NPO Content Strategy in time of crisis: Refit, Reuse, and Recycle
The missions of Non-Profit Organizations are often full of beautiful success stories. When your rubber hits the road, your mission is in it to change lives in one way or another. Perhaps you provide scholarships to students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend college. Maybe you would with survivors of abuse. Do you help kids learn music or sports? Whatever it is, it’s actively helping the world be better.
My guess is that right now, most of your operations are either slimmed down significantly, or stopped all together. Covid-19 has made it impossible for some types of activities to happen. That doesn’t mean that you should stop communicating on behalf of your mission. Exactly the opposite. Now is the time to ramp up those beautiful success stories.
Why? Because we need good news. We all need reasons to smile while we’re hunkered down.
Take this opportunity to refit, reuse, repurpose, repackage, and recycle your great stories and potentially reach a new audience.
Here are 5 quick ideas for ways to get started.
1) Build a kid’s guide about your cause. Families across America are hunting for cool things to add to their homeschool studies. Pack a PDF with stories, videos, photos, and activities that parents and kids would enjoy together.
2) Start a Live video campaign. Jump on FB Live with a few people who have influenced your NPO. Interview recipients of your services. Profile the CEO and other staff members. This is a great way to put a real time face to your organization.
(If Facebook is too public, organize a Zoom call for your donors with a calendar of special guests.)
3) Repackage old blog posts, videos, and appeal letters into a new format. These pieces of content can be made into evergreen items by extracting the core principles and putting them into videos, fresh blog posts, and other social media content.
4) Ask your team to make personalized videos of gratitude for your major donors. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just grab your phone, set up a tripod, and say “Thank You.” Donors are hunkered down focusing on their families and businesses. Brighten their day with a simple, human note.
5) Teach your audience a new skill. Tap your supporters for their interesting talents. For example, I’m a magician. What if your NPO hosted a zoom call where the guests learned 3-4 cool magic tricks.
We have an incredible opportunity to check off some of those back-burnered projects. As we dial back on the execution of the mission, perhaps it’s time to refit your website, or do the deep dive on that big project that you’ve been putting off.
