Is it time to refresh your nonprofit’s email newsletter? We recently shared our seven tips for modern nonprofit email newsletter designs.

Today, let’s look at five email newsletter trends that will influence the way your nonprofit’s e-newsletter looks in the future.

1. Movement at the Top

We all know the power of video and animated content. It’s everywhere. So why not at the top of your e-newsletter too?

Here’s an example from Charity: Water.

You can easily make animated gifs from still photos or graphics using tools like Canva or by inserting just a few seconds from a video you are highlighting.

2. Video Newsletters

Why not go all in with video and deliver the newsletter content itself that way? The National Military Family Association does a monthly video newsletter with a very brief text summary. While we don’t see a ton of these, we think it’s a great email newsletter trend. If you can’t pull it off, at least try to add movement at the top.

3. Seeking Feedback in the Footer

We all want to know how the folks on our mailing lists are perceiving our work. Why not ask?

Placing a section in your newsletter footer is another email newsletter trend we love, as Compassion International does. Each icon takes you to a landing page. You can include a form there to collect additional data or just acknowledge the feedback. If you are technically savvy enough, you could also pass this information (which icon they clicked on) into your CRM as another data point about the individuals on your list who do click.

4. Cleaner Event Marketing

Nonprofits market a lot of events. Like a lot. 

All of those details can really clutter up an email and make it very hard to skim.

I love the more visually oriented calendar approaches taken by Insight Memory Care Center and the Triangle Land Conservancy.

We really hope this trend catches on in the sector!

       

5. Conditional Content to Increase Personalization

The biggest email newsletter trend of all? Using conditional content to personalize newsletters to each person on your list based on what you know about them.

We’ll share much more about using conditional content as it becomes more universally available in email marketing software, but here’s the basic idea.

Conditional content lets you either show or hide content that will appear in each person’s version of your newsletter in their inbox. As you build the newsletter, you set the rules determining who will see what chunks of content.

So, you could show event marketing to people who have not RSVPd for the event yet, but suppress it or show attendee-only content to those who have.

If you know certain folks like cats and others like dogs because you have them tagged in your CRM, you can show cat images to cat people and dog images to dog people (or whatever makes sense given the topics you work on).

It will look like a bit of a mess on your end because you are adding ALL of the content in the version that you build. But when it is delivered to inboxes, it will look right. We highly recommend testing the variations before sending them!

We would love to see how you are implementing these trends in your nonprofit newsletters!

We recently presented a new webinar on modern nonprofit email newsletter designs. If you missed it, All-Access Pass holders can watch the recording in our private community.

We looked at more than a decade of nonprofit email newsletter designs and compared those to best practices today, which was very eye-opening for many participants. Are you still emailing like it’s 2020, 2017, or even 2012?

Here are seven pointers we recommend for any nonprofit considering a newsletter redesign. Based on the number of webinar participants who said they wanted to implement this change, I’m sharing these in order of importance. Eighty-four nonprofit communicators participated in the polling for reference.  Keep in mind they wouldn’t have voted for it if they had already made the change.

1. Shorten, Shorten, Shorten.

Nonprofit email newsletters are almost universally too long. Shorten, shorten, shorten. If you have that much great info to share via email, consider sending your newsletter more often instead of cramming everything in.  This was the most popular change participants wanted to make, with 65% saying they would like to shorten their nonprofit’s email newsletter.

More: Three Trends That Beg for Shorter Email Newsletters

2. No Paragraphs Longer Than Three Sentences.

One easy way to shorten your newsletter is to stop with the big blocks of text! Shorten your sentences and paragraphs! Keeping your nonprofit email newsletter design short also means making it skimmable, which means shorter blocks of text. A little over half of participants, 54%, said they wanted to try this.

3. Simplify the Header.

Don’t blow the most important email real estate right at the top with a meaningless graphic. Your “from” line should tell them it’s from you, and you don’t need to name your newsletter with an enormous graphic. Keep it small. Forty percent of webinar poll takers wanted to simplify their headers.

