Marketing with Purpose

When I get the chance to talk to Peggy I have to check my impulse to write down every word she says. Like, if she had a fan club, I’d join it. (That’s not creepy at all right?) But if you need a straight answer about nonprofit anything Peggy has it. So when I asked, “how can you tell what donors need to know?” She rattled off three things likity split. Which makes sense because she has over 38 yea...

Marketing is all about communication.  Communicating with your audience and communicating with your team.  One of my favorite tools to understand personal and audience behavioral and communication styles is DISC.   When we hit a bumpy spot with a client or team member we go right to DISC. The results are incredible. Heck, my husband and I agree we're still married because we did DISC training when...

3 Reasons Why You Need to Know Why Your Donors Donate Cliff Notes You can’t be effective unless you know why people give (their motivations) Learn the motivations of your current donors by actually talking to them and asking them why they give to your organization You can use what you learn to hone in what’s most attractive in your mission for future asks - Whether through direct mail, thank you l...

If your board is feeling a bit resistant to putting together a marketing calendar, then this is the story to share! Giving campaigns and ongoing marketing can feel hectic at the best of times. Then add in the holiday season and you have a recipe for total overwhelm.   Loretta saw the warning signs and took matters into her own hands, encouraging her board to participate in a pre-planned marketing...

City of Refuge was one of the highest earning nonprofits who participated in the 2020 CoMoGives campaign.  But $48,615 in donations didn’t happen by accident!  How did they do it?  Garrett and Andrea will explain the careful planning that lead to a huge day 1 and overall amazing end of year fundraising campaign for their organization. For a fully-formatted article version of this podcast, head ove...

My team and I have been rolling out marketing for the last 15 years. Take an inside look at how we develop processes at MayeCreate that help us get our work done. And then because I LOVE tools I geek out so hard explaining my favorite time saving low tech tools, design tools, and medium tech tools that you can use to supercharge your marketing efforts and get more stuff done in less time. For a fu...

Join me to celebrate (and learn from) Unchained Melodies Dog Rescue’s creative peer-to-peer fundraising success.  They exceeded their $25,000 year end fundraising goal on CoMoGives.com raising $33,705 and I want to know their secret!  Don’t you?  Melody and a member of her Peer-to-Peer team, Kat, will introduce you to Charlie, one of their rescue dogs and explain how they decided what to do, the n...

4 things you can do with low to medium tech experience to market your organization that are almost free, allow you to meet more people and save you time. WHAT!?! Yeah I know it almost sounds too good to be true…but really if you asked me how to market on a dime this is what I’d say. For a fully-formatted article version of this podcast, head over to our website:  https://mayecreate.com/blog/market...

Join us for Amy's story and tips to get the most of your volunteers, even those with low experience. Amy is a problem solver and master process maker. What she's best at making things work better. She runs two Facebook groups (@schoolfundraisingpro and @myparentingguru), is mom to 5 kiddos and heads up fundraising for their school. And right now, Amy is captaining a successful fundraising campaign...

For everyone out there, who doesn't know where to start with their marketing, who doesn't know where to start planning or doesn't know what to do - we're going to start at the very beginning. In this episode, I unpack the way that I look at marketing from a big picture perspective and share the principles I use to make marketing decisions. This episode is the first installment of my Zero to Market...

This podcast is all about what’s working on social media right now. Learn from the success of others.  I went over the last year of social media data from the nonprofit clients that we serve at MayeCreate. I thought back on social media conversations and reviews I've done over the past year during consulting sessions, and I asked my gut - what should nonprofits be posting on social media in 2021?...

I had three, yes three nonprofits ask me how to do this in my consulting sessions today...how do you manage a Facebook page with multiple audiences? If you have donors and the people you serve all following the same page, do you need to divide them? Or can you talk to them all on the same page? Can you ask everyone for donations? Well, here's what I think about that. For a fully-formatted article...

