Top 5 Blog Posts Of 2020

2020, am I right?

Whew. It’s been a year for the history books. Between the pandemic, racial injustice, natural disasters, presidential election, and more—we’ve survived a lot in the last 12 months.

And as nonprofit and social enterprise leaders, this year has also been a strain. Many small businesses (and large ones) have closed their doors and many nonprofits have lost significant event revenue and donations.

Despite it all, though, there are some silver linings: GivingTuesday was a smash, people have learned more about their priorities, and masses have supported racial justice as well as small and local businesses. Those are all things to celebrate.

We’ve also learned a few things (I know I have). You can share in that some of that knowledge in the blog posts below. These posts are what Signify readers found most interesting and helpful this year, and I hope you find them valuable, too.

So, as you usher in the holiday season, the most magical time of the year, take this opportunity to educate yourself—and then let’s show 2020 the door!

1) 29 Sensational Nonprofit and Social Enterprise COVID-19 Success StORIES

You don’t have to look far to see the devastating effect that the coronavirus is having on small businesses and nonprofits. It’s very scary out there. But, in the midst of all the bad, there are nonprofits and social enterprises that have found success during COVID-19. They are proof that, no matter your mission, people are still buying and donating.

These scrappy, cause-focused organizations have exercised creativity despite the constraints. They are an example for all of us to follow as we pivot in the short-term in order to be around in the long-term.

The nonprofits and social impact companies highlighted in this post are just a few examples of what your future could look like. Theses mini case studies are meant to serve not as a blueprint, but as a jumping off point. I hope you see yourself in their stories.

Read the full post . . .

2) The Ultimate Guide to Social Impact Websites

Outside of your people, your website is your nonprofit or social enterprise’s greatest marketing asset. It’s also one of the most important tools you have to help you make a bigger social impact. In fact, it’s so important that we’re going to look at it from just about every angle.

From what you should do before you create or update your website, to writing and designing it, to how to promote it after going live, this is your ultimate guide to social impact websites.

It’s time to build and engage a larger audience, increase your sales or donations, and do more good. This is one tool to help you do just that.

Read the full post . . .

3) COVID-19 Resources for Nonprofits and Social Impact Companies

There’s no question about it: Our world has changed. As we grapple with the reality of COVID-19, we are all struggling to keep up—not just as individuals, but as nonprofit leaders and business owners.

Fear and anxiety are high. Supplies feel scarce. Distraction is in overdrive.

And yet, our world needs your work more than ever.

According to the Small Business Administration, 99% of businesses in the United States are small businesses, and this includes nonprofits. Of those, 88% have less than 20 employees. In fact, small businesses employ almost half of the private US workforce.

This means that nonprofits, social enterprises, and social impact companies are vital, not only to our lives, but our culture. So, during this challenging time, how can you succeed when on some days, the odds may feel stacked against you?

Read the full post . . .

4) Racial Justice Resources for Nonprofits and Social Enterprises

As a leader of a nonprofit or social enterprise, some form of justice is already at the heart of your work. You’re fighting for a cause because it’s worthy of your attention and your voice. It’s true, it’s right, it’s just.

So, if you aren’t already involved in the conversation regarding racial justice, now is the time to join in—no matter what issues you’re already working on. Racism is a virus, and each of us is susceptible.

You’ve, of course, seen overt and horrific examples played out on a national stage, but the real work—the hard work—begins in ourselves, our homes, and the places we work.

Even as a cause-focused organization, it’s possible that you may need some assistance in this area. We can all lose perspective when it comes to our own work, and even ourselves.

As an advocate for justice, inequality is your adversary. And it’s time to pick a fight.

Read the full post . . .

5) Why Your Social Impact Mission Isn't Enough

Have you ever read an entire nonprofit or social enterprise website, only to find yourself still wondering what they actually do?

Have you ever had a fantastic conversation with someone about their mission, only to find that their website lacked the same passion?

