100th Episode! How to Create Valuable Content that Brings in Donors & Clients

Hey changemaker! I am so excited about today’s podcast! I know I say that every week, but today is the 100th episode! Can you believe it? Before we even start today I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU for listening and hanging out with me on this journey! You are simply amazing!

Today I am paying homage to you and this podcast! You are going to learn about creating content, why it is super important to show your credibility as a nonprofit or consultant, how to effectively tell your story as a nonprofit or creating depth as a consultant, and create a movement for people to be part of!  Of course, moreover the content will help build up donors, funders, clients, and/or customers.

Today I will give examples for both nonprofits and consultants and how you can get ahead without overwhelm before 2020 even kicks off.

I wanted to pay tribute to this 100th episode with an episode on sharing content and value. This is extremely important to both nonprofits and to freelancers because if we aren’t sharing we don’t build credibility, the story, or an experience or even a movement.

We heard from Dan Portnoy last week of Portnoy Media Group that sharing a story is vital for a nonprofit to have an effective fundraiser strategy or to attract long-term donors. This is also important for freelancers to actually share value then also sell, sell, sell.

Content. So this word is used a LOT these days. So is the word Value. But what does these words actually mean when used together?

The Word Factory gives a great definition of content: “Content is the presentation of information for a purpose to an audience through a channel in a form.”

This is pretty cool as it is a way that I want you to think of content. I also want you to think of content as your story, your tribe, and your experience.

Let’s look at this from a nonprofit’s point of view. You have fantastic projects where you serve underserved youth in an inner city with free summer soccer camps, soccer practice during the year, and academic tutoring. But you don’t really do much with your Facebook or Instagram page. Once in a while you scramble together a newsletter to send out to your donors, but it’s sporadic at best. You submit annually to foundations for grants but one time you even missed a grant opportunity because the foundation asked for a presentation about your nonprofit and you couldn’t find any pictures or content to share with the board.

Yes, you DO plenty! Yes, 100 underserved youth went through your program last year and the youth shared about it on their social media, but pieces of video and pictures and testimonials are scattered and in old computers that don’t work any longer.

Now let’s look at this from a consultant’s point of view. You started up a nonprofit consultancy this year – yay You! – but you are still getting your bearings straight. You have a put together website and you post daily on LinkedIn about all the great services you have. That’s all well and good, but what are you sharing to build a community? Do you do more asking rather than giving?

So content can be sharing all the cool stuff you are doing through a system, all the amazing things you are learning or wanting to learn, and/or sharing information and resources that help solve people’s problems.

To kind of put this in perspective I am going to talk about this podcast. This podcast started out of a semi-dare. I actually had another podcast before this one – Creatives Exposed – where I had long, in-depth conversations with different types of creatives and shared those stories. It was pretty cool, but it didn’t relate to my business, it just related to my interests and my need to meet more creatives on Guam. So, it was awesome. But during a Master Mind meeting a friend – Michelle from Secret Owl Society who is a boss entrepreneur, said, “why don’t you start one for your business?” Having only produced about five podcasts of Creatives Exposed I rolled my eyes and said these are taking me forever to do! At the time we had a $100 monthly challenge where we had to do one thing to drive our business forward each month and if we didn’t meet the goal by the end of we owed $100. Now if you really want to move and shake, I recommend finding some amazing people and doing this! So she said, “make your podcast super short with specific tips each week on grants and funding.” So I took it on as my monthly challenge. Now, more than two years later I am SO glad I did. I wasn’t so sure about it, but I wasn’t about to lose that $100!

Why the podcast though? Well, I wanted a way to scale beyond Guam and to build a tribe. Now I talk to you Changemakers every single week and the coolest thing is you talk back to me by sending emails, signing up for coaching and memberships, or joining courses. It is SO cool!

On my podcast I share content with you every week. In the beginning I didn’t podcast every week, but before 2019 hit I knew I had to be more consistent as I had people tuning in every week. If I was sporadic with my episodes I knew I would lose the momentum I created.

In the past couple of months I have been doing a lot more interviews as I am interested about certain topics so curating experts that can share more in-depth on topics that maybe I can’t. Plus I love meeting and interviewing people as it is so much fun! I’ll still have a mix of solo show (like today) with specific tips to drive your nonprofit or consultancy forward and interviews with other experts in the field.

What this podcast has allowed me to do is to build up the grant writing & funding tribe, to see which podcasts are getting the most downloads so I have an idea of what service or product to create or provide, and to actually help other people in advancing their business or organization. I’ve also been able to meet people and have a platform where I can talk with them or share their views with all of you.

Of course, having this content also helps build up customers. That is important. For you, the content will help build up donors, funders, clients, and/or customers.

Ideas for Content

E-Content includes blogging, writing articles, videos, and podcasts.

Hard content includes brochures, power points, in-person meetups, etc.

It really can depend on what you do and who your audience is. If you work at that soccer nonprofit then you might realize that your audience is youth and since you have dynamic active projects, you may want to collect mini-videos of the different projects you, testimonials of the youth, and share soccer related information. Then think of the main medium. Video, youth, and YouTube go hand-in-hand, so you start a YouTube channel with the full videos. But then you think, how can I repurpose this content for my Instagram page? So you take clips of these videos and share on social media. At some point you may even consider putting together all your videos into a documentary. Believe me, your chances of getting a grant to fund the documentary will be competitive if you can show some of your clips and statistics on your view/likes/comments rather than having none! In any case, you may have a funding source come to you because they came across one of your videos. These might be fun things to send to potential funding sources rather than just a brochure. However, if you just are not digging the E-world, then creating a brochure could be just as impactful. You could include the same content but just in a different format.

Can you see the difference your nonprofit can make when having a ...