By: Lidia Varesco Racoma
Owner of Lidia Varesco Design
Are your organization’s visuals on-brand or have they slowly started to derail?
Between working with multiple team members and outside vendors—plus the popularity of image creation apps like Canva and Adobe Spark—brand visuals can start to become diluted over time.
But fear not, you can maintain successful brand consistency by doing some simple planning and preparation.
One way to engage your organization’s current or prospective customers, members or donors, is through a newsletter. It doesn’t have to be big and splashy, but it should look professional and be easy to read. Here are some tips to help make your newsletter more readable.
By: Katelyn Foehner Communications Manager Big Buzz Idea Group As many nonprofit executive leaders know, your title encompasses much more than what it states. Many executive directors serve as not only the ED but the bookkeeper, event planner, communications guru and everything in between. Finding easier ways to get the job done is essential to fulfilling all your tasks. Insert Canva into the equation to save stress, time and money. Canva is a free-to-use online design platform. While many people use it to create images for social media, Canva can be used to create t-shirt designs, invitations, blog banners, business...
By: Andy Crestodina Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Orbit Media Where there’s traffic there’s hope. A visitor is an opportunity for conversion, which could mean a lead, a customer or a subscriber. But no traffic means no conversions. This is why content marketers work so hard at content promotion. And we do it by being active in three areas: search engine optimization, social media marketing and email marketing. Certain content has advantages in certain channels, but every piece of content can be promoted in all three. Let’s look at how this all works with content. Then we’ll explore 50 specific...
By: Melissa Lagowski Founder, CEO, and Queen Bee, Big Buzz Idea Group Every time we interact with another person, we make an impression. Each interaction—especially our very first one with someone—is an opportunity to establish a genuine connection and build a positive relationship. A business may call it a “brand image” or “company image” but this concept applies to a nonprofit too. Your organization creates its own “brand image” through each touchpoint it makes with donors, volunteers, people you serve, and others in the community. Have you paused to think about all those touchpoints and what type of impression...
By: Melissa Lagowski Founder, CEO and Queen Bee, Big Buzz Idea Group Nonprofit leadership and high-level salaried staff need time and space to focus on their organization’s mission, growth, strategy and fundraising. But all too often, we see these leaders become bogged down and burned out by administrative tasks trying to wear a million different hats. Does this sound familiar? With a few changes, it’s possible to streamline your nonprofit’s admin tasks and create effective systems. These efficiencies will improve day-to-day operations to benefit your leadership, staff and those you serve. #1 Segment Calls, Emails and Other Communications Managing incoming and...
By: Valeria Basso Symphonic Communications Consulting Here is a fact you most likely don’t want to hear but need to: 98% of your marketing is a waste of money. It’s just noise and your audience is hardly noticing it. The truth is that most non-profits miss the mark with their marketing because their message fails to answer a simple question: What's in it for the donors? You can tell uplifting stories about how your organization is changing lives but if you don’t show your donors how your work impacts and matters to them, those stories are going to be largely...
8 Ways Social Media Can Further Your Mission By: Melissa Lagowski CEO, Founder and Queen Bee, Big Buzz Idea Group When to-do lists run long, social media management is often one of the first things to fall off a busy nonprofit team’s plate. While it’s crucial to stay focused on organizational strategy, building and maintaining a social media presence is a tactic that can help your nonprofit successfully execute that big-picture strategy and meet next-level goals. Social media may seem small-reaching, especially if you’re still working to build a following, but with consistent, engaging content, it has limitless potential. How...
By: Melissa Lagowski President, Founder and Queen Bee, Big Buzz Idea Group When I first became an Executive Director, I was so excited! I couldn’t wait to roll up my sleeves and dig into the work to make my organization and the community prosper and thrive. But it didn’t take long to realize that running an organization as a team of one was exhausting, though I couldn’t fully understand why the task seemed so daunting. After many years, as I reflect on my first nonprofit role, it now seems so clear: executive directors are expected to wear many hats. How...
In the summer of 2015, I was having lunch with a friend at Navy Pier, talking about how hard Big Buzz works to make an impact in the nonprofit arena. That conversation stuck with me for weeks. All I could think about was how we could make a bigger impact in the nonprofit sector than we were currently making. A few weeks later while driving down Lake Shore Drive, it hit me: Big Buzz Idea Group needed to offer more than just event planning services! After a quick assessment of my years of nonprofit service, I realized that I had...
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