Blog

Have you tried advertising on YouTube before? With 100 hours of footage being uploaded every minute, chances are that your supporters are watching some videos over there. Check out Search Engine Watch’s 9 steps to start running ads on YouTube.

As an Art Director I've heard a common bit of advice from other creatives about how engage your audience. It goes something like this:

"If it comes from the heart, it goes to the heart."

Impact is the current buzzword in the nonprofit world, and while it’s overused (in our opinion), the idea behind it has value. Check out Hubspot’s post on how to demonstrate your organization’s impact for donors and supporters by using smart, strategic content. 

Whether you're branding your whole organization or running a campaign with a limited shelf-life, clear communications flow from an informed understanding of your audience—and, ideally, a tight focus on a particular group that you want to reach. Easier said than done. How do you determine priorities when you have so many stakeholders that are all important for different reasons?

What color should the most important button on your website be? The answer: it depends. Find out more over at Hilborn. 

This May, the Ducks are stepping into spring and leading various trainings all across the country. Learn more about our upcoming workshops, webinars, and conferences on all things nonprofit-communications-related—and be sure to register today!

Are you an ‘accidental techie’? Liberal arts major, maybe you never planned on getting into anything digital related, but here you are, running online campaigns for a nonprofit. If that sounds familiar, check out the top five things you should know right now from the Connected Cause.

Being a nonprofit communicator is a lot like being a science journalist—you have to deeply understand the issues you’re communicating about and (here’s the most important bit) translate them into interesting stories the general public can understand.

Earlier this month, I joined 1,500 other nonproifteers in Minneapolis for NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC). As usual, it was chock full of smart thinkers sharing informative case studies, exchanging ideas, and questioning the keys to success--and how to handle failure. Like last year, I put a call out for takeaways and asked the community what they learned. Here is a recap that I hope you'll spend some time to read, click around, and soak in the goodness. If you had other learnings that I missed--or burning questions--leave them in the comments!

As an art director, my role is often what our clients consider “the fun part.” After wrestling with the complexities of strategic goals and key messages, they’re almost always excited to weigh in on form and color. And while I like to emphasize that what I do isn’t all fun and games, designing for a living really is wildly enjoyable.