4. Add Motion to the Top.

Everywhere you look online, we know video works. But how do you capitalize on that with email? Adding animated gifs to your newsletter can work, whether you use three seconds from a video you link to or a more traditional animated gif you create in something like Canva. Forty percent of webinar poll takers also wanted to add motion to the top of their email newsletters.

5. Use One Main Article Followed by Secondary Teasers.

Here’s another way to keep your newsletters shorter and skimmable: Prioritize the content for your readers. Give more space to the single most important message and follow that with something more akin to bullets or teaser copy. About a third, 36%, wanted to try this approach to their nonprofit email newsletter design.

6. Left Justify Everything.

There’s no need to get fancy. When folks are skimming emails, it’s too much work for their eyes to dart around left, right, and center, trying to figure out what they should be looking at. Left-justify everything so it’s easy to skim. About a quarter, 26%, thought this could be helpful with their email newsletter redesign.

7. Limit the Use of Extraneous Lines and Photos That Don’t Add Meaning.

If it doesn’t add meaning, get rid of it. We reviewed many nonprofit newsletters with extraneous lines and photos that didn’t add any meaning but were just filler. A well-placed icon can often convey more meaning than a vague photo! A fifth, or 20%, of participants wanted to consider this tip when redesigning their nonprofit email newsletter.

See our Nonprofit Email Newsletter Best Practices and Tips for more.

Nonprofit email marketing is still a great way for nonprofits to reach the right people with the right message at the right time. It’s a great tool especially when you connect your email engagement work to your nonprofit’s big mission goals. Ultimately, the most strategic way to use email is to work towards good email metrics.

But nonprofit email marketing can be complicated! In much the same way that social media is ruled by algorithms, whether and how your nonprofit email gets delivered to your supporters is subject to complex algorithms.

And we know that nonprofits are struggling to do email marketing well:

Nonprofits Still Aren’t Using Some of the Best Email Tactics

The Nonprofit Email Apocalypse is Coming

But don’t worry—we can help you build and maintain a great nonprofit email marketing program by keeping you updated on the email best practices nonprofits should follow.

Managing Your Nonprofit’s Email Marketing List

Let’s start with the most important part of your email marketing program: your email list.

Maintaining a healthy, engaged email list is more important than any particular tactic you might try in any specific email you send.

Follow these golden rules of nonprofit email list management:

1. Only add names to your list with permission. Make sure people know they are signing up or that you will be sending them email based on a transaction with you, such as completing a form, making a donation, or RSVPing for an event.

• Is a Bigger Email List Always Better? Nope.
• Nonprofits Should Try Some New Email List Building Techniques
• 3 Email List Building Pop-Ups for Your Website
• Level Up Your Permission-Based Marketing and List Building

Implementing a nonprofit email welcome series is a great way to get new people on your email list off to a good start!

2. Segment your list, which is an essential email marketing strategy to increase engagement.  By creating subgroups on your list, you can can send specific groups of people the information they care most about.

• How We Used Segmenting to Increase an Email Newsletter Open Rate to 64%
• How Long with That 64% Open Rate Last?
• You Need to Fix Your All or Nothing Email List
• Advanced Email Engagement for Nonprofits: Use Zero-Party Data
• How Nonprofits Can Collect More Zero-Party Data or Email Marketing

3. When people stop engaging, try to re-engage them. 

We have lots of advice on running re-engagement campaigns! In fact, our All-Access Pass Holders can download several pre-written re-engagement campaigns we created especially for nonprofits. Here is some additional advice:

• Six Messaging Options for Email Re-Engagement Campaigns
• Need Proof That Inbox Providers Are Checking on Engagement?
• We are Running an Email Re-engagement Campaign and People Have Feelings

4. When they stop engaging with your nonprofit’s emails, stop emailing them!

• How We Cleaned Up Our Email List and Re-Engaged Our Subscribers
• Should You Stop Sending Email to Complainers?
• Best Practices for Your Email Unsubscribe Page
• When to Stop Snail Mailing and Emailing People, Part I and Part II
• Worry Less about Spam Blocking and More About Email Engagement, Part I and Part II

Send Engaging Nonprofit Email Marketing Content

Ensure that you are emailing often enough and providing opportunities for people to click on links in your emails. People need to engage with your email (click, forward, reply to) for the email companies to see that the people on your list really do want your emails.

