Blogs seem to be a particular pain point for nonprofits. There is either pressure to create the content (and resentment when it doesn’t happen), or so much overwhelm with regular responsibilities that a blog never gets off the ground. So, what are you to do?
Do you launch a blog, and potentially leave it sitting idle?
Do you wait for the right moment to start it?
Do you rearrange your schedule so that you have time to write? And what do you say?
Should your nonprofit even have a blog at all?
We can’t answer these questions for you entirely, but we’ll lay out a great case to help you decide for yourself. Spring intern, Manny Portillo, will give you six reasons you should consider starting a blog—and two reasons why you shouldn’t.
How important is it that your nonprofit website have a blog?
Starting a blog for your nonprofit can be a big commitment, and it isn’t always necessary. It all depends on the needs of your organization, your goals, and what you can handle. There are some things you should keep in mind when making the decision on whether or not to take the leap, and I’ll outline those for you below.
In short, it is often beneficial to have a blog for your nonprofit’s website.
However, while there are many reasons you should create a blog, the answer is not always a hard yes. A large part of making this decision is whether or not you and/or your staff can handle the added work.
Blogs can take a lot of time and effort, and ideally, you should be posting regularly to keep your donors and partners engaged and updated. So, while there are many different opportunities that come with having a blog, if you feel like it will be too much work, then this may not be the right time for you to start.
6 Reasons Why Your Nonprofit Website Needs a Blog
To help guide you in the decision of whether or not to start (or update) your blog, here are some considerations.
Establish Your Nonprofit Authority
A blog can be a great tool to establish your nonprofit as a reliable and credible source of information whether you’re just starting your nonprofit or have been around for years. This is a terrific opportunity to position your organization among peers, or it can be a way to distinguish yourself from others.
Keeping and maintaining a blog can communicate that your nonprofit is an authority in your field, is dedicated to informing stakeholders, and reinforces that you are deeply committed to your cause.
A great example of this is the Red Cross blog, on which they publish health tips. These tips are not only useful to the reader, but also shows that they are committed to public health in general. Their blog positions them as a place where people can go for information on how to live better and stay healthy.
This is also something that your nonprofit can do. For example, if you conduct any type of research or collect data, publishing the results in the form of a blog post can score major points for your organization, showing that you are a leader in that space. Plus, if this is a subject that you want to be known for, it’s another way to increase your S.E.O (search engine optimization) on that topic.
State Your Nonprofit’s Opinion
Nonprofits do not operate in a vacuum, meaning that they have to deal with a lot of things outside of their control that could potentially affect them and their funding. This might include policy changes, a major donor’s expression of their opinion on a controversial subject, or even a viral video with no connection to the nonprofit that deals with similar social issues.
A blog is a terrific place for your nonprofit to share its stance. For example, if there is a major change in policy that will affect how you operate, your organization’s blog allows you to state your agreement or disagreement with the policy, as well as what you will do in order to adapt to these changes.
One specific example of a nonprofit sharing its opinion is Refuge Coffee Company’s blog post on “Why Causes Matter.” The post not only aligns with their mission of supporting refugees, but also states their opinion on the abundance of causes vying for our attention and why they matter to all of us.
Provide Updates to donors and stakeholders
Something that people look for in nonprofits is transparency. Donors want to know what their donations are being used for, how the organization is operating, and what they can look forward to seeing in the future. A blog is a convenient place to talk about these types of updates, whether they are short-term campaigns or long-term initiatives.
The JC Evans Foundation, which provides housing for transplant patients and their caretakers free of charge, does a great job of providing its donors and the public with news on their progress. While they are still a small nonprofit, with the ability to only serve six patients at a time, they are continuously growing and make it a point to share when they are opening a new apartment to patients. They also do a wonderful job of updating donors on their long-term goal of opening a residential building for patients.
An example of a short-term campaign would be Giving Tuesday. Because it is a major fundraising day for thousands of nonprofits, having a blog post that can be easily shared with (and by) donors that talks about your mission, goals, and impact, as well as includes a link for donations can be hugely beneficial.
Information Archive Or Repository
A blog can also serve as a place to store information that would not have a home elsewhere on your website.
Sometimes you have a lot to share about your work, your beneficiaries, issues at large, and your stakeholders. However, you don’t want to have a million and a half things on your homepage.
Consider this: If you visited a website that is a wall of words to sort through or had numerous links and images to click on across a single page, you probably wouldn’t stay on it very long, would you? It would be overwhelming to look at. This is where a blog can come in handy.
Think of blog posts like subpages, where you go into detail about your organization’s annual reports, accomplishments, programming, and more. Moving this information to your blog keeps your main pages simple and easy to navigate, so that website visitors can quickly find what they’re looking for. Plus, if your blog posts regularly get sent to your email list, this ensures that donors see this important information, where they might miss it if it lived on a regular page.
Additionally, if your organization has a large website, a blog is easier to search, given the difference in layout. Instead of having a visitor navigate different tabs, they can narrow down their search through a category or tags.
Reasons Why Your Nonprofit Should Not Have A Blog
Operating a nonprofit organization is a lot of hard work, so taking the time to write a blog post may be out of your reach at this time. If your staff has already taken on quite a few projects, who is going to write the blog posts?
You Don’t Have The Time
This is the chief complaint among nonprofit leaders, and for good reason. Sometimes it’s a matter of prioritizing or delegating the responsibility, and then there are times when it just isn’t possible. Perhaps it’s a goal to set (and prepare for) in the future.
