The Nonprofit Marketing Balancing Act

[Editor's note: This article was originally published at Nancy Schwartz's Getting Attention! blog.]

"I have so much to do but don’t know where to start!"

That’s the crucial — but seldom acknowledged or discussed — challenge on which I co-led a vibrant mind meld at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, along with superstars Katya Andresen, Kivi Leroux Miller and Sarah Durham.

We were thrilled at the number and engagement level of the hundreds folks squished in the room. In fact, discussion got so lively we were hushed by the organizer of the session in the next room! That request exemplifies the excitement of the crowd in discussing this stuff and in meeting each other — brainstorming partners in the making!

Katya created these summary slides on the fly as we provided one-minute consulting and participants shared their bright ideas on how to:

Get priorities right

• Make a marketing strategy. It's better to have a plan because you'll work smarter. Align audience, objectives and tools.
• At the end/beginning of every day, take five minutes to identify the goals for the day.
• Put your big goals and high-impact activities on a white board in your office.
• Keep to-do lists.
• Say no: What you refuse to do is as important as what you take on!
• Focus on what the top things you need to accomplish with each of your audiences are. If the item in front of you doesn't do a lot to accomplish your aims, put it aside.
• Go to where your supporters are, and feature what your supporters say rather than feeling you have to create and build everything yourself.
• Use your networks. Learn from others so you don't reinvent the wheel. Seek pro bono resources.
• Ask for help, or ask a manager to choose among priorities when you're overloaded.
• Block off time away from e-mail and your computer.
• Communicate early and often with staff and external partners. It avoids time-consuming confusion later.
• No-meeting Fridays.
• Keep social-networking time spent in line with its importance — most attendees put that at less than two hours per day.
• Don't take on something you can't do well. It's better to have no Facebook page or blog than an inactive one in which you don't respond to supporters.