Have you ever seen an organization use different styles and tones across their social media, website, blog, and even when they speak in person?

If you’ve seen any of these issues in action, you’re witnessing a lack of clarity and consistency in the nonprofit or social enterprise’s brand message or brand voice.

With a strong brand message and brand voice, people will know what you do, why it matters, and how they can be a part of it. Without it, people could be left confused or even apathetic to the incredible work that you’re trying to do.

Read the full post . . .

Looking for more popular topics? Here are some of my readers’ all-time favorites:

12 Unique Launch Ideas You'll Want to Copy

What Do Successful Launches Have in Common? 

What You Need to Convince Potential Sponsors and Partners

10 Tools to Make Your Small Business Look More Professional (Most Are Free!)

5 Reasons Why Giving Back is Good For Business

PSST: Don't forget that you only have a few more days to enter to win a Communications Audit and Strategy Session, valued at $750! Resolve to have a stronger marketing strategy.

---

---

PIN THIS POST FOR LATER:

---

I’m Kristi Porter, and I help cause-focused organizations understand and execute effective marketing campaigns so they can move from stressed to strategic. Your resources may be limited, but your potential isn’t. Whether you’re a nonprofit, social enterprise, or small business who wants to give back, I’ll show you how to have a bigger impact.

---

Top 5 Blog Posts Of 2019

It’s been quite the year for nonprofits, social enterprises, and other social impact organizations! With every passing day, we see more people supporting causes, both personally and professionally. It’s an exciting time!

Likewise, this was a great year here on the blog and for Signify. There were some tremendous guests posts and contributors, and I’m grateful for all of the words of wisdom and shared advice. I learned a lot, and I know you did, too.

So, before we enter the next decade, let’s take a look back at this year’s five most popular posts. From nonprofit event marketing to utilizing influencers to empathy for social impact organizations to Squarespace tips to public speaking tools, there is a wealth of information below to help you succeed.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season!

1) How to wow your supporters after your event

If your nonprofit has a big fundraising event on the calendar, and it probably does, this is one post you won’t want to miss! Event planning is extremely popular in the nonprofit sphere, but it also takes a lot of effort and time, am I right?

You absolutely want to make the experience top-notch for current and prospective donors. Please do that first. However, there’s a vital piece of event planning that often gets left out: the follow up. It’s not the most exciting thing to talk about, but I can’t stress it enough.

Having a solid follow-up plan is part of what makes an event strategic for your organization, and not just something you do every year.

It’s also what increases your return on investment (ROI), especially considering events may not be as profitable in the long-term as you might think.

You’ve put so much hard work into planning this event, and an excellent follow-up strategy makes it more effective. What you say and how you say it could mean additional donations, recurring donations, and higher attendance at the next event. That’s why this matters.

And it comes to you from my new friend Erin at Funraise, which a super sweet nonprofit fundraising software built by nonprofit people.

Read the full post . . .

2) Why Nonprofits Need Influencers To Grow (And How To Do It Right)

Have you heard the buzzword “influencer” and wondered what the heck it was? Or if it’s a familiar term, have you struggled with how to find one of these elusive creatures to work with your nonprofit organization? Well, never fear—this post is for you.

While influencers have always existed, the Internet Age has given them new meaning, as well as new ways to capitalize on their popularity. (Cue the Wicked soundtrack!) Social media brought with it a whole host of new job possibilities. I mean, 15 years ago, we all would’ve laughed someone out of the room who said people would pay to watch another person play video games. But, here we are…

So, if getting an influencer to spread the word about your cause is on your To Do List, Kayleigh Alexandra of Micro Startups is going to break it down for you. I’ve seen social impact organizations have great success with this tactic, so I’d encourage you to give it a try and see what happens!

Read the full post . . .

3) How to Use Empathy to Make a Social Impact

For a lot of us, when we think of selling, the word “empathy” doesn’t come to mind. In fact, for many in the cause-focused space, particularly nonprofits, selling (just like marketing) is a bit of a bad word. However, it shouldn’t be.

