Here at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, we specialize in nonprofit marketing training. We do this in our quest to help you learn your job, love your work, and lead your team.

But we know everyone learns differently. Everyone has a different amount of time to devote to professional development. Everyone is at a different level of experience and learning on the job. Some want hard skills training, and others want to talk it out with colleagues before they make decisions at their organizations.

That’s why our nonprofit marketing training menu offers so many different styles and topics—and we’ve just added a couple more!

Nonprofit Marketing Training – Live Formats in Real Time

Webinars

Each month, we offer one or two 60-minute training webinars on topics in nonprofit marketing and communications, covering both tactical and strategic skills. Here’s the current schedule. Anyone can register for these a la carte, and they are also included at no additional charge in the All-Access Pass.  Popular webinars include social media, email marketing, and video trends for nonprofits.

Master Classes

Five or six times a year, we offer a three-hour Master Class on Zoom. This approximates an in-person workshop experience, including training, small group work time, lots of worksheets and resources, and plenty of time for Q&A. Our most popular Master Classes are the “Seven Writing Styles All Nonprofit Communicators Should Master” and the “Communications Planning Master Class.” Anyone can register for these a la carte, and they are also included in the All-Access Pass. 

Jump Starters

Once a month, we offer an hour-long small group workshop on a specific topic to our All-Access Pass holders only. During Jump Starters, you get a bit of training, time to discuss strategic questions with other nonprofit communicators, 15 minutes of quiet time to start on a provided worksheet, and time for open Q&A.  Popular Jump Starters include prioritizing which metrics to track on social media or email, developing personas or journeys, and setting boundaries with coworkers.

And we’ve recently added two new formats– Study Halls and Chitchats — within our free, private community!

Study Halls

Every month or two, we’ll hold a mini-training session we call a Study Hall in our private community. You’ll get a bit of training (5-10 minutes), and you will likely get a worksheet or template. In this way, Study Halls are similar to Jump Starters, but not as intensive. We will also use Study Halls for feedback and fine-tuning sessions where you share your work with others and provide feedback to each other. Many of these will be free for anyone to attend, although some will be limited to All-Access Pass holders only.

Community Chitchats

Chitchats are a chance for us to come together and discuss a certain topic. These will be Zoom-style meetings in our community on specific topics but without a training agenda. It’s more of an opportunity for community members to share their insights and questions with each other, and we’ll simply provide facilitation and relevant resources.

Study Halls and Chitchats will be about 30 minutes long and generally more casual and less structured than Webinars, Master Classes, and Jump Starters.

Check out the full schedule of events in our community.

Nonprofit Marketing Training – At Your Own Pace

Everything above takes place in real-time. Put it on your schedule and join us live! We do record some of these sessions, but not all of them. For example, Master Classes and Jump Starters are rarely recorded.

We do, however, have many resources and recordings for folks who cannot join us live for whatever reason. We know that many members of our community live outside North America, and time zone differences make live participation tough. We also know how busy many of you are during the workday.

No worries –our private community is a gold mine of resources, recorded webinars, and self-paced certificate courses.

Free Resources and Discussions

Start with our Free Resources Library where you will find a vast array of worksheets, how-to guides, checklists, and some webinar recordings. Then connect with other nonprofit communicators in our discussion spaces. If you do it at work, there’s a place to talk about it with others in our community! All-Access Pass holders have an even greater library of materials, including many more webinar recordings and in-depth worksheets, templates, and guides on all kinds of nonprofit marketing and communications topics.

Micro-Credentials and Professional Certificates

We are working this summer to expand our micro-credentialing program and our professional certificate program. We are designing these to be meaningful learning experiences. You can’t just say you read a few blog posts or watched a video and call it a certificate! But we’ll make everything we ask you to do relevant, fun, and meaningful.

Three Books

Kivi Leroux Miller is the author of three books on nonprofit marketing and communications. These books are used as texts for university and certificate programs across the U.S. and Canada. But these are not your average boring textbooks. These were written first as pragmatic guides for working professionals and then adopted later by academics because they are so relevant to working in the sector.

• The Nonprofit Marketing Guide, second edition
• Content Marketing for Nonprofits
• CALM not BUSY

The Communications Director Mentoring Program

The Communications Director Mentoring Program is our premier training and coaching program. With a cohort of up to 16 people in each session, this six-month program runs from January to June and again from July to December. It covers everything a professional communicator or marketer working in the nonprofit sector needs to know. In six months, you’ll gain the knowledge and experience that it often takes three to five years to build in the sector on your own.

