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Communications

Five Good Ideas about building non-profit communications capacity

Published on January 15, 2014

If you deliver nonprofit communications, you are likely familiar with the feeling of operating at – or beyond – capacity. But there is always more to do, more to achieve. How would the community you serve benefit if you were able to build your communications capacity? What does communications capacity mean to you and what would your increased capacity allow you to achieve?

In this session we worked together to explore what greater communications capacity might look like for a diverse group of nonprofits. We shared and developed creative and realistic ideas to build our capacity – as individuals and as organizations – to be more strategic and to be powerful communicators who make a difference.

Five Good Ideas

  1. Think smaller
  2. Stop doing one “old” thing; try one “new”
  3. Leverage more of what you already have
  4. Invest in yourself
  5. Schedule productivity

Marlene Oliveira’s five follow-up blog posts

  1. Building nonprofit communications capacity, Part 1: five good ideas
  2. Building nonprofit communications capacity, Part 2: the possibilities
  3. Building nonprofit communications capacity, Part 3: what we need
  4. Building nonprofit communications capacity, Part 4: more good ideas

Five Good Resources

  1. NonprofitMarCommunity.com and #NPMC Chat
  2. Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications by Sarah Durham
  3. No Pain, All Gain, Do-It-Now Nonprofit Communications Audit – article from Nancy Schwartz at www.gettingattention.org
  4. Nonprofit Technology Conference from Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN)
  5. Your calendar and a timer