Kivi's Non-Profit Communications Blog

Our September E-Clinic is all about getting your nonprofit and good cause more media exposure, and registration is now open!

During this month-long e-clinic, you’ll get the training and coaching you need to learn how to get the media interested in your organization and your cause today. You’ll get the basic media training that all nonprofit communicators should have, but just as importantly, you’ll get up-to-the-minute takes on what nonprofits need to be doing right now to get their stories published and produced by the media at both the local and national levels.

The “Get More Media Attention for Your Cause” E-Clinic includes three training sessions, two coaching Q & A calls, and two e-guide downloads:

Webinars on

• How to Be an Effective Spokesperson for Your Nonprofit
• Getting the Media to Love You and Your Good Cause
• How to Be Seen as the Go-to Expert in Your Field

Coaching Q & A Calls on

• Understanding What the National Press Corps Needs
• Pitching Your Ideas

E-Guide Downloads on

• The Pizza Party Quick-Start Media Plan
• 50 Ideas to Get Media Attention for Your Nonprofit

We are limiting this e-clinic to 40 participants, so get the details and register today!

P.S. The first live session is on Wednesday, September 8, but we are recording all of the sessions, so don’t worry if you can’t attend some of them live. You’ll get access to the recordings within 48 hours of the live event.

Get all of our live and recorded webinars for 90 days for just $145 with the All-Access Pass. Includes archive of the last three months too! Get the Details and Order Here.

This month at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, we presented a series of webinars aimed at helping you get more creative with your nonprofit communications, including using metaphors and humor. I heard from many people who want to guest blog for me, so you’ll see more creative ideas here in the coming months.

For now, here is a roundup of some recent blog posts to get you thinking more creatively. This roundup is also the August edition of the Nonprofit Blog Carnival.

Creative Uses of Technology

Many nonprofits are contemplating creative ways to use mobile technology. Jason Dick presents Mobile Giving Research and Opinion posted at A Small Change- Fundraising Blog, along with How Does Mobile Giving Work? and Text to Give Pricing.

You should also check out Pew’s latest report on the use of social media by older adults and keep an eye out for a report coming next Thursday (September 9) on Pew’s first-ever look at “apps culture” – who has apps on their cell phones, which ones, and how they use them.

Jennifer Saksa presents IVR at the Museum posted at NCH Software Blog, sharing a look at the creative way museums have started using Interactive Voice Response telephone software systems to help teach and spread information to people, with less staff or volunteer time required.

Toying with using more personalization of your email communications? Read what Devin T. Mathias has to say about When Personalized Data Go Bad… And Go Right posted at through non-profit eyes.

Creative Content Ideas

The Agitator suggests you listen to your donors for your best creative ideas in Who Made Your Best Ad?

Looking for some creative ways to connect your blog to the greater blogging world? Woman Tribune presents Blogging is Activism — 6 Blogging Events to Get Involved In.

Community Media Workshop urges you to look beyond the typical, tired ways you frame up stories for the media in Reframing Stories of the Great Recession. (Thom Clark from Community Media Workshop is doing a webinar for us next week on being a good spokesperson for your cause.)

Marc Pitman reminds us to stay curious if you want to be a good fundraiser.

When to Play it Straight

Jake Seliger at Grant Writing Confidential cautions you against creativity when grant writing. When writing grant proposals in response to RFPs, Jake says, “Most of the time, you’ll be given a box, and if you step outside it, you’re not going to be praised like a precocious high school student. You’re going to be treated like a cat who’s decided to show its creativity by ignoring the litter box. The RFP is your litter box. Ignore it at your peril.”

Maybe doing things the same old way works just fine . . .  or does it? See what Katya Andresen says in ‘Old” donors give more – so do we stick to the same ‘old’ fundraising?

Read a blog post lately that got your creative juices flowing? Share it in the comments.

Want a quick consult with Kivi Leroux Miller? All-Access Pass Holders to Nonprofit Marketing Guide can now reserve 30 minutes on Kivi’s calendar for only $75. Fast, affordable way to get answers and advice. Get the Details.

