Wear a lot of Nonprofit Hats? Expand Your Digital Knowledge Base
In order to optimize resources and money, most nonprofits need to operate very lean. This usually results in staff with robust titles – such as Director of Development, Communications, Marketing and Events. But it’s likely they aren’t an expert in all those areas. Whether you are a novice or a pro when it comes to digital marketing & technology for your nonprofit, here are a few resources to expand your digital knowledge base.
Inbound Marketing Certification from HubSpot
HubSpot offers a free Inbound Marketing course and certification. Don’t know what inbound means? It essentially is creating great content that attracts and nurtures users – which makes it quite applicable to nonprofit marketing strategy.
*Topics include: social media, blogging, email, landing pages, personas etc.
Download Primer for iPhone or Android – and have instant access to dozens of digital marketing lessons for free. The content can be great to bring new interns or employees up to speed on the impact SEO, PPC and remarketing can have on your nonprofit’s online presence. For more details, read my quick review of the app on ArcStone.com.
*Topics include: SEO, content marketing, remarketing, PPC, storytelling and more
CreativeLive is essentially an online classroom with both live and recorded lessons. Although most aren’t directly tied to nonprofits, the classes are high quality and taught by experts in their field. This is an easy way to learn a creative skill that might be holding your projects back, such as learning new creative software or formatting your annual report.
*Topics include: Photoshop 101, Facebook marketing, How to use Periscope and more.
Lynda.com is similar to CreativeLive except it has a broader scope of technology, creative and business skills. This site can be especially useful when gaining more technical proficiencies such as web development. Having at least a basic understanding of HTML or analytics can be incredibly beneficial to your nonprofit or your personal development.
*Topics include: web courses & training, programming fundamentals, productivity, accounting and more.
If you strategize, manage and create content for your nonprofit’s website, check out and subscribe to GatherContent’s blog. They take content planning and creation to a much deeper level than most websites. I click on nearly every email they send to me; I especially pay attention to posts on content audits and inventories which can be helpful when preparing for a website redesign.
*Topics include: SEO, content optimization, content mapping, success metrics a d more.
Other valuable blogs & resources
NonprofitHub – general nonprofit topics
Idealware – software options & implementation
NTEN – nonprofit technology network
