Building Your Toolkit: Resources for Advancing Your Career in Nonprofit Communications
In this blog post, we explore some of the resources available for nonprofit professionals to enhance your communications skills in a few important areas:
Evaluating Communications Effectiveness
Learn how to measure the impact of your communications and identify areas for improvement.
The Communications Network has a communications evaluation guide called Are We There Yet? Created by our team at Asibey Consulting, this guide can be used to develop evaluation plans that will help you monitor your work and measure progress. [FREE]
The Communications Network has a series of learning sessions for measuring communications success. [FREE]
Nonprofit Marketing Guide’s free course, Communications 101, covers a number of helpful topics for the nonprofit professional, including a module on communications effectiveness. [FREE]
NTEN offers professional development courses led by expert practitioners. The course on Communications Fundamentals can support nonprofit professionals as they evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their communications strategies. [PAID]
Crisis Communications
Investing in crisis communication training and development can help your organization respond effectively to crises.
The Public Relations Society of the Americas has a workshop on Effective Communication During a Long-Duration Crisis. Check it out to improve your crisis management skills. [FREE]
To learn how to prepare in advance for a crisis and receive some tips for creating a crisis communication strategy and plan, take this course offered by The Nonprofit Leadership Alliance. [PAID]
Read this guide from Hootsuite about How to Use Social Media for Crisis Communications and Emergency Management. [FREE]
Storytelling
By sharing stories about the impact of your nonprofit’s work, you can connect with your audience on an emotional level, inspire action, and build a sense of community.
The Goodman Center specializes in workshops about storytelling, presenting, strategic communications, and more. They are a key resource you can use to learn strategies for engaging your audience. [PAID]
The Chronicle of Philanthropy offers a comprehensive toolkit for your communications needs, where they share an overview of storytelling basics for fundraising and advocacy. [FREE]
This video series from The Communications Network is centered around storytelling. Check out various webinars and breakout sessions on how you can amplify messaging for your organizations. [FREE]
The Nonprofit Storytelling Conference is an annual gathering of nonprofit professionals and storytellers who come together to learn, share, and collaborate on ways to use storytelling to advance their organizations' missions. The conference typically features a diverse range of speakers and sessions focused on the art and science of nonprofit storytelling, including workshops on storytelling techniques, case studies of successful nonprofit campaigns, and discussions of emerging trends in the field. The recordings from several past sessions are available for free through their webinar series. [FREE]
Their annual conference will be held November 2-4, 2023 in San Diego, CA. [PAID]
Digital Readiness
Nonprofit professionals with a strong digital foundation can help organizations develop and implement effective digital strategies to reach your stakeholders.
Meta Blueprint offers curated digital marketing courses to help build your digital skills on Meta technologies (Facebook, Instagram). Taking these courses can also prepare you to earn certification as a Facebook Certified Digital Marketing Associate. [FREE]
The Center for Humane Technology (CHT) offers a free online course aimed at professionals “shaping tomorrow’s technology.” You can learn how to build technology that treats attention and intention as sacred, protects well-being, and builds capacity to address urgent challenges. [FREE]
Nonprofit Hub hosts a library of free nonprofit how-to guides. Look through their archive of social media and fundraising guides to learn about topics such as building a grants calendar or tips and tricks for A/B testing. [FREE]
Check out Tech Impact’s Nonprofit Technology Learning Center for dozens of webinars, assessments, and trainings that are specifically geared toward teaching digital communications tools to nonprofit professionals. [FREE & PAID]
Some resources include a workshop for improving your organization’s SEO [FREE], tips for learning Google Analytics [PAID], and a guide to CRM software [PAID].
Nonprofit Tech for Good offers free and low-cost webinars covering skills in digital marketing and fundraising. Check out their upcoming events to catch a live webinar. [FREE & PAID]
HubSpot’s nonprofit content library includes free marketing, donor management, and planning & reporting resources, templates, and tools. Within that library, you can find HubSpot Academy training courses and certifications that include hours of video lessons, templates, and self-paced educational content to help marketers learn. [FREE]
Finding Community
Find a community of like-minded professionals for support, inspiration, and opportunities for growth and development.
The Communications Network brings together social sector leaders to solve complex problems, while providing them with insights, ideas, innovations, and techniques to help them grow. Made up of a dedicated community of 3,000 communicators, storytellers, strategists, designers, researchers, producers, and community builders, membership in the Network can help you forge connections and build relationships with global leaders in social sector communications. [PAID]
Registration is now open for the Communication Network’s annual conference! Join hundreds of your colleagues and friends, September 20-22, 2023, as they gather in Atlanta for 3 days of community, learning, leadership, and fun. Share and exchange knowledge, advice, and experiences with comms for good leaders around the world. [PAID]
For those doing digital strategy work, including written or multimedia content for nonprofit websites, social media, and e-newsletters, join NTEN’s public group. It is dedicated to digital communications professionals who create written or multimedia content for websites, social media, and e-newsletters for nonprofits. [FREE]
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is the largest professional organization for public relations (PR) practitioners in the United States. With more than 30,000 members, PRSA represents PR professionals from every sector. To access more resources geared toward nonprofit communicators, join PRSA’s Association/Nonprofit section. [PAID]
The Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) is an international professional organization dedicated to advancing philanthropy and fundraising. By joining your local chapter, you get access to resources, networking opportunities, and professional development opportunities for fundraising professionals, including nonprofit leaders, development officers, and consultants. [PAID]
Better Together is a program offered by LinkedIn for Nonprofits, which brings together experts in the nonprofit and philanthropic field through a series of fireside chats hosted on LinkedIn Live. These conversations connect the community and help nonprofit professionals leverage LinkedIn's professional network to achieve their goals. [FREE]
This post was written by our Asibey Spring Intern, Sommer Alex. For more insight on topics ranging from social media strategy to Asibey’s consulting work, follow our LinkedIn page.