I think so, and so does Kerri Karvetski who is our guest speaker at tomorrow’s webinar, Funny Ha Ha! Using Humor in Nonprofit Communications (Wednesday, September 1, 1:00 p.m. ET / 10:00 a.m. PT).

I just got a sneak peek at Kerri’s presentation and it’s loaded with tons of examples to get you thinking more creatively. She also shares five “Formulas for Funny” and some very practical tips, such as

Funny is Hard. Don’t go with your first idea. Keep brainstorming until you have 10 ideas.

It’s OK to Copy. Find something funny that someone else created that’s related to your cause and share that with your supporters. Kerri provides several sources of funny stuff you can pass on, or if you have a little money, that you can customize to make your own.

Commit to It. If you are going to use humor, you have to go all in with the premise or joke.

Kerri will also share her 10 reasons why nonprofits should use humor  –  a great list to pass on to your boss or others who may need some cajoling to try something more creative.

Here are three of my favorite reasons:

Humor gives you freedom to say things you couldn’t with a straight face.

Humor lets you deflate criticism, show humanity and puncture an argument.

Humor breaks down fear, lessening the pain of discussing difficult topics.

I hope you can join Kerri and me for the webinar!

Get all of our live and recorded webinars for 90 days for just $145 with the All-Access Pass. Includes archive of the last three months too! Get the Details and Order Here.

I know how busy you are. I also know how much better you’d feel about your communications work if you had a focused, creative, and realistic marketing plan guiding your decisionmaking.

That’s why I’m teaming up with Nancy Schwartz in October to provide a one-day, in-person, intensive marketing plan workshop.

Look who’s already signed up for the New York City and Washington DC events:

• a statewide ballet
• a watershed protection group
• a journalists association
• a cultural council
• community health care providers
• several international cultural organizations
• a group assisting people with spinal cord injuries
• family service organizations
• religious charities
• and more.

You can join us too, in New York on October 7 and in Washington on October 28. Plan with us for one day, and you’ll have a blueprint you can use forever.

Learn more about the Total Focus Marketing Plan Workshop.

Want a quick consult with Kivi Leroux Miller? All-Access Pass Holders to Nonprofit Marketing Guide can now reserve 30 minutes on Kivi’s calendar for only $75. Fast, affordable way to get answers and advice. Get the Details.

On Thursday, August 19, I’m teaching a new webinar called “Using Metaphors and Themes to Get Your Messages Across.” It is part of our Get Creative series this month, and also part of the Ideas for Nonprofit Writers series of trainings I’m creating.

As part of my preparation, I interviewed Susan Strong (@susancstrong), the founder and executive director of the Metaphor Project, which helps mostly progressive causes frame their messages using well-understood cultural imagery and idioms – or as Susan says, to “speak American.”

Here’s part of my interview with Susan . . .

Susan Strong, Executive Director of the Metaphor Project

Q: What got you interested in starting a project about metaphors?

A: I was working in the peace and environmental communities in the 1990s and saw that many environmental groups were using the wrong kinds of metaphors or no metaphors at all. Instead they were using lots of scientific jargon or language mainstream Americans didn’t understand. So, I started the Metaphor Project in 1997 and put the first version of the website up in 2000. Today the website includes what we call the American Framing Steps, which is a step-by-step guide to speaking American. On the site we also provide an American Metaphor Categories list and a American Story Elements list.

Q: What do you mean when you say that nonprofits need to speak American? Is this about making your cause seem more patriotic? Are these causes speaking un-American now?

A: No, it’s simply about understanding American cultural narrative and tying in your message to that ideal American sense of identity that everyone already understands, instead of talking in the abstract.

For example, the idea of “playing by the rules” is a big part of American culture. That of course refers to sports, and there are lots of other widely understood sports metaphors like being a team player or leveling the playing field. Some nonprofits miss the point and think, “We can’t use that because we aren’t about sports.” But what these metaphors are really about is human endeavor and a common moral code of fairness that all Americans accept.