Did you know we offer a special monthly Writing Prompts newsletter that helps you think more creatively about the content for the following month?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Making Your Messaging More Relevant
• Four Questions to Ask to Get Your Messaging Right
• How to Connect Emotionally to Motivate Action
• Conversion Copywriting Tips for Nonprofits
• Adding Urgency to Appeals: Why They Should Do It Now
• Mind Your Microcontent: 8 Little Bits That Can Make a Big Difference in Your Next Email

Screwed something up in that email that just went out? It’s OK! Resends often have better open rates than the originals! Check out 36 subject lines and phrases to help you fix email mistakes.

Focus on Improving Your Email Deliverability

Following the steps above will help improve your nonprofit’s email deliverability. Let’s look at a few more important considerations, especially since email deliverability is down, for a variety of reasons. 

Moving Your Nonprofit Email List? How to Warm Up a New IP Address.  You definitely need a plan if you are moving to a new email service provider (for example, switching from Constant Contact to MailChimp).

You also want to work on your email list health well ahead of big emailing times of the year. In the nonprofit sector, that is typically year-end, but depending on your mission, it could be other times of year too.

• Get Your Email List Ready for Year-end Fundraising Now
• PSA: Don’t Send Email on Black Friday or Cyber Monday if You Don’t Have to

More on Nonprofit Email Marketing Trends

We frequently include questions about email in our annual Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, as do others who release trends reports.

Here are some specific briefings on nonprofit email trends:

Nonprofit Marketing Email Trends for 2023: Another Peek at the Data

5 Top Takeaways from the Nonprofit Email Report (NeonOne)

We teach a two-part webinar series yearly on the latest email marketing trends for nonprofits, so watch our training page and join our free community for even more resources. And if you have the All-Access Pass, you get access to our annual Nonprofit Email Playbook as well!

Kristina and I are about to make one of those big switches that all nonprofit communicators will likely make at some point in their careers: moving an email list to a new email service provider. That means we will need to warm up a new IP address and rebuild our sender reputation.

Shaky on the vocabulary? Email service providers (ESP) include companies like MailChimp, Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign, etc. Those companies use their own specific IP addresses to send email on your behalf (it’s like a return address). So, when you change the IP address you send from by moving your mailing list from one ESP to another, everyone wants to make sure you are legitimate and not a spammer.  This includes the company you are now using to send, the inbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc., as well as all the different “spam monitor/blacklist” companies in between.

In our case, we are leaving Keap/Infusionsoft and moving to ActiveCampaign.  We’ll share what we learn along this journey as we use the new tools, especially since many nonprofits use ActiveCampaign too. We also hope to take advantage of new features like dynamic content fairly quickly.

Only Take the Most Engaged with You When You Move Your Email List

One of the first tasks in this process is deciding which records to move and which to leave behind. We are moving only the most engaged records, about a third of our current database. We haven’t mailed to that full list in a very long time, so only moving the most engaged is a really nice bit of spring cleaning!

But next comes the part that is a little nerve-wracking: warming up our new IP address so our emails reach their destination. Anytime you start sending emails to thousands of email addresses with a new company, the various companies involved want to ensure you aren’t a spammer.  The move from your old ESP to your new ESP means you are also moving from one sending IP address to another, so you have to rebuild your sender reputation on the new IP address.

The same holds for using a new domain name. Let’s say you’ve rebranded and changed your website domain and, therefore, your email addresses. You need to warm up that domain, too. Thankfully, we’ve been sending from NonprofitMarketingGuide.com for a long time, so we are good there.

How to Warm Up a New IP Address

Rather than sending to everyone on the list at your normal pace, you must warm up the new IP address. Here is some of the advice from ActiveCampaign that we are working through and how we are thinking about it.

1. Only Send to Engaged Contacts

We are currently scouring our list in several different ways to ensure we are only bringing over people who regularly open emails. At the same time, we also need to ensure we are bringing over people who have paid for services like our All-Access Pass even if they haven’t been opening emails. While we will still transfer those names over, we will tag them and treat them differently. More on that below . . .