Consider yourself invited to join our community of nonprofit communicators working on their own professional development individually and together! We hope to see you in one of these trainings soon.

Working in nonprofit marketing and communication teaches us many things, but perhaps most importantly, that we’re all in this together. No matter the size or type of our organizations, we face similar challenges every day. As a nonprofit marketer we strive to advance our missions with limited budgets and manpower, juggling multiple priorities and often battling misconceptions about the value of good marketing.

Some days are tougher than others. On those challenging days, it can be helpful to recall a few key affirmations that have helped me through my years in nonprofit marketing:

I am a Nonprofit Marketer and…

1. “I can do hard things.”

This might sound a bit cliché, like something out of a motivational poster, but it’s a vital reminder. We are stretched thin at times. Have competing priorities. Outlandish external expectations. A new process, project, software, audience, or leadership idea. Every new challenge seems daunting at first, but remember, it’s always hard, until it isn’t. Remind yourself why the work is necessary, focus on the goal, and push through the discomfort (within reason). It’s through these challenges that we grow.

2. “I was selected to be here.”

You’re here because you have something valuable to contribute and because you understand this discipline—perhaps better than anyone else in your organization. Often, as nonprofit marketers we find ourselves defending our work, budgets, strategies, or the necessity of our roles, especially in nonprofits where the importance of marketing and communications can be underestimated or misunderstood. Embrace your role as the subject matter expert in communications and marketing.

Remember, you were chosen for this position to offer crucial insights and drive your organization’s mission forward. Even if your role is multifaceted, remember that someone trusted you to manage this vital area. Own it, nurture it, and speak with authority.

3. “Spend the money.”

When you are a nonprofit marketer, it’s natural to want to save as much as possible to direct funds towards your cause. However, investing in the right tools, education, and marketing strategies is crucial. Effective outreach requires resources, and being too frugal can mean missing out on opportunities to amplify your message and impact.

4. “Embrace failure.”

Not every initiative will be a success, and that’s okay. Each failure is a lesson in disguise. If you’re not failing, you’re likely not innovating or pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Recognize that every setback is a step forward in disguise, giving us lessons that can refine your strategies and improve future outcomes.

For instance, if a fundraising campaign doesn’t meet its target, instead of viewing it as a setback, see it as a chance to analyze what didn’t work and why. Perhaps the promotional methods didn’t resonate with your audience, or the timing was off. Remember, the path to success is often paved with lessons learned from failure—embrace it as part of your growth journey.

5. “My mask first.”

Working as a nonprofit marketer often means putting others first, but you can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself, set boundaries, and ensure you’re not heading towards burnout. It’s not selfish; it’s necessary. Make self-care a priority, not an afterthought. By maintaining your well-being, you ensure you have the energy and clarity to give your best to the causes you champion. Just like in airplane safety, securing your mask first is essential before assisting others.

Remember these affirmations, especially on the tough days. What you do is crucial, and sometimes, just reminding yourself of these simple truths can provide the strength to persevere. Say it with me: “What I do is important and necessary!”

If you need a little more support, check out 10 Easy Ways to Lower Your Stress Levels or more tips on Balancing Mental Health in Nonprofit Marketing

Congratulations — you found us! Nonprofit marketing and communications is all we do here at Nonprofit Marketing Guide.

We focus on the needs of nonprofit marketing and communications professionals and offer community, training, coaching, and mentoring. This is your nonprofit marketing professional development home online—that’s it. We aren’t trying to upsell you on software or private consulting services.

Our motto says it all: We want to help you learn your job, love your work, and lead your team.

Ready to get started?

Step One: Join Our Nonprofit Marketing Guide Community and Find Your People!

It’s free! Join our private community to connect with thousands of other nonprofit marketing and communications pros. Everyone in our community gets what you do for a living because they do it, too. The community works the same way many social media sites do, so we think you’ll find it intuitive to use.

You don’t have to explain nonprofit marketing to anyone, justify your job, or always talk about it in the context of fundraising. We get it!

If you really want to stay in touch, be sure to download our apps so the Nonprofit Marketing Guide Community is with you on the go. You’ll get notifications about the events and conversations you care most about.  Download the Nonprofit Marketing Guide app from Google Play  | Download the Nonprofit Marketing Guide app from the iOS App Store 

Step Two: Download Some Nonprofit Marketing Templates or Jump into the Conversations

Once you get your account set up, there are two ways to go.