Other categories that are very much American, even if they don’t explicitly seem like it, are family (birth, death, mother, father), entertainment (dress rehearsal, soap opera), and nature (sowing seeds, man’s best friend).

Speaking American is also about speaking more simply, without jargon and big words. As the Heath brothers say in Made to Stick (Amazon link), simple does not mean simplistic. We want a message that is both simple and profound. You can speak American with complete integrity.

Q: What are some of your favorite uses of metaphors in the nonprofit sector?

I like much of what the environmental community is doing now; they have really come up to speed. I love terms like ecological footprint and carbon footprint. We also are seeing the phrase ecological overdraft, just announced by the Global Footprint Network this week. They are using a very familiar American banking metaphor to get their point across to the public.

Here’s another example of American metaphor success: Yes! Magazine used “America: The Remix” on its cover for the Spring 2010 issue about racial diversity. The magazine was focusing on diversity in society, but doing it by drawing on a very familiar entertainment metaphor.

Another clever example is the book called The She Spot: Why Women Are the Market for Changing the World — And How to Reach Them (Amazon link), which plays off sexual metaphors to talk about the economic and social power of women in society.

Q: What metaphors do you see nonprofits using that are overused or just don’t work?

A: I hear the phrase silos a lot to talk about people who are working in their own department or on their own issues and not collaborating. It works graphically, but not conceptually, because it’s not clear what should happen instead, what’s really going on, and why. After all, farmers need silos for very practical reasons, so why are they bad in this context? It’s not clear.

Cages might work better, because it’s easier to think about who put someone there and who can get them out. “Let them out so they can be free range.”

Q: What can nonprofit communicators do to start conversations in their organizations about using the best metaphors for their work?

A: Use the free resources on our website, starting with the American Framing Steps. Look at the American Metaphors Category list. Read through it and think about the possibilities. Next, think about your audience, what they think, and what language they use.

It’s also helpful to frame messages as solving a problem. A lot of people focus on telling a story with a villain, but problem solving needs to be there too. Americans want to solve problems the most.

The most fundamental thing to do on a metaphor search is to answer the question, “What is the thing we are doing like?” Is it like a game, or a medical intervention or a journey from here to there or something else?

A metaphor is a way of describing one thing in terms of another, and also a way of telling a story in a very condensed way. A good one can get attention, convey your story, and evoke the values you stand for in a very compact way—something we badly need in today’s competitive media environment. Our website also provides criteria to help you evaluate whether your metaphors will work for you and your audience.

Q: What can we expect next from The Metaphor Project?

A: I’m writing a book that summarizes our work. Until then, subscribe to our monthly updates at www.metaphorproject.org.

Want More?

Join Kivi for “Using Metaphors and Themes to Get Your Messages Across” live on Thursday. If that doesn’t fit your schedule, the recording of the webinar will be available to you for two weeks when you register a la carte. All-Access Pass holders will have access to the recording for three months.

Get all of our live and recorded webinars for 90 days for just $145 with the All-Access Pass. Includes archive of the last three months too! Get the Details and Order Here.

It’s Get Creative Month here at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, and Lane Phalen, a board member with the TAILS Humane Society, shared one way that her organization has been getting creative to solve a common problem: More cats waiting for adoption than dogs.

To help their feline friends find forever homes more quickly, TAILS runs numerous promotions throughout the year, many inspired by events on the calendar that people are already familiar with.

Two of their biggest events which have led to many cat adoptions come in July and October. “During the first week of July, the cats wrote their own Declaration of Independence,” says Lane, “and we lowered their adoption fee to $17.76.”

At the end of October, TAILS holds a “Change Their Luck Days” and gives black cats away for free to good homes. “Too many people are superstitious and almost half of our cat population has gorgeous black fur,” explains Lane. Customizing an adoption event specifically around black cats is a creative way to solve  shelter population problems.

TAILS has also run smaller events throughout the year, including “St. Catrick’s Day,” “Cinco de Meow,” and “Find Your Soulmate” in February.

