6 Essential Components of the Best Nonprofit Blogs

[SakibIslam&8]

Having a blog is one of the most effective ways to tell the story, characteristics, and who your nonprofit is. Building narratives around your nonprofit allows you to leverage these human stories to connect people with your cause and inspire them to support your organization, as well as connect you to a broader audience.

But there are a few key aspects that make the great ones stand out from the average. If you're looking to build the best blog to support your nonprofit's cause and inspire your readers, here's what you need to keep in mind.

1) Provide a two-way communication path

Your blog not only highlights your compelling stories, but it’s also a place to communicate with your readers and followers. Simply asking your audience for their opinion azerbaijan phone number material on a blog post or story creates that dialogue. It helps give your organization’s staff a voice and reminds your readers that there are real people on the other end, supporting the mission from within.

A blog is a great place to discuss issues, share success stories, and get feedback on content. It’s also a space for your readers to communicate with each other.

The ASPCA blog is a great example of this communication between followers, supporters, and activists. Earlier in the year, the nonprofit posted a news story about 367 dogs that were rescued from a dog-fighting raid, and in just one week, it had over 180 comments on the article.

2) Tell and share personal stories

The most powerful blog posts emotionally connect the reader to the story being told, especially when told through video . Charity:water created a moving and inspiring video of Rachel Beckwith, a 9-year-old fundraiser who was tragically killed in a car accident before reaching her fundraising goal.

Her story prompted thousands of people around the world to donate in her honor, raising over $1 million. In this way, charity:water told Rachel’s story and made donors feel connected to the nonprofit.

If you don’t have the ability to use video to tell all of your stories, a heartfelt, moving post illustrated with photos works just as well. St. Baldrick’s Foundation, an organization whose mission is to fund grants for childhood cancer, allows parents of patients to share their stories on their blog.

In a post , Lori Miller, Justin Miller's mother, writes movingly about what it's like to send her son to treatment where he "feels like a caged animal," as well as her hope that he will recover and survive, even as he has been diagnosed with cancer for the sixth time.
3) Link donor actions to numbers

Sometimes explaining how a donation directly impacts your organization’s mission is made easier with numbers. You can link donation amounts to singular units like Nothing But Nets does. For example, when someone donates $10, the organization can purchase a mosquito net for a child living in a country where malaria and other blood-borne diseases are widespread.

Or, you can showcase the overall impact of your organization's fundraising events. In a blog post , St. Baldrick's featured a photo of the Quinnipiac University ice hockey team in Hamden, Connecticut. Members of the team raised $25,000 for cancer research by shaving their heads.

Showing the impact of your supporters’ support is key to getting people to donate again. The more concrete the impact, the easier it will be for your audience to notice it and repeat their donation, as well as share your organization’s mission or cause with their personal networks.

4) Thank volunteers for their efforts

If your organization has programs where people can volunteer their time, such as serving on or chairing a committee, raising funds for your cause, or helping out at events, you can use blog posts to highlight their efforts. By highlighting volunteers and what they’ve done to help your organization, you get a triple benefit.

First, you thank people for their time and effort, which is valuable to them; second, you inspire others to get involved. Finally, when you highlight volunteers, they spontaneously tell their friends, family, and coworkers via social media and email, which leads to even more people visiting your blog and raising awareness about the cause you promote.

Once again, a great example of this comes from charity:water. The nonprofit filmed a short “ We Love Our Supporters ” video for Valentine’s Day to say thank you and posted it on their blog.

5) Repurpose evergreen content

You already know the most frequently asked questions you hear over and over again from your audience, and you probably already have the answers to these questions stored away.

In addition to (or instead of) designing an FAQ page for your website, create blog posts that answer some of these questions, such as "How can I be a successful fundraiser?" or "Who should I email my fundraising page to and how often should I email it?"

You can also create a piece that explains terms used in your industry or develop a post that lists other resources, bloggers, or experts. This type of evergreen content is relatively easy to create and lasts forever. Plus, if it's SEO-optimized, search engines will find it when they search for information again and again.

The Red Cross blog is a good example of this. The nonprofit categorizes all of its posts, including disaster services, health and safety, and services for the military, which are topics that its audience continually searches for online.

Being the destination for basic data and useful information about what your organization is an expert in is a great way to consistently engage your audience.

6) Recruit guest bloggers or hire someone to write for you

One way to ease the pressure of writing a lot of blog content is to recruit people to help you. You can hire a freelancer or trainee to write for you. You can also divide up writing duties among your staff, for example by assigning one article per month to each person or creating quotas for teams or departments.

Additionally, you can recruit guest bloggers: members of your organization, community experts, board members, or volunteers.

Guest blogging is a win-win: you get personal stories from your followers and fresh blog content (without having to write it all yourself), and at the same time, guest bloggers get to share why they connect with your cause or how your organization is helping them fight cancer, save an animal’s life, retrain for a job, etc.

As an added benefit, when a guest blogger writes a post, you can be sure that they’ll share it with their network, increasing your organization’s reach and reinforcing its credibility.

As an example of a guest blogger program, Heartwaves (an organization that brings together parents and patients of congenital heart disease) hired 30 bloggers to contribute to their blogging community in order to build credibility and alleviate the pressure of having to write all the content since they have a small staff.

These are just a few examples of successful nonprofit blogging practices. How does your organization leverage its blog to engage new and existing audiences?