If you simply do not have the time to produce blog content, maybe hiring a copywriter could be an option for you. Making the decision to hire a copywriter is a discussion for another day, but one that you could consider if you recognize the value in having a blog for your nonprofit.
You Don’t Know What To Write About
Then there is the cursed writer's block, and simply not knowing what to write about. This is the second objection Kristi usually hears from clients and peers.
Keeping to a posting schedule is a hard thing to do if you don’t know what to write about. Thankfully there are lists online with tons of blog ideas (and most of them are free!). We’ve even created one for you. If you do take to Google, just make sure that you keep your nonprofit’s mission and goals in mind when picking topics.
Also, it’s a good idea to keep a list of running ideas somewhere, so that you always have them to come back to when inspiration or motivation fails you. Having them handy will go a long way in overcoming writer’s block.
Blog Best Practices
If you do decide to add a blog to your nonprofit’s website (good decision!), here are some things to keep in mind.
Evergreen Content
If keeping up with a blog or making time to write posts is an issue, you should consider creating evergreen content.
What is evergreen content? Well, just like evergreen trees, they are fresh and generally have a long life span. Evergreen content will not become obsolete within a few months. It can be useful long-term and year-round.
For example, writing a blog post about your upcoming fundraiser would not be evergreen content because it is time-sensitive. However, a list of “10 Ways To Donate to Us in 10 Minutes or Less” would be perfect because it is applicable no matter when someone reads it.
There are two other things to note about evergreen content:
There is a current trend in blogs to remove the dates, meaning you don’t know when the posts were published. We only recommend this action for evergreen content.
You may choose to solely publish evergreen content, and that’s okay. If you decide that your blog will only ever have a few posts, just be sure they are topics that are important to your nonprofit and that readers will be interested in. This is another instance where the posts might act like subpages on your website.
Call To Action (or CTA)
There is one thing that all your content should have—a call to action (or CTA).
A call to action is just what it sounds like: You state what you would like your audience to do. Every post you write should have a call to action.
This could mean that you ask readers to participate in an event, donate to your cause, or even sign up for your email list. It doesn’t have to be a large ask, but you do not want to leave your audience with just an implied “thanks for reading.” You want to lead them to deeper engagement with your mission.
Here are a few more possible CTAs:
Provide feedback
Leave a comment
Sign up for a tour of your facility
Share your post on social media
Email the post link to a friend
Contact local representatives to voice their opinion in support of your cause
Blogs are a great way to continue building relationships with donors, as well as build new relationships with people who stumble across your content. Therefore, you don’t want someone to just read the post and move on. You want to invite them to take the next step.
Keep A Posting Schedule
Ideally, you should post new content to your blog once or twice a month, or even more, if you have the time. This is because we are all a little “out of sight, out of mind,” even with our best intentions. But the important thing is to find a rhythm you can keep up with, even if that’s every other month or quarterly.
Keeping to a posting schedule is crucial to the success of your blog. It sets both internal and external expectations. When it’s on your calendar, you’re more likely to stick to it. And, when it’s at regular intervals, your audience can anticipate it as well—and hopefully get excited for the next edition!
Whatever you decide, commit to a posting schedule and stick to it. Start off with an obtainable goal, and increase your posting frequency as you’re able.
Guest Posts
Good news: You and your staff don’t always have to do all the work! Inviting guest contributors is a fantastic way to give a fresh perspective to your blog and create content when you don’t have time.
Guest posts can be from someone on your team who typically does not write for the blog, a board member or donor, a beneficiary, a parter or sponsor, or even a subject matter expert. This person doesn’t have to know everything about your organization, they just have to be informed or engaged on one level that readers might relate to.
If you do decide to engage guest contributors, we recommend having a set of guidelines for them to follow so that you maintain consistency on your blog. This could include post length, format, style, do’s and don’ts, deadlines, and more.
Hire an Intern
Want to stick to your posting schedule, use the talent around you, and engage the next generation for your cause? Hire an intern!
There are tons of college students who would be thrilled to write content for your organization. This not only helps you accomplish your goals, but they get something of value to include on their resumé in return. This can be a terrific option if your organization does not have the financial resources to outsource a professional copywriter.
Do keep in mind that to keep this legal, your intern must be paid or able to get class credit for their work.
Blogs Do Not Have To Be Long
Finally, not all blog posts have to be a mile long! If part of what intimidates you or keeps you from getting started is thinking that you have to write a long post, think again.
While some topics will command a lengthy post, some can be relatively short. In fact, most SEO experts recommend a minimum of only 500 words—that’s about a third of this post!
You are an expert in what you do, so once you start writing, you may be surprised at how quickly you can reach 500 words. And if SEO is not a consideration at this point, you can make posts as short as you like.
SEO becomes a factor when you want more people to find you through Google searches and cold traffic on the internet. In the beginning, most nonprofits rely on friends, family, and people they know. So, if the prospect of writing for SEO is overwhelming at this point, just focus on keeping your audience informed and engaged for now.
Manny Portillo is a senior at Oglethorpe University, studying Communications with a track in Public Relations and Social Work.
Outside of class, he is the president and founding member of his school’s Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) chapter, and president of the Environmentally Conscious Oglethorpe Students (ECOS).
In his down time, he collects exotic plants from every corner of the world. His collection now includes over 40 plants from South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
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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.