How have holidays or events on everyone’s calendar inspired your creativity? Share your story in the comments on this post (Click over to the blog if you are reading this in your email.)

P.S. Here are our next “Get Creative” webinars . . .

August 19: Using Metaphors and Themes to Get Your Messages Across

August 26: Using Photos Effectively: From Cool Composition to Rock the Stock

September 1: Funny Ha Ha! Using Humor in Nonprofit Communications

Want a quick consult with Kivi Leroux Miller? All-Access Pass Holders to Nonprofit Marketing Guide can now reserve 30 minutes on Kivi’s calendar for only $75. Fast, affordable way to get answers and advice. Get the Details.

This afternoon, I’m presenting the first webinar in a three-part series for NTEN on Turning Your Nonprofit into a Self-Made Media Mogul.

Everyone, including your nonprofit, can be a self-made media mogul, thanks to affordable email, web hosting, and social media. But to become a media mogul, your nonprofit needs to look at marketing and communications in entirely new ways, where everyone on staff is a messenger (not just the communications director), everyone knows how to use the tools (not just the techies), and everyone works together to create a community of supporters around your good cause.

Here’s what we are covering . . .

August 10: Work for a Nonprofit? Then You Are a Nonprofit Marketer!

If you work at a nonprofit and you talk about your work with your friends and family, you are marketing that nonprofit. We’ll help accidental, reluctant, and marketing-phobic nonprofit staff understand their power and influence as informal marketers. We’ll also help staff tasked with marketing and communications understand how to better help their co-workers be happy and productive members of the marketing team.

August 17: Taming Your Communications Calendar

Media moguls produce lots of content in lots of places and talk about it back and forth with their supporters. It’s a lot to create and to manage, and you can sometime feel like you are being buried alive in email replies, Google Alerts, and tweets. Get a grip on it with Kivi’s “Cakes to Cupcakes” approach where you save time by reusing the content you create in multiple places and incorporating the conversations you have with your fans into new content.

August 24: Integrating Your Online and Offline Marketing into One Plan That Works

When you integrate your online and offline communications — and take the multi-channel marketing approach — you get better results from your supporters. We’ll look at ways to use email to increase direct mail giving, and to use direct mail to increase online giving. We’ll also look at how social media can be used to reinforce messaging through other online and offline channels. We’ll also identify ways to make your communications more consistent in print and online, while also selecting the best types of messages for each channel.

Registration is a bargain . . . only $75 for NTEN members and $150 for everyone else. But NTEN is extending the member rate to fans of Nonprofit Marketing Guide. Here’s how to get the three webinars for just $75:

• If you’re new to NTEN, you’ll have to set up a free and easy account! (Or login to your NTEN account.)
• Go to Turning Your Nonprofit into a Self-Made Media Mogul
• Select ‘Kivi’ in the “How did you hear?” field when registering to receive the NTEN member rate of $75.

Don’t worry if you can’t make all of the sessions live — the recordings are included in the package too, as is a copy of my book.

Get all of our live and recorded webinars for 90 days for just $145 with the All-Access Pass. Includes archive of the last three months too! Get the Details and Order Here.

I’m calling August “Get Creative” month at Nonprofit Marketing Guide. We are doing webinars on video, photography, and snazzing up your writing with metaphors and humor.

In addition, I’d like to post lots of great ideas, resources, and case studies here on the blog during the month. Do you want to help?

1. Write Your Own Post for the Nonprofit Blog Carnival

I’m hosting the August edition of the Nonprofit Blog Carnival and the theme is “Creative Ideas You Can Make Your Own.” Share what you’ve learned or discovered by posting it to your own blog and then submitting it to the Carnival, which is a round-up of posts on a particular theme. I’ll post the carnival at the end of August.

2. Write a Guest Post for My Blog

Don’t have a blog you can post to, but still have some ideas or stories to share? Write a guest post for me here at Nonprofit Communications. Send me an email with a brief description of what you’d like to cover and we’ll go from there. Please put “Get Creative” in the subject line.

