Non-profits

(seen on  The Rhetoric Of Me with a pointer from Chris Dover)

The American Cancer Society continues to be an innovator in the world of non-prof marketing and fundraising. Here’s their download page where you can grab a badge to fight cancer.

Orgs sometimes forget the importance of the marketing download page to spread the word. Download pages make it easy for folks to display, link, tell others and is mission critical! Pages typically include links, banners or buttons and blurbs for lists and newsletters.

Hey, maybe we should check to see if these marketing pages are on Chris Dovers list and add it if it’s not.

Another nice ‘spread the word’ page is the Skoll Foundation’s Uncommon Heroes. You can check out some other blog badges at the Blog Business Summit, going on as we write… We’ll have to find (or create) some examples of these marketing pages for orgs that don’t have unlimited budgets 😉

I spend a lot of time explaining the benefits of RSS/Really Simple Syndication to non-profits and companies. Here’s a Washington, DC based non-profit that makes their latest news available via RSS. Share Our Strength has also incorporated blog like features into their website.

Diva Marketing points to an American Cancer Society blogging effort and then some. Lisa Stone and RelayBlogger are featured here. Chris Dover (aka RelayBlogger) has also asked for feedback from the Relay for Life blogging effort.

Another great community effort was recently launched by the March of Dimes. Nancy White and Lee LeFever, of commoncraft (and MOD members!) are responsible for this effort. 

It’s great to see national, branded non-profits blogging and (still) building communities (especially around advocacy issues). Non-profits understand ‘community building‘ more than corporate America does– that’s for sure. What’s interesting is that you can talk to a company about blogging but mention the term community building and eyes start to flicker. And, blogs are all about community building.

Speaking of community building, Nancy White has an interesting post about the changes that blogging has brought to her onlinefacilitation listserv. These days, I wonder if blogging has done (or will do) to email what email did to newsgroups.

Back to Chris Dover’s excellent best practices list he’s compiling, I want to take a closer read and offer input but one organization we can all learn from is Spirit of America. They have done a particularly good job of engaging the blogosphere, fundraising and getting mainstream media exposure.