If you have something that someone else needs or wants, isn’t that a good thing? That’s where it all begins.

One of my spring interns, Rima Patel, will tell you how empathy intersects with the sales process, particularly the selling of products. I think this will not only be insightful, but good news for many of you.

You’re already leading a nonprofit, social enterprise, or other for-profit doing good, which means that empathy is at the core of what you do. This info takes it one step further, allowing you to see how empathy can be the glue that holds your triple bottom line together.

Read the full post . . .

4) Squarespace: The Pros and Cons

This post comes from my friend, Madison Beaulieu, who is a graphic designer and half of the dynamic duo, Mad + Dusty. She and her hubby created not only my logo and branding, but my website as well.

Madison and Dusty only design in Squarespace, and because I wanted to work with them, I went with SS as well. It’s been a great decision, and if re-branding or launching a new website is on your list, I’d urge you to take a look at this platform.

And to get you started on your research, I’ve asked Madison to review the pros and cons of Squarespace. No website platform is perfect, but there are a lot of features she and I both love about SS, and maybe you will, too.

Read the full post . . .

5) Want To Do More Speaking? This Is A Must.

Even with all the newfangled technology at our disposal, public speaking is still one of the best ways to get the word out about your cause. It’s an oldie, but a goodie. Plus, with the aid of technology, you now have more options than ever to speak publicly. It could be on a stage, radio, television, podcast, or video interview.

I repeatedly hear from clients and friends how their donations and sales were boosted after a speaking gig. That reason alone makes it a high priority for a lot of social impact organizations. And, if that’s the case for you, I’d like to give you one tip for making every speaking opportunity easier for both you and your host.

Read the full post . . .

Looking for more popular topics? Here are some of my readers’ all-time favorites:

12 Unique Launch Ideas You'll Want to Copy

What Do Successful Launches Have in Common? 

What You Need to Convince Potential Sponsors and Partners

10 Tools to Make Your Small Business Look More Professional (Most Are Free!)

5 Reasons Why Giving Back is Good For Business

PSST: Don't forget that you only have a few more days to enter to win a Communications Audit and Strategy Session, valued at $750! Resolve to have a stronger marketing strategy.

---

---

PIN THIS POST FOR LATER:

---

I’m Kristi Porter, and I help cause-focused organizations understand and execute effective marketing campaigns so they can move from stressed to strategic. Your resources may be limited, but your potential isn’t. Whether you’re a nonprofit, social enterprise, or small business who wants to give back, I’ll show you how to have a bigger impact.

---

How to Use Empathy to Make a Social Impact

For a lot of us, when we think of selling, the word “empathy” doesn’t come to mind. In fact, for many in the cause-focused space, particularly nonprofits, selling (just like marketing) is a bit of a bad word. However, it shouldn’t be.

If you have something that someone else needs or wants, isn’t that a good thing? That’s where it all begins.

Today, one of my spring interns, Rima Patel, is going to share how empathy intersects with the sales process, particularly the selling of products. I think this will not only be insightful, but good news for many of you.

You’re already leading a nonprofit, social enterprise, or other for-profit doing good, which means that empathy is at the core of what you do. This post will take it one step further, allowing you to see how empathy can be the glue that holds your triple bottom line together.

No one will deny that the key to creating a successful product is by thinking like the consumer. Putting yourself into their shoes and figuring out what they want can help make your great idea even more desirable. This concept is not unfamiliar to us; in fact, it’s something we aim to practice in our day-to-day lives. Whether it’s individuals trying to build strong relationships or cause-focused organizations trying to connect with consumers, empathy is essential.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Empathy is the difference between feeling for someone and feeling with them. Acknowledging feelings from shared experiences connects us as humans, beyond all the ways in which we separate ourselves—and that’s special. So special that it has the power to change lives and make an impact.