3. Suggest Someone I Should Interview

I’d like to provide more interviews for you on my blog, so if you know someone I should interview about how nonprofits can be more creative in their communications, marketing, and fundraising, let me know. Please put “Get Creative” in the subject line.

Thanks for sharing and helping your fellow nonprofits think more creatively!

Amanda Byrne, IT Administrator at the Carolina Tiger Rescue, recently shared a story with me about changes she made to the way she managed her Facebook page after hearing me give a presentation on using social media to empower your fans.

Here is Amanda’s story in her own words . . .

Amanda Byrne of Carolina Tiger Rescue with Kaela

“We recently participated in Chase Community Giving, and I was the representative managing our Chase profile. I spoke with you after your presentation about how often it was suitable as a page admin to post.

You had suggested in the presentation creating posts that would inspire interaction, so rather than reposting the vote link and hammering the vote message, I posted messages about voting and then asked our fans to share why they voted.  Then the next day I would post the vote link and ask our fans to share their favorite experience at the sanctuary, then what they had learned.  I would also add my own comment to give an example and get the ball rolling.

You had also suggested not holding back with sharing the work of other organizations.  Although it wasn’t directly part of the Chase campaign, I have begun posting more of the stories I pick up from a similar facility with whom we frequently collaborate, Big Cat Rescue.

In the first Chase Giveaway in January, we did not pass the first round, but they did, and I had encouraged our fans to consider voting for them.  This time they returned the favor, and I think the additional votes solidified our position in the last few days of voting.

Carolina Tiger Rescue asked their fans to thank Big Cat Rescue for their support:

And they did:

The end result: We were 121st of the top 200, and were announced as winners of a $20,000 donation!  Although I feel very comfortable with how Facebook works, I’m not sure that I would have thought to use some of these strategies had I not heard your presentation.

So sincerest thanks!  Your presentation helped an organization continue supporting 70 wildcats!”

Thank you, Amanda, creating a safe home for those big cats, for sharing your story and for proving that subtle changes in how you communicate with your supporters in social media can make all the difference!

Get all of our live and recorded webinars for 90 days for just $145 with the All-Access Pass. Includes archive of the last three months too! Get the Details and Order Here.

Thanks to the 154 nonprofits who completed our recent survey about what should go on the webinar schedule. Here are the top three webinars you selected.

1. How to Create, Reuse, and Manage All of Your Content

This webinar has been scheduled for Thursday, November 4. Registration will open late August.

2. Rethinking Your Newsletter Strategy

This webinar will be held Thursday, September 9. Registration will open in two weeks.

3. Starting and Growing Word-of-Mouth Campaigns

I’m looking for a good guest speaker for this one, but it will mostly take place in October. Stay tuned!

The following people, randomly selected, won an a la carte pass to the webinar of their choice. Thanks for helping me with the schedule!

• Becky Rocker, Jewish Family Service Association
• Lee Ann Kolker, EMQ FamiliesFirst
• Alicia Searfoss, National Relief Charities
• Jerry Borton, Joni and Friends Greater Philadelphia
• Felice Mancini, Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation
• Hamidah Glasgow, The Center for Fine Art Photography
• Lauren Maul, Gateway Greening
• Jennifer Milburn, Kentucky Waterways Alliance
• Vicki Testerman, Volunteers of America of Minnesota
• Amanda Lopez, Center for Spirituality at Work

P.S. Here’s what’s coming up on the webinar schedule . . .

August 11: Anatomy of a Nonprofit Video – How To Plan, Produce, and Promote Your Next Video (Featuring Michael Hoffman of See3)

August 19: Using Metaphors and Themes to Get Your Messages Across

August 26: Using Photos Effectively: From Cool Composition to Rock the Stock (Featuring Claire Meyerhoff)

September 1: Funny Ha Ha! Using Humor in Nonprofit Communications (Featuring Kerri Karvetski of Company K Media)

September 8: How to Be an Effective Spokesperson for Your Nonprofit (Featuring Thom Clark of Community Media Workshop)

Want a quick consult with Kivi Leroux Miller? All-Access Pass Holders to Nonprofit Marketing Guide can now reserve 30 minutes on Kivi’s calendar for only $75. Fast, affordable way to get answers and advice. Get the Details.

