Give it away, give it away, give it away now! In general, I believe that the more a person gives away, the more that will come back to them. I practice that philosophy in my work as well as in my personal life. (For a great book on this subject, which I had the honour of editing for the authors, buy a copy of The Power of Giving).
The things I’ve learned over the last 15 years doing not-for-profit communication work is nothing secret. And, in many cases, not that hard to do yourself – if you have the tools and templates.
This section is kind of like the “free stuff” pages on Craigslist (my favourite website in the world!). Take it. Use it. Make it work for you and your organization. And let me know about your successes – and challenges. I’m always looking for new case studies for workshops.
media relations
The media. As a faceless monolith, “the media” can seem quite scary. We’ve all heard stories of (or experienced first-hand) the reporter who mangles quotes and uses comments out of context. With a better understanding of who the media are (people in your community), what they need (a good story), and how to prepare for an interview (practice, practice, practice), media relations can actually be fun!
general communications
The resources in this section are some of my favourite. From the nit-picky (catching typos your spell-check will miss) to some tips to help you develop great stories about your organization, this section has fun communication tips for any not-for-profit.
e-newsletters
Six articles developed to support the first business I launched: a web-based service called Better e-Newsletters. In 2001 the world of e-newsletters was still young and, sadly for me, not-for-profits were slow adapters. I got lots of thanks for the resources at that old site, but no paying clients. Site is long dead, but the resources still live.
on a non-profit budget
Over the years I’ve written close to a thousand pages of communication handbook content. Most of this writing was for an organization that no longer exists, therefore all of that content is very hard to find. I’m working on a series of communication handbooks with a variety of other content experts. If you’d like to add your opinion about what topics we should launch the series with, please participate in a short survey.
webinars
This is another one of those “at the idea phase” projects of mine. A wonderful, terrible, scary idea. Given my background delivering 90-minute, online workshops and full-day, in-person workshops, I thought it could be interesting to develop a couple of webinars. If you have ideas for communication topics you don’t see offered by other folks, let me know. I’ll do a bit of research to determine if I think I could wrangle up a couple dozen people to participate.