2.  Ease into Sending on the New IP Address

Inbox providers only want to accept so many emails per day from a new sender, so we really have to ease into it. ActiveCampaign has asked us by day of the week, week of the month, etc., what we typically send so they can help us create a plan for how many emails to send each day during our two-week warm-up period.

We are still awaiting their specific recommendations, but some plans encourage sending just 50 emails on the first day (one email to just 50 email addresses) and 100 on the second. From there, the number grows exponentially, so you can send thousands by the end of the week and tens of thousands by the end of the second week.

3. Create a Day-by-Day Plan for Your Nonprofit Email List

Since you can’t just send an email to everyone all at once, you’ll need a plan to ensure everyone does get your content eventually. Take a newsletter for example. You might need to send that content out over four or five days depending on the size of your list. So you’ll need to keep track of who got it each day of the week.

4. Make the Content Really Good

Because you are trying to build trust with all the companies involved, you want your subscribers to open, click, and otherwise interact with your emails by forwarding or replying. So this is a great time to be thoughtful about your email content. Spend a little more time on the subject line. Give them opportunities and reasons to click. Ask them to reply to a question.

5. Use Your Old ESP for the Less Engaged Parts of Your Nonprofit Email List

Depending on the size of your list, this may mean that you can’t send to everyone you normally do. Does that mean a big chunk of people won’t get your newsletter or other email? Not necessarily. You can still send from your old ESP while you are warming up with your new one.

For example, one part of our list will likely receive our weekly newsletter from ActiveCampaign later this month, while others will get it via Keap. The same goes for other one-off emails. Only the most engaged email addresses will initially receive those messages through ActiveCampaign.

So, if you see that you are getting messages from us via ActiveCampaing in mid-late April, thank you! That means you are one of our most active subscribers.

6. Watch Your Stats for Signs of Trouble While Warming Up Your New IP Address

It is totally normal for your nonprofit email metrics like open rates to be lower than expected during this warm-up process (even though we know open rates are problematic). It’s OK. But with each passing day and week, the numbers should be improving. If they are not, that’s a sign of potential trouble. You should talk to your account rep immediately to ensure that you aren’t permanently damaging your sender reputation and that it’s just a temporary warm-up problem.

We’ll share more from our experiences with this email list move soon.

I am working on the slide deck for Thursday’s webinar Social Media Trends for Nonprofit Communicators in 2024 and thought I would share some of the data I am finding on how people feel about using AI to generate content.

One of the themes I am seeing is that AI use will skyrocket, but that is causing social medias users to be leery. Hootsuite research found that “62% of consumers say they are less likely to engage with and trust content is they know it was created by an AI application.”

Part of this distrust comes from not knowing what it real or fake on the internet. But with all signs pointing to AI use by marketers only increasing in the coming years, how can we utilize this helpful, time-saving tool while retaining our followers’ trust?

7 Ways to Build Trust Even When Using AI

1. Know your audience and how they feel about AI
2. Share authentic moments
3. Focus on how your content makes someone feel or the experience they have when interacting with your brand
4. Let your personality shine to humanize your content
5. Show REAL people from you organization
6. Be transparent if you do use AI for images
7. Create AI policies to ensure regulations are in place to combat things like copyright infringements and bias

How to Find Authentic Moments

• How you keep doing it, even when it’s hard
• Talk about the flubs and frustrations
• What do you love?
• What do you talk about after work with friends and family?
• What are you learning?
• Honest reactions to news and culture
• Occasional memes that reflect how everyone is feeling

Ways to Show Personality

• Writing in first and second person
• Letting us know who is doing the posting
• Expressing an opinion
• Sharing losses as well as wins
• Making us smile
• Telling stories

For more on social media, join us next Thursday, March 21st for Social Media Trends for Nonprofit Communicators in 2024. The information below was taken from the BONUS handout Everything Nonprofits Need to Know About Social Media in 2024. Get a FREE copy of this e-book when you register for Thursday’s webinar.

In order to effectively use social media, you need to know how it’s used and who is using it. Let’s break down some important data about social media and specific channels like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and more.