John Haydon is presenting this Wednesday’s webinar called Twitter for Nonprofits: The Truth about Tweeting for Your Cause (July 21, 2010, 12 pm ET / 9 am PT – One hour earlier than our usual time). If you aren’t sure about the best way for your nonprofit to use Twitter, this webinar will clear that up for you.

I asked John to share some of his favorite Twitter tips, and he replied with 13 ways to get retweeted.

1. Be Relevant - A survey conducted by Dan Zarrella found that people share content because they thought it was relevant for someone they know. In other words, try and stay relevant to topics your followers want to hear about.

2. Write Pithy Headlines – On Twitter all we have is 140 characters. How would someone like Shel Silverstein tweet?

3. Include Links – Dan also found that retweets tend to have more links. 56.69% of retweets contain a link versus 18.96% of normal tweets.

4. Add Your Own Thoughts – One big limitation with Twitter’s retweets is that you can’t edit the tweet before retweeting. Tools like Seesmic and Tweetie give users a second option of “quoting” the tweet where you can edit it to your liking.

5. Break News – Be the first to share breaking news on a topic. Know beforehand what might be newsworthy before it trends by creating a Google or Tweetbeep alert.

6. Not About You – Dan also found that talking about the color of your underwear won’t get retweeted as much as talking about the color of Madonna’s underwear.

7. Nurture Community – People that create trust with their community tend to be retweeted more than those who lack any connection to their followers.

8. DM a Retweet Request – You can also send a private message asking for a retweet. This has to be used sparingly or you’ll quickly drain your social equity account. Also, make it easy and DM a link to the tweet you’d like retweeted.

9. Use Your iPhone – The Retweet app lists the top retweets. Retweeting the valuable posts sparingly will increase your exposure to new users.

10. Embed Retweets – Put a “ClickToTweet” link in your email newsletters and particular blog pages. Read How To Get More Email Subscribers With Embeded Retweets for more info.

11. Consider the Timing – Dan also found that 4:00PM is the when the most retweets happen. Especially on a Friday.

12. Say Please – Dan also found that saying please also increased the likelihood that someone would retweet your post.

13. Say Thank You – People like to be acknowledged when they retweet your post. Plus it’s just polite.

Want more ideas? Join us for the webinar, Twitter for Nonprofits: The Truth about Tweeting for Your Cause on Wednesday.

(These tips come from this original post by John.)

Get all of our live and recorded webinars for 90 days for just $145 with the All-Access Pass. Includes archive of the last three months too! Get the Details and Order Here.

You have to be genuine, generous, and grateful in social media to succeed, which means you have to be a real person. But if you go too far in putting yourself out there — what some people would call building your personal brand — you can overshadow the nonprofit cause that you are representing. Finding this right personal/professional mix is challenging, especially for small nonprofits.

I interviewed Geoff Livingston of Zoetica Media yesterday to get some additional perspective on this for you. During the conversation, we talked about how several nonprofits are handling this, including the National Wildlife Federation, the Humane Society of the United States, LiveStrong (Lance Armstrong Foundation), and Goodwill of Greater Washington DC, as well as some corporations.

Personal-Professional Mix in Social Media with Geoff Livingston from Kivi Leroux Miller on Vimeo.

Kivi Leroux Miller interviews Geoff Livingston about the personal – professional mix in social media, including the notion of personal branding. Cases discussed include National Wildlife Federation, Humane Society of the United States, LiveStrong, the Goodwill Fashionista and more.

What’s your experience with finding the right personal – professional mix? What do you see in the nonprofit sector that’s working, or not working?

Share your thoughts and stories in the comments.

Want a quick consult with Kivi Leroux Miller? All-Access Pass Holders to Nonprofit Marketing Guide can now reserve 30 minutes on Kivi’s calendar for only $75. Fast, affordable way to get answers and advice. Get the Details.