NTEN’s Free publication for Nonprofit Leaders is also a great read for NPTech staff members.  Includes case studies and tech solutions from other NPOs.

To access the latest issue, you’ll need to subscribe with your email address.  Future editions will be emailed to you.

Access here: Hot Off the Press: Issue Two of NTEN:Change is Live.

Rather than standard newsletter copy, both community centers use the bold graphics they already have on-hand for event promotions to create teaser images that link to the event’s page on their websites. The graphics stand on their own to create a visually appealing newsletter that’s easy to scan at a glance and see what’s happening at the center. I appreciate the simplicity of it every time I get one of their newsletters in my inbox. I’m also more likely to click on an image that strikes my fancy than read a mile-long newsletter, what about you?

Here’s an example of Q Center’s copy-free, ‘visual’ newsletter.

Now, both of my clients are community centers, so their newsletters are of the ‘upcoming events’ variety. I realize that graphics-only newsletters won’t be be appropriate for every purpose, but I think it’s a solution that is worth exploring if you’re struggling to create fresh and interesting content for each issue.

What do you think? Have you come up with a novel solution to address your newsletter blues? Tell me about it in the comments.

Hudson Pride Connections Center is an LGBTQ Community Center located in New Jersey. With a small staff and limited annual budget, Hudson Pride needed a website that they could easily update with new content and images regularly. Their old site was outdated–making heavy use of table-based layouts, deprecated code, and inline styles–and required a webmaster to make even the smallest update or change.

I built Hudson Pride’s new website on WordPress, my preferred content management system (CMS), for small nonprofit clients, and created a custom theme to best meet our design and functionality requirements. The new site includes an Events Calendar, with upcoming events streamed on the home page, a Blog for announcing news items and press releases, and an engaging look and feel.

Before launching the new site, I trained Hudson Pride staff to use WordPress to manage their own content moving forward. They will be able to easily and quickly edit the navigation menu labels, create new pages, add new photos to the image slider on the home page, etc.

I’m pleased with how Hudson Pride’s new site has turned out–it will serve Hudson Pride well in the years to come. Thanks especially to Nancy Caamano, Hudson Pride’s wonderful Executive Director, and to all Hudson Pride’s staff, volunteers, and board members for their assistance in creating an engaging new resource for the LGBTQ community in New Jersey.

VISIT LIVE SITE

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Something that Facebook hasn’t changed, however, is the ability to create a custom username for your nonprofit organization’s Fan Page. A custom username lets you direct your supporters to your organization’s Facebook Page with a short, easy to remember link (eliminating that nasty string of numbers at the end). It’s a simple step you can take now to improve your nonprofit marketing efforts.

Instead of the default link to your Page that looks like this:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Fan-Page/123456789101

You can create this shorter, more memorable link instead:
http://www.facebook.com/My-Fan-Page

As long as your organization’s page has 25 fans or people who “like” it, it’s eligible for a custom username.

Follow these (quick and painless!) steps to create a custom username for your organization’s Facebook Page

1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/username
2. You’ll see something similar to this on your screen:
   
3. Select your organization’s Page from the drop down menu (you must be logged in as a Page Admin to do this).
4. Facebook will let you know if your Page is eligible (at least 25 fans/’likes’).
5. Select your preferred username (ideally the Page Name), check its availability, and click to confirm.
6. UPDATE 4/25/11: Facebook does allow you to edit or change your username after you’ve confirmed it, but be aware that doing so will change the URL of your Page to match the new username.
7. Once you’ve created a custom username, use it from now on when creating a link to your organization’s Page. You don’t need to update existing links, however, unless you want to–Facebook will automatically redirect users who use the old url.

Questions? Read up about custom usernames for Facebook Pages here. Visit Facebook’s Pages Guide for more resources on starting and managing your organization’s Facebook Page (if you’re new to using Facebook as an organization, visit the link to resources for “Nonprofits”–you’ll find a helpful best practices guide.)

One caveat: you can’t have the same image in more than one Image Widget, so if you have more than one sidebar, and want the same image on both, you’ll need to upload the image twice and rename the second one to use it in the widget. Otherwise, it’s a great plugin for giving clients the ability to add images to a sidebar without using code.

Kivi Leroux Miller’s list of recommended copywriters & consultants that work well with nonprofits is a great starting point for organizations looking for help articulating their missions online or in print. Hiring a copywriter who understands the language of nonprofits and how to reach your unique audiences can really make a difference in a new website’s success. A well-designed and user-friendly nonprofit website is only half the battle, but content is the star of your website.

The next time your organization is redesigning your website, don’t skimp on the copy and try to do it in-house, hire a professional! It may even increase the odds that you’ll hit your target launch date–your professional copywriter won’t be too busy planning your annual fundraiser to work on writing copy for the new website.

Nancy Schwartz of Nancy Schwartz & Company, a New Jersey based firm offering Nonprofit Marketing and Communications services to nonprofit organizations clients throughout the U.S., hired me to redesign her outdated static company website. The new site needed to retain the look and feel of the old site, but with a refreshed design.

NS&C wanted the new site built on WordPress to allow them (Nancy & her staff) to easily update content, especially on the site’s sidebars, which frequently require the addition of new graphics and sign up forms for NS&C’s numerous products and services (including NS&C’s Annual Nonprofit Tagline Awards and Report).

We decided to build the site on the Headway Theme for WordPress which allowed me to quickly develop the site to match our design concept and incorporated SEO elements that were a priority for NS&C.

VISIT THE LIVE SITE >>

I provided some basic info on registering a domain name, selecting and setting up web hosting, and using WordPress to get a website up and running quickly and on a small budget. We also talked about some simple SEO strategies that you can implement on your website immediately. Hopefully, I’ve made the topic a little less scary.

Thanks to the Oregon School of Massage for this wonderful write-up and for collecting a few responses from participants:

“She was very approachable & knowledgeable and great about answering specific questions. I appreciated the specific recommendations she had about WordPress. For people new to websites there were good specifics such as where to get a host, domain name, etc. Her visuals were good in that she had screenshots of what she was talking about.”

“It was very nice to have some ideas about how to set up your own site using the suggestions that she had. I think that many people were also pleased that they could pay her once and then make changes as they chose.”

Your questions are welcome, just put them in the comments section.

GettingAttention.org makes a successful transition to WordPress! The blog published by nonprofit marketing guru Nancy Schwartz of Nancy Schwartz & Co., launched on its new WordPress set up last week.  The blog has been published for 5 years on Typepad, and the goal of this project was to disrupt readers as little as possible, so the new blog looks identical to the old one.  This kind of project presents its own challenges and the result is that my work should be invisible to blog readers–if I did my job, readers won’t notice the change at all.

I developed the website and blog using the latest version of DIY’s Thesis Theme for WordPress. It’s a solid theme that has quite a few features that make it worthwhile.

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