strategy to produce real and lasting results.

Making the Most of Limited Marketing Resources: Proven Steps to Successfully Market your Nonprofit on a Shoestring Budget

One of the biggest misconceptions about marketing is that it has to be expensive to be effective. Simply not true. Even the smallest of nonprofit organizations can create and manage a results-driven marketing program that uses a variety of low- or no-cost tactics. As you move forward on developing your marketing plan, consider some of the ideas included in this article to keep costs in check.

10 Steps for Planning a Successful Webinar

Tips for organizing and producing online seminars for your nonprofit organization

The top website design assumptions that will cost you

Annual Marketing Planning Time is Here: Here are five tips to make every dollar count in 2010

Social Media

Social media is becoming more popular in the nonprofit community as a way to promote organizations and the work that they do. Below are some guides and tools for Facebook and Twitter to help get you started!

Guide to Facebook - TechSoup

Facebook Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations

Inside Facebook

Five Essential Apps for Your Nonprofit’s Facebook Page

Guide to Twitter

Tweetdeck – A useful program that lets you track and update your Facebook and Twitter accounts from one location

Articles

Shoestring Creative Group is proud to be partnering with the Philanthropy Journal to provide articles for its new Marketing and Communications Resources Section.
This is a really great collection of articles!

10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips