It was fun to put little organic touches in it, like pretending it was a wooden desk, adding a cup of ice tea, which I was pretty addicted to last summer, adding a pen, adding my book, and my picture too.

It felt like my own desk!

But times change.

For one thing, I stopped drinking iced tea! My family is full of dentists, and they said that the acid in the tea is really bad for your enamel. So I started drinking a lot of water instead. Purity became more important.

Since last summer I’ve started to do more research around social media, and write a lot more. Now I’m about to come out with my second book, The Wild Woman’s Guide to Social Media. This week, I’m giving a workshop for the City of Austin called “Advanced Social Media Tactics for Jedis.” I’m so excited to do this!

In the course of researching my book about social media, I found out about Google Heat Maps, and I thought, “I’d REALLY like to design my website around this idea too.”

And I’ve started to do a lot more webinars too, with CharityHowTo.com. Kurt Steiner and the team at CharityHowTo have been marvelous to me, and I love working with them. In fact, I’m giving lots of webinars with them this month, go to the webinars page and see what’s new! So I wanted my website to reflect all of this teaching, too.

And I wanted to start giving people a mini-e-course as a way to say thank you for signing up for my enewsletter. Now, finally, after much procrastination, if you look in the top right of the page, you’ll see that I’ve done it!

So in short, my concepts of what I want to do with this website needed to reflect my new knowledge and growing sophistication around social media.

It was time to say goodbye to the old, organic design, and go with something slicker, and more professional. Thanks to Aries Labs, it got done! It’s not totally complete yet but it’s getting there.

What do you think of the new look?

Have you ever built a new website?

Do you have before and after pictures that you’d like to share? Horror stories? Tell us!

New Website Design! What do you think? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 3, 2011.

1. Make it over 20 pages, and an extremely hi-resolution pdf. Yep. the longer, the better, really.

2. No graphics on the cover, just a blue field.

3. Make the cover have boring stock art.

4. Make the cover have “unnecessary” “quotation” marks. Because that’s not indicative of the editing quality of the rest of the report, right?

5. Don’t put anyone who actually has been helped by your nonprofit on the cover. God forbid you should be personal or real.

6. Inside, make sure you have lots and lots of text. No call outs. No boxes. No pictures. Just text.

7. Make sure your graphs are as boring as possible. In fact,

8. Don’t even worry about financial transparency. I mean, it’s not like there are tons of nonprofit scandals around, right? It’s not like your nonprofit is getting audited right now, right? People trust you, right?

9. Don’t list all of your donors. Who looks for their name in an annual report, anyway?

10. Make sure there are no pictures of your team. Who wants to see the people who make it happen, anyway? Ditto for quotes from your team.

11. Whatever you do, don’t have links on your website to different parts of your annual report.

12. No humor. This is serious business here. We cannot joke about your cause, EVER.

13. When you get it printed, use someone you’ve never used before, give them absolutely no time to do the job, and don’t bother with proofs. Grainy photos, misspelled words, and run-on sentences all okay! Who has time to edit these days, right?

Follow these tips and you’ll be SURE to get an unreadable report. In fact, it might as well go straight from the printers to the pacific garbage patch!

Any other not-to-dos? I would love to hear your thoughts below! Also, if you want a free ebook I just made with some ways to do it right, sign up right here, and get it!

 

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Want to be an Annual Report JEDI? Free Ebook Download originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on June 30, 2011.

Have you ever tried to redesign your nonprofit website? Was that fun? No? Why not?

Is it because you were trying to skimp on people who knew what they were doing, and decided to DIY? Is it because you trusted people who said they knew what they were doing, and then they didn’t really know? What did you learn from that experience? Did you learn to ask people, “How do you know what you know?” Did you learn that actually, you can’t teach yourself how to create a WordPress Theme from scratch?

Here’s a quick checklist of things you need to get clear on before you redesign your nonprofit website, straight from the book, “Don’t Make Me Think” by Paul Krug.

• What is the goal of the site? What do you want to happen?
• Does this website make us look attractive to donors, funders and the community?
• How many people on your team have to be involved? At what level?
• What are some successful websites we could look at in terms of fundraising?
• Are we telling a story which will help us achieve our fundraising goals?
• Are we hoping people will watch or learn or donate?
• Are we making it easy to spread the word using various social media tools?
• Can people use us as a community resource?
• Are we making it easy to leave contact information, and track visitors and potential donors on our website?
• When people come to our site, are they trying to answer a specific question?
• How many places link to us, and how can we increase that?
• Who needs to update this site? How often?
• How often can we afford to overhaul this site?
• Does showing up in search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost? Will we be willing to compromise any of the things above in order to achieve this goal?
• Will the site need to be universally accessible? Do issues of disability or language or browser come into it?
• How much money do we have to spend? How much time?

So once you answer these questions, you are ready to start redesigning your site.

Remember!

Focus above the fold
This means don’t put useful information where people have to scroll down for it. Put your navigation links, pictures, stats and donation button at the top of the page.

Don’t assume you know how the donor is going to look at the website
Test the website with different people, like your mom, or the receptionist, or anyone you find wandering around. What are the “hotspots”? Left hand side? Right hand side?

Make your tagline clearly state what your nonprofit does
The last thing you want is someone getting confused on what you do.

Clear Call to Action
Make your call to action something concrete. Not “Save the Earth,” but “Can you commit to recycling all waste paper at work and home this week?” Not, “Stop Domestic Violence” but “Can you donate $100 to our rural education program, to help educate one child about self-esteem and healthy relationships?”

Put your donate button in your navigation bar
In fact, put a way to donate into two or three places in your website. It has to be simple to give.

Build transparency into your website design
This means you need to show why you need the money and where the money goes as quickly as you can once the user comes to your website. Kiva does this exceptionally well.

Anything you’d like to add to this list? Leave a comment please!

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Re-designing your nonprofit website and other things that are sent to try us originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 25, 2011.

Let me give you some free tools you can use to make your annual report sparkle, and your e-newsletter shine!

Two words.

Gimp.
Brushes.

What is Gimp?
A free software program that lets you create all kinds of fun effects. You can download it and use it on any operating system.

What are brushes?

Brushes are add-ons to gimp that allow you to draw, instead of a line, a big pattern, a flower, a solar system, a piece of tape, a whole bunch of things!

Here's an example of Sketchpad, a free Google Chrome app and what it can do.

They will make you look like you own one of those really fancy programs, or have access to a super expensive design firm.

So where do you go for brushes? Click here. Deviantart has a whole community for Gimp Brushes.

Online Tools for MORE nonprofit graphic design fun!

Where else can you go? Try Google chrome, a web browser that has apps inside it that you can run and use on your pictures.

Such as

Sketchpad
This is such a fun drawing tool!

Deviantart Muro
You have to get a deviantart account, but since that’s free, it’s no big deal.

Example of Harmony drawing tool in Google Chrome Apps

Harmony
This has so many beautiful patterns, and geometric designs, you could spend quite a bit of time in here just exploring.

Advanced Image Editor by Aviary
This helps you edit photographs.

here’s a full list of graphic design and art tools on google apps

Furthermore:
ImgSpark
BeFunky
If you want some color schemes to work with
Editing photographs

Fonts
One of the cheapest and quickest ways to make your website look special and different is through a unique font.

If you’d like a place to find free fonts to jazz up your annual reports and other items you’re designing,
check out myfonts.com,
fontsquirrel.com, and
urbanfonts.com.

They have lots of good fonts.

Also, if you are looking for good web fonts try Typekit.
http://typekit.com/

What Typekit does is install a bit of javascript in the header of your website, and then it allows you to use prettier fonts than the standard font package that you normally can use, (such as Georgia, Courier, Times New Roman, Arial and Verdana.) This is not an affiliate link, and none of the links on this page are. Just so you know. No axe to grind here. These are all free tools.

Do you have any graphic design tips you’d like to share? Please weigh in below!

Are you doing nonprofit graphic design on a shoestring? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on March 16, 2011.

Today I wanted to make you laugh, so I give you:

TRUE CRIMES AGAINST GRAPHIC DESIGN

The Guardian did a hilarious piece on the font, Comic Sans, written entirely in Comic Sans. (Actually, the comments section is what made me laugh even more!)

In case you don’t know what Comic Sans is, let me show you.

Comic Sans!

Now that you’ve seen it, you may be thinking,

But why can’t I use it at my nonprofit? It looks so cute! So innocent! I’m going to put it on the newsletter right now!

Don’t touch that Font button!

This font is going to make everyone think you are silly! And worse, that your nonprofit is run by a bunch of jokers. People may laugh at clowns, but they don’t usually want to give money to them. If you don’t believe me about comic sans, check this twitter search out.

Now, check out this annual report.

Annual Report by Mazarine Treyz

I may have made some egregious graphic design errors in the past, but with this cover, I think I got something right.

Do you know where I got the idea from?

This.

Where did I get the font? Urbanfonts.com

When a board member saw the annual report, she said, “But who is the graphic designer? That looks REALLY EXPENSIVE!”

And then I said to her, smugly, “I did it.” and “We got the whole thing printed for free by a generous corporate donation.”

And then she smiled and said nothing more.

If you’re still not convinced, think about what happens when you put a letter in arial versus a curly script font. Does arial make you feel sort of stripped down, and the curly font, a bit frivolous?

A font conveys a feeling. What feeling do you want your cause to convey in a reader? If your cause is serious and urgent and important, Comic Sans is not going to get that message across.

Nor is it appropriate to use for children. Children deserve good fonts too!

So, if you want to amp up the look and feel of your small nonprofit, the right font is the way to do it.

Places to get fonts include
Myfonts.com
Urban Fonts
Font Squirrel
Smashing Magazine
Google Fonts
(I especially like Google Font’s Crimson Text)

Try a distressed font like 28 days later
or go with Gotham, which was the Obama campaign’s font.

Fact: All of the NYC Subway stations also use Gotham font. It conveys authority.

And for all you head-nodders, the next comic sans is Papyrus!

Warning, clicking above may cause you to snort coffee out of your nose.

 

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My eyes! My beautiful eyes! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on November 1, 2010.

Pantone Color Chart

Is it time to print a poster or banner for your next event?

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve had posters come back from the printer, they haven’t looked quite right, and I’ve often wondered why. What could I have done better? I never studied graphic design in school, so what do I have to do to make it look like it does on my computer screen? Maybe I needed to hire a graphic designer!

Today’s guest post is from Danielle Bardgette, a fabulous graphic designer with loads of talent that you should definitely hire ASAP!

Beginning Your Journey
So you’ve decided to hire a graphic designer. You know you need a website and a logo put together, maybe you have a photograph you’d like used, so you contact a designer your friend recommended. The designer meets with you and the two of you discuss your project, the timeline, audience and the visual look desired. Somewhere in the middle of the process, a color palette will be decided upon.

Print Colors versus Computer Colors
The tricky part is realizing that what your eyes see on paper vs. a computer screen is different. To accurately reproduce the color you choose, it’s important to understand this difference. Color in print uses a color mode referred to as CMYK, while color viewed on a television or computer screen uses a color mode called RGB.

RGB = Red, Green + Blue
RGB is an additive color mode, which involves light emitted directly from a source or illuminant of some sort, such as a computer monitor. RGB stands for red, green and blue. RGB colors in your website use HEX codes to be precise. Of course, depending on how much your computer monitor’s brightness or contrast is turned up or down, your colors will look different to different people. Here’s a fun color calculator to map your colors on your website.The combination of different amounts of RGB creates one color. Red, green and yellow are represented on a scale from 0 to 255. The color purple, for example, is created with 145 parts of red, 36 of green and 117 parts of black.

CMYK = Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black
These are the colors used by printers including both your home printer and those at the local print shop. Varying amounts of the four colors will achieve one color. For example green is created by using 67% of cyan, 4% of magenta, 79% yellow and 0% black. A shorthand version of this is written as C-67, M-4, Y-79 and K-0. CMYK is a subtractive color mode. Subtractive color means that as light hits an object of varying or different hues, the wavelengths are subtracted or removed and what we see is what remains – the reflected color From Contemporary Color: Theory & Use, p.92. If color must be accurately represented across print pieces choose colors from the Pantone Matching System (“PMS”). A shade of yellow, for example would be referred to as PMS 107. Pantone sells their color swatches which can be purchased from their website. (Apparently, they also subscribe to a system of astrology using Pantone colors.) Ask that your designer use PMS colors in your next design project. Once printed you can be assured that whichever printer you’re taking the project to the colors will be the same. If however, a close match is all that is needed and your budget is non-existent, using CMYK, which is sometimes referred to as process colors, is the preferred choice.

Why Should You Care?
Understanding the two color modes is important when viewing a draft of your design project or a final proof.

Say you’re designing a T-shirt for your cause. The colors are going to look different on your screen than they are on the T-shirt. Hex codes aren’t going to help your print shop. Pantone colors are. So get the closest Pantone color you can, and tell the printer to use that.

Or is your design project a business card? Take a moment to print the draft given to you by a designer. How do the colors look?

Ask the print shop to provide you with a proof.

Your work printer is good starting point to see how your colors will look, but viewing a proof from the final machine at the shop will give you the best sense of the color.

So, the moral of the story is always get a proof from the printer, no matter what it is. If you don’t take the time to understand if your photos or drawings or logos are in RGB or CMYK, you are going to get uneven results.

Interested in learning more about color? These sites will provide you with helpful information.
Pantone
Worqx.com

Danielle Bardgette is a terrific freelance graphic designer based in Austin, Texas. She graduated from Beloit College with a Bachelors of Arts degree in Art History and Austin Community College with a graphic design certificate. Her early childhood memories include lots of reading and often dancing in her parent’s living room. A tad taller now and with a handful of grey hairs, she can typically be found spending time with friends and family, doing yoga or jaunting off on camping trips.

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Guest Post: What the heck is CMYK and RGB and why should you care? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on September 27, 2010.

What if it happens? Who are you online? How can you control what people find out about you online?

Why would anyone care what you think? Have you studied the nonprofit and charity and philanthropy sectors? Have you got an advanced degree, or a CFRE certification? Do you have years of experience to back you up? Have you ever thought about writing a book about your experiences?

Why not start to build your brand with the knowledge you have right now?

Building your platform takes time and patience and until today, I never thought I was going to reveal to you what goes on BEHIND THE SCENES here.

I never thought I would do this, but today is the day.

I am going to do something really crazy. I guess I wouldn’t be Wild Woman Fundraising if I didn’t!

I am going to give you a free 17 page e-book which details EXACTLY how I got 150,000 hits, 25,000 pageviews and 4,000 uniques this month.

I am going to give away my online marketing and branding secrets, right here, right now!

Download it right here.
How to Turn Your Nonprofit Knowledge Into A Profitable Brand

If you like it, tell me.

Share it, enjoy it, tell your friends, come on over, free advice!

If you don’t like it, lump it, but tell me what I can do better!

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How can your nonprofit knowledge become your brand? Free E-book originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on June 29, 2010.

I have been having some wonderful conversations lately with Mimi Meyer and Sue Thornton from the Nonprofit Job Club meeting I presented at last week. They helped me realize that there are a few tools that I use that others might find useful, and that some people don’t know about.

So, without further ado, peek inside my toolbox!

1. Do you hate internet ads? Me too. Get the Stylish Addons for Firefox, you can take the ads out of Gmail, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. Also, get Ad Block Plus for Firefox too. All free.

2. Hootsuite. Helps you schedule your tweets for twitter, linkedin, etc, It gives you metrics to figure out which tweets are the most popular. It can help limit your time on Twitter, if, like me, you have a tendency to get addicted to social networking.

3. Making lists in Twitter will save you a lot of time, and help people understand how you see them, too. Apparently I am a “funder” according to the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, probably because I’m WildWoman “Fund” on Twitter. Let it be known, I am NOT giving out money, please, please, back away with the grant applications, VERY SLOWLY. Okay. Thank you.

4. Goodbye Buddy! Track your people who have stopped following you on Twitter. You can also find a job on twitter here.

5. FFFFOUND.com. This is the source of much of my graphic design inspiration. This can make your nonprofit marketing SPARKLE. Highly recommended. You never know what you’re going to find. For a preview, just look at my Enjoysthin.gs feed to the left.

6. The more Twitter people you follow, the more will follow you, and you can build your audience and become a resource. How do you find people to follow on Twitter? Easy way is to find someone you admire on there, such as Amy Sample Ward, Beth Kanter, or Dan Pallotta, and see who THEY are following. Then follow them. Also, type in a treasured publication into the search bar. So if you’re a foodie, type in “Epicurious” or perhaps you’re a lefty, and you’ll type “MotherJones” instead.

7. SEOBook.com. It’s free, and very useful to scope out the competition, and what others can find out about you too. You can see how many incoming links a site has, if it’s listed in the DMOZ directory, what kind of keywords its running, and how much that costs, so if you are a small charity in England focused on eldercare, for instance, and you want to learn how to market your nonprofit better, you could download the SEOBook toolbar and see what the most successful eldercare websites are using for keywords. This will save you a lot of trial and error.

8. Comment on 10 blogs per night. Just do it. Leave a thoughtful comment. Link back to your site. And you’ll get bloggers interested in your nonprofit. And then they might write a blog post about what you do, if you ask nicely. And there you go, free marketing for you.