Social Media Demographics in General

• The typical social media user actively uses an average of 6.7 different social platforms each month and spends an average of more than 2 hours and 23 minutes per day using social media
• Social media user identities have passed the 5 billion mark the equivalent to 62.3 percent of the world’s population
• There are 239.0 million social media users in the United States as of January 2024 (70.1 percent of the total population)
• Almost all nonprofits use social media in some capacity

Facebook

• Number of monthly active users: 3.049 billion
• Number of active users in Northern America: 208.6 million
• Largest age group: 25-34 (29.6%) 
• Gender: 43.2% female, 56.8% male (no data on other genders)
• Time spent per day: 30.8 minutes

Instagram

• Number of monthly active users: 2 billion
• Number of active users in Northern America: 187.2 million
• Largest age group: 18-24 (32%)
• Gender: 49.4% female, 50.6% male (no data on other genders)
• Time spent per day: 33 minutes

TikTok

• Number of monthly active users: 1.562 billion
• TikTok’s advertising reach in Northern America: 127.4 million users aged 18 and above
• Largest age group: 18-24 (38.d%) 
• Gender: 53.4% female, 46.6% male (no data on other genders)
• Time spent per day: 55.8 minutes per day

X (Formerly Twitter)

• Number of monthly active users: 372.9 million (down from 450 million)
• Number of active Twitter users in Northern America: 71.7 million
• Largest age group: 25-34 (38.5%)
• Gender: 35.7% female, 64.3% male (no data on other genders)
• Time spent per day: 31.4 minutes

YouTube

• Number of monthly active users: 2.5 billion
• YouTube’s advertising reach in Northern America: 279.1 million users
• Largest age group: 25-34 (20.7%)
• Gender: 45.6% female, 54.4% male (no data on other genders)
• Time spent per day: 48.7 minutes

LinkedIn

• Number of monthly active users: 900 million
• Largest age group: 25-34 (60%)
• Gender: 43.7% female, 56.3% male (no data on other genders)
• Time spent per session: 7 minutes

Sources:

https://datareportal.com/social-media-users

https://www.mixbloom.com/resources/average-time-spent-on-social-media-2022

https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-united-states-of-america

https://wearesocial.com/us/blog/2024/01/digital-2024-5-billion-social-media-users/

https://backlinko.com/youtube-users#user-demographics

The online search landscape is changing. A November 2023 study by HubSpot highlighted a shift towards social media over search engines for information, especially among younger audiences like Gen Z and Millennials. They go on to share that their Trends report shows 31% of consumers now use social platforms for finding information.

Another report from DataReportal stated that back in 2022, 75% of internet users used social media to research products, look for reviews, and recommendations. And another 27.9% used social media to find inspiration for things to do and buy. All signs and reports point to that number having increased today.

Social SEO, as a result, is now becoming as popular as traditional SEO once was. Unlike traditional SEO, which optimizes for search engines like Google and Bing, Social SEO focuses on making content visible on social platforms. It’s about making our content easier to find and ensuring it shows up in users’ feeds.

The American Marketing Association named Social SEO as one of the top six 2024 trends for marketers. This highlights how important Social SEO is for nonprofits like ours, especially as social media search and AI chatbots become more common.

So, what does optimizing social media platforms for search look like?

Top Tips for Enhancing Social SEO:

1. Tailoring content for each social platform.
2. Incorporating keywords and phrases relevant to your audience’s search habits.
3. Optimizing your social media profiles for SEO.
4. Using relevant hashtags to improve discoverability.
5. Analyzing and adapting content based on performance insights.
6. Using interactive campaigns to engage and inform.
7. Optimizing posts for visibility and search relevance.
8. Sharing high-quality, shareable content that aligns with your mission.

Now let’s see it in practice for mission-based organizations. Let’s take a look at some examples of Social SEO in action:

Optimizing Profiles for SEO

Example: A homeless shelter nonprofit enhancing its Facebook profile by including keywords such as “homeless support services” and “emergency shelter” in its bio section. They also link directly to their donation page and use a consistent naming convention across platforms to improve their searchability and brand recognition.