I invited a few non-traditional podcast guests on for today's episode. These little people are so amazing. See, I picked my kids up from school the other day and thought, "I wonder just how much they know about nonprofits and what we as individuals can do to support them." As much as I talk to them about my work and what I do I wasn't even sure if they had a clue.     Here's my question for you, h...

I was reading a book about sharks to Aveleen, my 6 year old, last night and had a bit of an a-ha moment about sharing data to tell a story. It's like the book we were reading, Shark Bites, followed all my rules from episode 59!  My biggest lesson learned...we often talk to our audience like they know all about what we do. Shark Bites talks to kids who know nothing about sharks and makes all the sc...

Sharing statistics usually accomplishes one of two things - proves your point or loses your audience. I LOVE using statistics to tell a story.  The goal is to make people think “wow”.  Depending on the point you’re trying to make you want them to either think “wow that’s a lot” or “wow that’s not very much” or “wow that’s almost the same”. How do you do that? (1) Keep the stats close together in t...

In the conversations I've been having with participants from our recent Online Fundraising Events Bootcamp, I've been noticing a common mistake that’s being made as we work through event ideas and all the pieces that go into it. In this podcast, I'll explain what the mistake I'm seeing is and how to keep it from happening, as well as share stories from these consulting sessions that will help give...

Timing isn't everything but it does help and we need every grain of goodness we can get in 2020.   Of all the emails I send to market CoMoGives (a local year end giving campaign that supports 142 nonprofits powered by the Community Foundation of Central Missouri): GivingTuesday is the highest donation generating email , it brought in $25,715 in 2019.  But New Year’s Eve is consistently the highest...

The human attention span is short.  That you're reading this at all is actually a huge compliment to me. Or maybe an indicator that you're just really interested in the topic but either way I'm flattered!   You have a story to tell in your fudraising campaign.  And it can take a hot minute to get to the point, right?  So how long is too long?   Let’s take the next 17 min and talk it through.   For...

GivingTuesday's Kathleen Murphy Toms talked to my local nonprofits about how to use email to promote their GivingTuesday campaigns.  After the talk she fielded questions about all things nonprofit marketing including: How many emails is too many emails? What platform to use for personalizing emails.  Advice on segmenting your list. How to get your head on straight and write an email that really co...

Asking for donations because COVID put the kibosh on all your events? Not sure how to explain that to your supporters? I have a plan!  First, I want to tell you, COVID cancelled events or the need to hire more people are great reasons to need funding… AND I also, in the same breath, need to explain that my gut tells me some donors may not respond to that need as well as they would respond to the r...

After our Year End Peer to Peer and Email Fundraising Strategies Workshop we had a lot of questions about crafting your year end fundraising asks. So I held a challenge on my Facebook Group, Nonprofit Marketing With Purpose, with three short videos to watch with assignments to complete over 3 days. Now did that Oct. 1 so it's all over now but I thought I'd share the 3 part recipe and idea starters...

I got my first year end giving letter this week from Alternative Community Training in Columbia, MO!  Shout out to them for being on the ball with your year end fundraising efforts! For those of you who might be feeling a bit behind or overwhelmed I want to share this great example as a reminder of where to start with your year end activities. And break it down for you into 3 easy steps! For a ful...

Every year as you’re reviewing all the numbers in your business, you also need to review your website so you can see what’s working and what’s not.  Give it an annual physical and make a checklist of what you can do to make it better. Which in some cases is updating it and in others is just trashing your current site and getting a new one…but how do you make this checklist, where do you look?  Wha...

Get tips on where to start with your marketing and learn more on how to gear up for 2021 in this podcast episode! Rick Briemann, Director of Business Development in St. Louis for the Missouri Asphalt Pavement Association, says the most important thing you can do to gear up for 2021 is to: Focus on marketing and selling your solution to your potential customers’ problems. In our latest podcast epis...

You probably already know this, but just in case you don’t, I’m going to say it anyway. The thing you need to focus on right now in your business to be ready for whatever 2021 brings is to go back to what made you successful in the first place: RELATIONSHIPS. After all, isn’t that what marketing (and sales) are all about? The building and maintaining of relationships? But we have been separated fr...