9. Google WonderWheel. Yeah, do a search for your nonprofit, then click “Show Options” Scroll down, see that “WonderWheel”? Click it. This will show you when people are searching for your keywords, and how many people are searching. Quintura.com is another way to look this up.

10. Bing’s Farecast Okay, this is not strictly related to marketing but it’s going to save you money, which will then leave you more money to buy marketing with, so I’m tossing it in. See when to buy airline tickets, when fares are going up and down. It’s how I flew, roundtrip, from Austin to Portland for under $250.

Bonus: Do you know where you get the majority of your traffic to your nonprofit website? And if not, why not? Contract with a web developer to get stats that you can easily understand.

What’s in YOUR internet marketing toolbox? Did I miss something important? Leave a comment!

Follow Wild Woman Fundraising on Twitter! Because you’ll get more resources every day!

Mazarine's Toolbox of Ten Useful Internet Marketing Things originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on May 20, 2010.

You have to be the development director, development associate, development assistant, events director, grantwriter, outreach coordinator, major gifts officer, grant researcher, volunteer coordinator, envelope stuffer, marketing director, graphic designer, etc.

If you are fundraising in a small shop, I salute you. It is hard. You come to work and often receive no kudos or respect for what you do. I want you to know that I know what you’re going through. And I appreciate that you take a small part of your limited time to read this.

You must not only look for funds, rub shoulders with major donors, and keep your programs on track, but you must fight the utter confusion, board member inertia, and culture of destitution.

Nonprofit organizations have a culture of destitution because they lack the ability to think strategically enough to grow an organization.

You must be strong enough to scold your CEO for being a poor business person, for creating and perpetuating a culture of destitution.

You must be able to go and get volunteers and interns from somewhere, and you must have clear job descriptions for them, and you must be RELENTLESS in delegating tasks and asking for help.

To remain able to think strategically, you can’t be thinking about how you’ll survive into next week if you don’t get some more money. You must be compensated fairly. Many nonprofits do not want to compensate you fairly, and so you either have to be very firm in the negotiation process, or you have to bring in a union. And that would help everyone in your nonprofit, not just you.

How do you deal with all of this pressure?

What else do you need to know when fundraising in a small shop?

Here’s a resource for you. Laura E. Kaufman has written an excellent post about development planning over on her blog.

Comment and tell me how you deal, and what else you do.

I want to know what you want.
Please tell me. Takes 5 mins. Tops.

Are You Fundraising in a Small Shop? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on May 17, 2010.

Have people ever looked at you sideways because you wanted to advertise in 4 newspapers, on the buses, on a billboard, on the subway, in a street banner, and on the radio and tv too?

Have people asked you, “What’s wrong with you? Why do you want to waste so much money that could be going to your cause?”

Common Misconception: Charities should not waste money on expensive advertising. It is money that could otherwise go to the needy.

When we discourage paid advertising, we are saying, “Our charity is not important enough to advertise.” Guess what, if you don’t advertise in the paper, on the radio, on TV, on the street, your competition will. And your competition is Coke, Nike, and Estee Lauder.

People spend their money on things that grab their attention. Coke says, “You’re thirsty.” Nike says, “You’re athletic.” Estee Lauder says, “You need makeup to look pretty.” And your nonprofit needs to say, “You want to help make the world a better place. Here’s where you do it.”

Advertising builds consumer demand. The more that charities are allowed to advertise, the better they can compete with consumer products for the consumer’s dollar, and the more money they can raise for the needy.

Does it make you angry that management is making it hard for you to raise money, hard for you to do your job? Are you frustrated that it’s your job to raise all of the money, yet you’re supposed to just make people hear about you by magic?

Say it quietly at first: “Advertising our nonprofit is not wasting money.”

Say it to your coworkers: “Advertising our nonprofit is not wasting money. This is how we get more donations and continue to do our work.”

Say it to everyone, shout it, “HEY! Advertising our nonprofit is not wasting money!”

Here’s an idea. Show your nonprofit boss how much success another nonprofit in your field is having, because they are advertising. Tell your boss you need to advertise your nonprofit, just to be heard.

Thank you to Dan Pallotta and his book Uncharitable, for helping me see that nonprofits need to have big advertising budgets to become more successful.

Follow Wild Woman Fundraising on Twitter!

I want to know what you want. Please tell me. Takes 5 mins. Tops.

Advertising your nonprofit is not wasting money originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on May 5, 2010.