Do you need to download templates, ideas, worksheets, and more on a specific topic? Head on over to the Free Resources section, which is set up following our 10 Keys to Nonprofit Communications Success. Based on our decades of research and experience coaching nonprofit communications staff, these are the ten categories of work that we believe all nonprofit communications and marketing professionals should be working on.

Or maybe you’d prefer to get right into the conversations! You’ll see lots of spaces organized by the topics nonprofit comms staff are working on every day. Click on in, read some posts, reply to a few, and post your own questions or insights.

Step Three: Check Out Some of the Great Resources Here on the Blog

We have been blogging on nonprofit marketing and communications for longer than anyone else — we started in 2007 and are still at it today! That means we have thousands of posts on just about everything. Here are some great places to start:

• A Basic Nonprofit Marketing Strategy, Outlined
• What Goes into a Nonprofit Marketing and Communications Plan or Strategy?
• New to This Work or Just Flat-out Overwhelmed? Ground Yourself in These Nonprofit Comms Basics
• Nonprofit Editorial Calendar FAQs

Also, check out our annual Nonprofit Communications Trends Reports, released every year in January based on survey answers from hundreds of nonprofit communicators.

Step Four: Like to Read? Get Kivi’s Books

Kivi Leroux Miller, the founder and CEO of Nonprofit Marketing Guide (and the person writing this post!) has written three books.

• The Nonprofit Marketing Guide, Second Edition
• Content Marketing for Nonprofits
• CALM not BUSY: How to Manage Your Nonprofit’s Communications for Great Results 

She also created the Nonprofit Communications Strategic Planning Card Deck, a visual tool for prioritizing and planning your work.

These books and the card deck are often the assigned texts for university and certificate programs on nonprofit management. You can find the books and the card deck on Amazon or ask your local bookseller.

Step Five: Sign Up for Nonprofit Marketing Training

Like I said at the top, all we do here is training and coaching for nonprofit communications and marketing staff. While we have many free resources available in our community and on this website, we also offer paid webinars, online master class workshops, and a six-month mentoring program.

On average each month, we offer two paid trainings, such as a one-hour webinar or a three-hour master class. You can check out all of our upcoming training here.

We also offer a Jump Starter workshop each month exclusively for our All-Access Pass Holders, who pay one fee to to attend as many trainings during the year as they like. Jump Starters are special sessions where you get some training, discussion time, and 15 minutes of quiet time with a worksheet before we all come back together for the final Q&A.

If you are ready for an accelerated learning experience, consider the six-month Nonprofit Communications Director Mentoring Program. We run the program twice every year, from January to June and again from July to December, for just 16 nonprofit communicators each session.

We are here for you!

No matter how long you’ve been doing this work, we are here for you! Let us know how we can help.

Through our All-Access Pass training program and our Communications Director Mentoring Program, I meet many nonprofit communicators in coordinator or assistant positions who want to be promoted to the manager or director level. We also work with communications directors who are working toward VP or C-Suite (“Chief of”) jobs.

While many factors determine who gets those jobs, here are three tips that anyone interested in being promoted to a higher-level nonprofit communications job should consider.

Demonstrate That You Can Think Strategically

A strategic thinker looks far beyond today’s to-do list to consider the organization’s needs months, even years, in advance. They connect the dots between the communications work and the organization’s larger goals. They understand the big picture and how to translate that vision into tactical assignments for junior staff.

You can’t sit back and wait for someone else to figure out your job. When you are at the director level or higher, you are responsible for determining your own job and the jobs of the people who report to you.

Take Control of Your Own Professional Development

The communications director job at nonprofits is still a relatively young role. Many of you reading this blog are the first communications director at your nonprofit. While we are doing our best at Nonprofit Marketing Guide to help you figure out what a professional development plan looks like, the reality is that there’s no set path to reaching a higher level of professionalism in this field.  Once again, it’s up to you to figure out what skills you need and to find a way to get them.

Grow Your Way into Management by Growing the Team

If you talk to a communications director who’s been with the same organization for a while, you’ll likely hear a story like this: “I was the only communications staff member. After a couple of years, I made the case to start growing the team. Then I was promoted to the director job once there were too many people for my boss to supervise directly.”

At Nonprofit Marketing Guide, we are all about helping you learn your job, love your work, and lead your team. We also love to hear your success stories in moving from coordinator roles to leadership. Share with us in our private community!

If you read this blog regularly but aren’t yet in our free Nonprofit Marketing Guide community, the time to join is NOW!

Here’s why . . . 

Rather than sharing our traditional “Week of Freebies” here on the blog between Christmas and New Year’s Day, we are sharing them in the community only. These resources are typically only available to All-Access Pass holders, but for a limited time, we are making them open to all in the community. 