Maybe you’re an entrepreneur and you want your consumers to have an emotional connection to your product. Maybe you’re a nonprofit and you are trying to fix a social issue by inspiring others. Or maybe you’re a social enterprise and you just want to do more good. How can you use empathy to make a social impact?

Empathy can push you to create solutions that help others, but it can also push others to help you and your cause.

Empathy in the design process

A human-centered approach to innovation

Design thinking is a popular process that many social enterprises use today to creatively solve problems and make social impacts. This process takes a human-centered approach and involves five steps: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

This semester, my Intro to Entrepreneurship professor decided to focus her class around the design thinking process, giving us the task of creating a product that would help solve the issue of climate change on campus. After the project was over, in a class with almost 300 students, we all came to the same general consensus: the empathize stage was the most important.

At first, many of us had a lot of great ideas, but the empathize stage made us quickly realize that our ideas could be better.

We all knew the problems associated with climate change and we all knew the different methods to prevent it, but what we didn’t know was how much people were actually willing to do. We found that college students want to help the environment, but don’t want to go out of their way to do it. You’ve probably seen something similar with your audience.

We realized that methods requiring the consumer to take some action like using water refill stations or compost bins don’t go as far as methods that don’t require the consumer to take an action, like putting motion detector lights in dorms. Creating the most value for our consumer requires using empathy to understand the best way to solve the problem.

The empathize stage not only helped us understand the consumer and how they felt about the issue to make the most efficient product, but helped us understand what steps they might actually take. Without empathy, our product might have ended up useless, unrealistic, and ultimately unsuccessful.

So, how do you use empathy in the design process? The first step is to ask questions.

Ask yourself:

• What do you know about the problem?

• What do you not know?

• What are your assumptions?

Then ask others:

• How do they feel about the problem?

• How does it impact their life?

• What are they willing to do about it?

These insights will help you understand the problem, who is involved, and how you might go about solving it in a way that brings others into the process for a more successful solution.

We all have great ideas that we want to see come to life, but if we want to be as successful as we can, it’s necessary that we open our ideas to other perspectives. Using empathy, you can see what would work and what would not, how people react to and feel about your ideas, and how to make them better.

There are many solutions to a problem, but the best solution is the one that begins with empathy.

Consumer empathy

Stop marketing products, start marketing feelings

Today, consumer empathy has become quite popular because companies are starting to realize its impact. If people have an emotional connection to a product, they are far more likely to buy it. If people share the same feelings as an organization, they are far more likely to support it.

Consumer empathy makes people feel less like consumers and more like humans, and that appeal is strong enough to make a positive impact on businesses and on the world.

Consumer empathy involves not only understanding the desires and struggles of the consumer, but also sharing those feelings with them. A great example of consumer empathy is a commercial for Cardstore by American Greetings in 2014. In order to promote their website, American Greetings sparked a common, shared feeling—the love we have for our mothers—and used it to help the audience create an emotional attachment with the brand. With this commercial, American Greetings was marketing a feeling, not a product.

Another great example is TOMS, a shoe company that built its brand on the concept that for every pair of shoes sold, there was also a pair given to a child with no shoes. Growing up, I remember seeing so many TOMS flags hanging up in bedrooms. Why were people so inclined to hang a shoe brand up on their wall?

The flag represented a feeling, an emotional attachment to the product, and a sense of pride for doing something good. TOMS recognized the power of making every person who purchased their shoes feel like they made a significant impact, and were part of a solution to a big problem. Today, TOMS continues to use consumer empathy to discuss other important social issues, like gun violence.

Now, it might seem like empathy is an obvious tool for marketing products. Of course thinking like the consumer is necessary for creating something that is valuable and relevant to them. Unfortunately, many companies still lack this skill.