Optimizing Posts for Search Relevance

Example: A mental health nonprofit uses Instagram to share content that directly addresses common search queries, such as “how to cope with anxiety.” They include these phrases in their post captions and video content, making their posts more likely to be discovered by users seeking information on these topics.

Tailored Content for Each Platform

Example: A literacy nonprofit can share quick tips on Twitter/X, in-depth articles or long post content on LinkedIn, and visual testimonials on Instagram to connect with different segments of their audience.

Interactive Campaigns

Example: Hosting live Q&A sessions on social platforms to address common queries that come into the organization and encouraging followers to submit questions before, during, and after.

Strategic Hashtag Use

Example: An environmental nonprofit could increase content discoverability and connect with like-minded users by using targeted but somewhat mainstream hashtags such as #PlasticFreeOceans to connect with a targeted audience.

Engaging Visual Content

Example: Sharing compelling stories and images of rescued animals, an animal welfare nonprofit can use Instagram Stories or Facebook Live to boost engagement and visibility.

Community Building Through Engagement

Example: Fostering two-way conversation through comments and shares, to build deeper connections with your audience.

Befriend the Algorithms

The shift towards social media as a primary search tool offers nonprofits an invaluable opportunity to connect with their audience on a deeper level. By leveraging the unique strengths of each social platform and aligning your content strategy with your audience’s search behaviors, your nonprofit can significantly enhance its social SEO. The addition of strategic hashtag use, engaging visual content, and community building through engagement further enriches this approach, ensuring your nonprofit’s message not only reaches but resonates with the right audience.

With every hashtag, every shareable moment, and every community dialogue, we’re not just reaching audiences; we’re inviting them into our story. Stay curious, stay engaged, and let’s make every search a step towards new relationships and achieving your mission.

“What should I post on social media?” is one of the top questions nonprofit marketers ask. To help answer that question and to see if it lines up with best practices, we asked nonprofit communicators to tell us how often you share different types of content on social media. Here are the results found in our 2024 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report:

Highlights:

• 46% of survey takers said they share news or upcoming events most of the time with the same percentage saying they market their programs most of the time.
• Very few nonprofits want to make waves on social media, however, with almost 90% saying they seldom or never try to evoke controversy and 66% saying they seldom or never take a stand or share strong opinions.
• Only 6% of nonprofits say they share funny content most of the time with almost 60% saying they seldom or never share humorous posts.
• Using social media for fundraising was fairly split with 52% saying they seldom or never ask for money on social media and 48% saying they ask for money sometimes or most of the time.

Does this content align with what social media users want?

We know from research we’ve done for social media webinars that what social media managers post does not always match with what people want to see. And unfortunately we see a lot of the same issues in this data.

According to Hootsuite’s Social Media Trends for 2024, over one-third of social media audiences say that too much self-promotion negatively affects how they view a brand. And yet, according to our survey, almost 90% of nonprofits are marketing programs either most of the time or sometimes as well as sharing news or upcoming events and showing how they help. All of these things could be considered self-promotion depending on what exactly you are posting.

And despite memes, how-to content, and opinion pieces doing well on social media, over half of nonprofits say they seldom or never post that type of content.

Let’s break this down further and look at how nonprofit social media content aligns with what people are doing on different platforms.

Our previous Trends Reports show that Facebook is used most frequently by nonprofits followed by Instagram.

If we take data from consumer research company GWI and look at how Facebook users want to interact with others on the platform, over 58% say they are looking to “keep up to date with news and current events.” Since, as we said before, most nonprofits share news and upcoming events, Facebook is a good place to do that. LinkedIn and X (Twitter) should also be considered as users listed “Keep up to date with new and current events” as their top reason for being on both of those platforms.

BUT you need to consider what you consider “news” and what users consider “news” may be two different things. Hiring a new ED is news for you, but the average social media users – even your followers – will not consider that a “newsworthy” event in their lives. When they say they use social media to keep up to date with news and current events, they don’t mean they log in to find out if you got that grant.

Do you have to be funny?