And now it’s easier than ever with our new apps. Download for Apple and Android to get blog updates and much more.

Here’s what you are missing out on if you don’t join and visit the community . . .

• Tuesday:  Our Donor Communications Planning Worksheet (This one is already posted and waiting for you!)
• Wednesday: Outlines for Four Online Content Marketing Campaigns
• Thursday: Email Re-Engagement Campaign Templates
• Friday: Resources for Changing Your Mindset and Taking Charge of Your Work Life

This week, Kristina and I revealed our tentative nonprofit communications training schedule for 2024. Listen in as we step through our 2024 plans quarter by quarter, highlighting the webinars, master classes, certificate programs and jump starter workshops we currently have planned for you.

Interested in attending some or all? Be sure to get your All-Access Pass! Passes are required to participate in jump starters and to work on the certificate programs. You may register for webinars and master classes a la carte.

P.S. If you receive the blog via email, please note that we will stop sending posts sometime next week. Instead, we’ll share them in our community and on social media.

Stephanie Krieg

It’s been a minute, but I am so excited to bring you a brand new submission for our Day in the Life of a Nonprofit Communicator series! This series lets you describe your workday in your own words. I would love to start sharing your days again so submit your day by filling out the form at the end of this post.

Stephanie’s Bio

Stephanie Krieg, MSHC, CHES, is an advocate for health promotion and communication. She holds a Master’s degree in Health Communication, a Bachelor’s in Health Promotion and Education, and is a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES). Stephanie has devoted her professional journey to empowering individuals and communities in making well-informed decisions regarding their health. Her expertise is centered around crafting and executing highly effective health promotion strategies, specifically tailored to address diverse public health concerns within the cancer community.

When Stephanie isn’t educating and advocating for the cancer community she can be found spending time with family and friends near some great cheese and even better wine, out on coffee talks with friends, or making memories with the amazing tiny human her and her husband have helped create.

She works at home and this is her typical day:

Before 8:00 am: I wake up at 4 am to kick start my day. I am a part time fitness instructor and have been for 15 years, so I have two dedicated AM classes that I teach at 5 and 6 am. My motto is that there’s nothing a little caffeine, cackles, and CrossFit can’t fix.

I get home at 7 am just in time to get my 11 month old son up and ready for the day. We spend some time cuddling, having breakfast, and watching Sesame Street before one of his grandparents meets us at the house for pick up so I can start my workday.

8:00 am to 10:00 am: I start my workday at 8 am – just me, my computer, and my to-do list. Both my husband and I work from home, so in the mornings we usually get organized together. We review our to-do lists, meeting schedule, and chat about big initiatives. We both work in the public health space, so its nice to bounce ideas off of one another and get a different perspective.

I have both a physical and digital to-do list. My physical one is a list of what I want to get done that day, and my digital one is an excel spreadsheet with my open projects. I leave notes daily on whats been done, what needs doing, and any significant updates/documents linked related to each project. I lead a department of two, plus an intern, and we’ve all adapted to using open project spreadsheets to stay organized and on top of the variety of requests we receive.

I finish this part of my morning reviewing emails to make sure nothing urgent has come up while I start tackling the day.

10:00 am to 12:00 pm: The thick of my workday is between 9 am and 2pm. I am most productive in the mornings, so I tend to schedule important meetings and my most comprehensive work during these times.

I have been working outside of a traditional office since 2018 and I find that I focus so much more this way versus an office environment. I check in with my teammates using text/zoom/g-chat/email, and I block focus time on my calendar so I can concentrate on projects. I spend a lot of my time in HubSpot, Canva, and researching ovarian cancer topics for educational campaigns, programs, tools, and educational resources.

As the Communications Director, I also spend a lot of my time in strategy meetings and meetings in general – being looped in across happenings in the organization allows me to strategize early and often about how to communicate our impact and tell our story.

I also use project management tools like Asana to track my time on different initiatives. If something is taking up a significant amount of my time, I work to delegate responsibilities across our team so that we can balance workloads and prioritize a work-life balance.

Speaking of work-life balance – I always block out time for lunch with my husband. Its our connection time in the middle of the day without interruptions from kids, work, or life in general. We will eat or go on a walk around the neighborhood with our dogs.

12:00pm – 2:00 pm: After lunch I take a look at the remainder of my to-do list and prioritize. If you work at a nonprofit, you wear a lot of hats and you know that not everything gets done within the time you hoped it would. I reprioritize if needed and connect with my teammates to see if any of them need support with reprioritization.