Pepsi, for example, aired a commercial in 2017 amidst the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The commercial involved Kendall Jenner joining an ambiguous protest and sharing a Pepsi with a police officer, sparking unity and excitement among everyone. Pepsi received severe backlash, taking down the ad several days later, and responses to the commercial gave a clear understanding as to why. A former organizer for BLM said, “No one is finding joy from Pepsi at a protest.” Bernice King, daughter of MLK Jr., tweeted, “If only daddy knew the power of #Pepsi.” To make things worse, the face of the ad was a rich, white supermodel who has no history of being an advocate for BLM, or any other social issue for that matter. Pepsi failed to understand their consumers and how they feel about the issue, which is what made the ad unsuccessful.

So, what did Pepsi do wrong? Pepsi’s commercial was trying to ignore the problem. Its message does not fall far from, “Why can’t we all just get along?” It provides a “solution” without actually acknowledging the existing problem of police brutality that some black people face everyday in America.

Empathy goes beyond just understanding someone's feelings; it requires learning to share them, too. Pepsi attempted to use a current, popular trend in social justice to promote their brand and make more money. Their mistake was leaving out empathy, and it was a mistake they could have avoided had they taken more time to know their consumer.

Using empathy in marketing involves understanding how your consumer feels, but it also involves understanding how your consumer will react. How do they want to feel, and can you make them feel that?

Using empathy to create social change

How feelings can change the world

The beauty of empathy is that it affects all of us.

Whether we are selling or buying the idea, it makes us all feel something. Empathy reminds us that we are all human and that we share experiences and feelings. It has been a tool used around the world to make individual problems feel universal.

Empathy allows consumers to feel like they are being heard and understood, that they are not alone, and that there are people out there trying to solve their problems. It sparks inspiration and motivation for people to work towards the things they care about.

As entrepreneurs and innovators, it is essential that we practice empathy in all aspects and phases of our projects—from idea to design to marketing. So, ask questions and open your ears. Understand who you’re working with and what they’re feeling.

Remember that empathy involves shared experiences, so remind yourself of your feelings and why you got involved with your cause to begin with. Keep in mind that the product or the profit isn’t special, but the feeling it invokes and how those feelings might eventually change the world is.

Developing Your Empathy Muscle

Empathy 101

One question that may have come up in reading this post might be something like, “Is it necessary to have empathy if others around me already do?”

In other words, is access to others with empathic skills just as valuable as learning those skills for yourself? In my opinion, no. Empathy is a skill we want to individually develop because it is a skill we can use in all aspects of our lives, not just work.

Having access to others with empathy is a great way to learn empathy; however, relying on others for empathy to make your ideas better only limits yourself.

Empathy isn’t just meant to benefit your business. It can be the very thing that motivates and inspires you when approached with a challenge or failure. Learning and practicing empathy puts things into perspectives you might never see otherwise, and that’s an important skill everyone should try to have.

If you want to develop more empathy, here are four recommendations:

• As mentioned, hang out with people who have empathy. Surround yourself with people who challenge you to improve.

• When you are around people who are more empathetic than you, ask questions that will help you understand their perspective and how they identify with the emotions of others.

• Read more literature. According to research, fiction can make you more empathic and improve your EQ, or emotional intelligence.

• Travel to new places. Putting yourself in unfamiliar environments and around different cultures is a great way to get out of your comfort zone and develop an appreciation for others.
  

---

I’m Rima Patel, an upcoming senior at North Carolina State University, majoring in Sociology with minors in Business Administration and Nonprofit Studies. My ultimate goal in life is to do good and help people, and right now I’m doing that through marketing for nonprofits.

I hope to make significant impacts on social issues through innovation and social entrepreneurship.

LinkedIn

---

---

PIN THIS POST FOR LATER

---

I’m Kristi Porter, and I help cause-focused organizations understand and execute effective marketing campaigns so they can move from stressed to strategic. Your resources may be limited, but your potential isn’t. Whether you’re a nonprofit, social enterprise, or small business who wants to give back, I’ll show you how to have a bigger impact.

---