Today’s guest post is written by Lisa Gerber.
Last night, I asked my husband what I should blog about this morning.
He said, “Blog about what to do when you don’t have anything to blog about.”
Me: “Can’t, I’ve already done that.”
It’s the wild card. The “I can’t think of anything to write about, so I’ll write about the fact that I don’t have anything to write about.” It happens to the best of us. You get to use it once.
So what do you do the second time it happens? Just start typing, baby! Go with the stream of thought, and return to the top and edit.
I wrote a post this week for Razoo, helping fundraisers get started on Twitter. It is a tactical article on growing your community. But as I worked on it, I couldn’t help but think about the competition amongst the nonprofits right now, and how content marketing is critical to motivating people to donate.
It’s a terrible economy, and the collective giving wallet is shrinking at a time when it is needed more than ever. Nonprofits have gone social, and our newsfeeds are full of images of starving children and tortured animals.
It seriously breaks my heart; I’m in no way trying to be insensitive here. But I question if a different strategy might be more effective.
The pressure to save the world is too much for many who are simply trying to save themselves.
Everyone could use a little levity and some nonprofits are getting the message;
- Have fun with your content.
- Ask for a smaller amount.
I’ve been fascinated with the growth of #Movember during the past few years. Instead of scaring me with the fact that my husband has an x in xx chance of dying of prostate cancer, they’ve involved men (men who wouldn’t normally step up to be advocates) to grow mustaches and raise money socially.
They anticipate 600,000 men to be participating this year. Now? We’re having fun and raising awareness about a very serious issue.
Their goal isn’t even focused on dollar amounts, but participation. Organizers guess one-third of the participants won’t raise any money at all, and they don’t care. Because the other two-thirds will.
Crowdrise is fundraising platform. Perhaps you’ve heard of it; it’s relatively new to me. Crowdrise has adopted the same strategy, levity in fundraising.
In fact, their slogan is: If you don’t give back no one will like you.
Their site is pretty funny. They tell a great story. And? They’ve integrated gamification. If you are a regular reader here, you know how much we love scoring points. I earned 750 points just for setting up my page, and of course it has all the mandatory social integration.
I have no intention of detracting from the serious issues that are happening every single day. It’s tragic, and it’s overwhelming. Everyone is working hard to make ends meet and we can only handle so much. Seriously, I can’t even open the PETA emails, it breaks my heart.
It’s OK to lighten up.
Thank you to T. Gray for the image.