This is also the time I usually schedule my team one-on-one’s. Its a nice way to wind down the workday checking in with my team about their workloads, follow up on their questions, and support them. I don’t drink coffee after 11am, but I am a snacker, so this is the time I snag a snack and give myself some grace – I’ve been up for a long time!

2:00pm – 4:00 pm: I take the last part of my day to fill out my spreadsheet with important updates, create the next day’s to-do list, catch up on emails, throw in laundry, tidy up, and start dinner.

My husband and I do a divide and conquer before our son gets home at 4 pm so that we can spend the evening uninterrupted with him.

After 4:00 pm: Unless there is something super urgent like a grant request or an event, I am offline at 4 pm. My son is home and I spend my time with him and my husband. We go on a walk, have dinner together and play. My coworkers and boss are all really respectful of my time and its my favorite thing about working where I do.

You can’t pour from an empty cup, and this is the time I take to unwind and make memories.

Thanks for sharing your day, Stephanie!

Want to be featured in this series? Tell us what you do in a typical day as a nonprofit communications pro by filling out the form below.

Can’t see the form? Try this.

Here are five quick reminders I think a bunch of you need to hear right now:

1. You are not alone.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of people working in nonprofit comms are struggling with the same issues. I promise. I talk to them daily, and it’s one of the reasons we decided to create a private community (it’s free; folks with the All-Access Pass get more).
2.  Complicated situations are common, but don’t require complicated plans. A lot of you work for nonprofits doing complicated, hard things. Or you work for nonprofits doing 30 different things, which complicates your job as a single nonprofit communicator. Don’t bring even more complication to the table. Simplify as much as you can. Hone in on what is most essential from a communications point of view.
3. Nobody knows everything about the job. There is no one set “nonprofit communications director” job description. It varies as widely as the missions of nonprofit organizations, and there is a nonprofit for everything. So don’t feel like an imposter or that you have too much to learn before taking on the job. Just do it, and keep learning. The job is always changing. Even those of us who have been at this for ~20 years are still learning every day, trust me.
4. If you feel you have to justify your existence at work, that’s a problem with them, not you. Yes, you may need to do some internal education about the strategic role of marketing and communications in the nonprofit sector, about better practices, about what is realistic, and what is possible with more time and resources. It’s discouraging when your job is first on the chopping block. But understand that is nearly always a sign of a short-sighted approach and leadership failure. It’s not because your chosen profession doesn’t matter. It does.
5. You can figure it out — whatever it is. That doesn’t mean you personally have to do whatever it is. But whatever the communications or marketing dilemma of the day is, there are people who have done it before or who are available to listen, at a minimum. Give yourself a little time to breathe, a bit more time to think, and you’ll get there.

In our 2023 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, we asked if you would be looking for a job with a different organization in 2023.

More than a third (34%) of nonprofit communications staff plan to look for new jobs in 2023. But we suspect that a much larger percentage are open to opportunities even if they are not actively looking.

Source: The 2023 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report

Is the Great Resignation Still Going?

There are varying thoughts on whether the Great Resignation will heat up in 2023 or grind to a halt.

Either way, many blamed the Great Resignation on employees just wanting more money, but research shows it’s much deeper than that.

In my September 2021 post The Great Resignation: Why Your Nonprofit Employees Are Quitting and How to Stop It, I found that the highest quit rate is among those that are “not engaged” and “actively disengaged” workers. Gallup calculated employee engagement by having survey takers rate the following statements (what they call the 12 essential elements of engagement) on a scale from 1-5 with a sixth option of “don’t know/does not apply”:

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

I highlighted three of these elements because they all speak to a trend we found in our 2023 Trends Report data.

Which Nonprofits Should Be Most Concerned About Losing Their Communications Staff

When analyzing the answers from survey takers who were likely to leave (see chart below), what really stood out as the differentiator isn’t team size or whether they received a raise in the last two years. It was (1) whether they believe there is an opportunity for advancement and (2) how difficult it is to say No when a supervisor makes a work request. (See Kivi’s post Why Communications Staff Need the Ability to Say No for more on this second factor)

Source: The 2023 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report

A whopping 80% of those who said they were looking for a new job did NOT believe they had an opportunity for advancement or weren’t sure.

So you can’t really blame staff retention problems on money alone. For nonprofit communicators, much more goes into their decisions about whether to stay or go.

You can read all about our findings on nonprofit communications jobs including salary info and budget size in our FREE 2023 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.