The Creative Activist

Strategic planning, including SWOT analysis, is for small nonprofits, giant philanthropic foundations, and every other nonprofit. Every nonprofit that seeks financial support of any kind needs a strategy.  The point is to make a plan and work the plan. Business gurus have shared a bunch of strategic planning tools, some generic and some made for a specific purpose. This post is about looking at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats - SWOT.  Knowing about your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is step one in planning your fundraising efforts.  SWOT - A Quick Review This is not the best place to run through SWOT analysis, but an overview will make it obvious why we need to do it. First, however, you should write down your fundraising goal. Then, you can do some analysis. Here are the steps: Strengths - What about your financial resources? What about your reputation and your connections? How big is your audience on social medi...

Read Nancy Schwartz's Getting Attention blog post on nonprofit marketing trends you should be paying attention to. This post is about three of those trends and my thoughts on them. I hope you get some good ideas... 1. Social Media Marketing All content and activity needs to be shared using sites like Facebook and Twitter. If you don't have a social media strategy, 2013 is the time to start using social media for marketing. Are you as an organization, on the same social media platforms your audience uses? Are individual staff, especially in develop and communication, using the appropriate social media channels to connect with people? If not, consider adding that activity to your 2013 communication plan. 2. Email Marketing Email is not dead.   Use it regularly to share news, get people involved in your events, and to ask for money. Focus on providing information. Only throw out the occasional fundraising appeal. You can, of course, put a brief appeal for donations...