When the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act passed in 2009, Community Services Consortium needed a way to let local nonprofits and the community know about the programs and services they were implementing with Federal Stimulus funds.

Problem: They had no budget, minimal staff time, and little technical knowledge, but they did have a staff member who regularly wrote news articles and press releases for the agency.

Solution: I created a free blog on Blogger, customized it, and then trained the staff to cut and paste their articles and news stories into the blog template. The real time-saver is the creation of an automated, monthly eNewsletter. The eNewsletter template was created in MailChimp, a free email service provider, and uses the blog’s RSS feed to automatically generate an electronic newsletter each month.

Staff members are not spending hours each month laboring over a newsletter template, managing email subscribers, or assembling content. The work is done once, when an article is written up and then published to the blog. Each month, email subscribers receive a formatted eNewsletter in their inbox with all the stories and articles published on the blog that month. The process couldn’t be simpler for staff and avoids any duplication of effort, always a plus for Executive Directors, but most importantly it ensures that they stay in touch with their supporters each month.

If you’d like more information about how I can implement a similar solution for your time-strapped nonprofit, get in touch with me here.

January 6, 2010 · Rebekah L. Hickey · Comments  

Tags: Case Studies, Nonprofit Tech 101