When we did our webinar on conveying your personality on social media, many people asked if they had to be funny to get attention. You probably won’t like the answer as almost 55% of Facebook users and over 64% of Instagram users are on those platforms for funny or entertaining content.

And another survey from Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX) and Gretchen Rubin says 91% of people prefer brands to be funny. That same survey said if a brand uses humor, people are more likely to buy from the brand again (80%), recommend the brand to family and friends (80%), choose the brand over the competition (72%), and spend more with a brand (63%).

As mentioned above 60% of nonprofits say they seldom or never share humorous posts. So you may want to lighten up a little bit to get more attention and stand apart from other organizations.

Like “newsworthy,” the phrase “entertaining content” can mean a lot of different things though. Dramas are still entertaining – look what usually wins Best Picture awards!

If you just can’t do the funny stuff, keep leaning into storytelling. Eighty percent of nonprofits say they post inspiring stories either most of the time or sometimes so it’s something most of you are already doing!

If you are one of the many nonprofits who just aren’t seeing the results they want from social media, it may be time to change your approach.

For more on social media and how nonprofits should be approaching it, download our 2024 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report and register for our webinar Social Media Trends for Nonprofit Communicators in 2024.

In last year’s 2023 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, we saw that Twitter (now X) was the social media platform nonprofits most said they would drop if they could.

Nonprofits are leaving Twitter for a long list of reasons.

This year, when we release the 2024 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report next week, you’ll see that for many of those nonprofits, this wish has been granted.

Only 25% of nonprofits surveyed said they used X either the same amount or more in 2023 than in 2022. 

The rest? They are leaving Twitter in one way or another.

• Twenty-six percent (26%) say they use the platform less than previously.
• Twenty-five percent (25%) said they have stopped posting but maintain the account.
• Eight percent (8%) report deleting the account entirely.
• Fifteen percent (15%) said they rarely used it previously and still don’t.

Those who still find value in Twitter/X say it’s because it’s the best way to reach very select, targeted audiences including media professionals and politicians. Some advocacy groups still use it because the specific issues they work on still have robust or influential communities there. They can’t imagine leaving Twitter until those communications needs are met elsewhere.

But they are a minority now within the nonprofit sector.

Where is the time, effort, and money that was previously spent on Twitter/X going now? Without question, Meta is the winner. Nonprofits report reinvesting those resources primarily into Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, followed by LinkedIn.

Download the Trends Report for the full briefing.

If you haven’t led a nonprofit website redesign process, your time is coming!

In the corporate world, website redesigns every 18-36 months are not unusual. In the nonprofit sector, we often stretch that out to more like every 3-5 years.

But many organizations also include rebrands or refreshes when doing a nonprofit website redesign. Those decisions can make the process last well over a year. In other words, you might barely get a break after launching the new site before someone wants to talk about redoing it again!

Here’s a peek at some of the data we will include in the 2024 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.

38% planned for 2024

Who Redesigned Their Website in 2023?

Twenty percent of survey participants said their nonprofit completed a website redesign in 2023. Nonprofits with budgets between $1.1 – $5 million were most likely to have done so in the last two years.

Of those nonprofits completing a website redesign in 2023, here’s who also made additional changes:

• 39% did a significant email newsletter template redesign
• 33% made changes to their brand color palette
• 32% did a logo refresh or redesign
• 27% made changes to their brand typefaces/fonts
• 23% did a full rebrand

Who Plans to Redesign Their Nonprofit Website in 2024?

Two hundred organizations, or 38% of the organizations completing our trends survey, say they plan to pursue a significant website redesign in 2024.

Of those organizations, the following percentages also plan to make the following changes:

• 39% plan a significant email newsletter template redesign
• 24% plan a logo refresh or redesign
• 21% plan to change their brand color palette
• 19% plan to change their brand typefaces/fonts
• 14% plan a full rebrand

Of those organizations who plan to redesign their websites in 2024,

• 40% said their current site was designed in 2018 or earlier
• 20% said the current site was designed in 2019 or 2020
• 18% said their current site was designed in 2021 or 2022

We’ll host a brand-new webinar on how to manage a redesign of a nonprofit website in late 2024.

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