How to write a nonprofit blog that will be read

So you want to launch a blog for your nonprofit. What should it be about?

Copyblogger, which focuses on doing blogs right, has some advice for would-be corporate bloggers that we can use: How to Become a Heroic Business Blogger. Here's the main point:

All great copy focuses on the prospect, and all great blogs focus on the reader. You're wasting your time telling people how great you are, because odds are no one will care enough to decide whether to believe you.

The best focus for a commercial blog is "hero stories" -- stories about customers who solved problems. In the nonprofit world, that would translate to stories about heroic donors. Here are some ways that might play out in your blog:

• Accounts about individual donors and what motivated them to give.
  
• Posts about donors encountering your work, perhaps even authored by the donors.
  
• Interesting accounts about your work, tied back to the generosity of donors.
  
• Posts that are calls to action (for donations, volunteers, advocacy, etc.) to help work in progress.
  

I've yet to see a nonprofit blog that does any of these things consistently. Most are obsessively self-focused posts in which the organization shines a spotlight on itself day after day. That just doesn't stay interesting for very long.

Maybe the first donor-as-hero nonprofit weblog will be yours.

Technorati Tags: nptech, nonprofit blog, fundraising

Comments

[Idetrorce]

very interesting, but I don't agree with you
Idetrorce

[Cat Laine]

I'm the primary blogger for the international development non-profit AIDG (http://www.aidg.org). When we started blogging in earnest last year, we first concentrated on what we were doing as an organization, but eventually shifted to writing about anything and everything in our sector: appropriate technology, international development, social entrepreneurship, environment/sustainability. [We start small businesses in developing countries to sell clean and green tech to people living on $2-4/day].

We figured the way our blog would be most useful to us and our readers was if it helped establish us as experts in the field, in addition to highlighting our work. We're only 2.5 years old so building credibility is hugely important. We also wanted to make it entertaining and give people something they'd come back everyday for. Plus we figured that if our staff wasn't reading it voluntarily, even with their busy schedules, other people wouldn't either. So you'll find things like photo spreads that I did of the Design for the other 90% exhibit and urban farming Science Barge in NYC, or an appropriate technology roundup of the blogosphere or the music video Eric Prydz vs. Pink Floyd - Proper Education (featuring teens doing guerrilla activism to fight global warming) or a piece about what our interns are doing in Guatemala.

Our biggest goal has been to educate and inform people (and ourselves) about new developments in our field while having a good time. It's been very useful for networking with other people.

In terms of marketing our organization to our donors (who aren't big blog readers), we include posts about our organization's activities in our quarterly online newsletter and sometimes adapt them for our direct mail letters. Might as well make it do double or triple duty. For a recent ecotour for high school students that we held in Guatemala this past July, we kept parents informed of what was happening by emailing them related blog posts with photos.

It's been great fun and a great asset for building our brand.

Cat Laine
Communications Director
AIDG, Inc.