Avoid These 3 Writing Mistakes in Non-Profit Communications – Part 1

0:00Introduction to Non-Profit Writing Mistakes

Gena0:00What are three big mistakes writers make when writing for non profits?

Christopher0:04Hey, we can help with that. Hey, Gena.

Gena0:09Hey, Chris.

Christopher0:10What are three mistakes that people can make when writing for non profits? Wow, that's a mouthful.

Gena0:14I know, we're gonna talk about that today.

Christopher0:17So Gena and I have written for non profits for years.

Gena0:20Decades.

Christopher0:21Yeah, literally decades. It makes me feel very old when you say that. I don't know if I want to use the word decades when it comes to things I do. But yes, we've been writing for non profits for decades we've written for speakers and pastors and ministers and non profits that have to do with ministry, non profits that have to do with like helping people. Humanitarian, international, all across the board and as we have done so we have been writers ourselves for these different organizations and we have worked with writers For all of these organizations and we have found that there are some general mistakes that [00:01:00] writers make when they're writing for nonprofits, and we thought we'd just share three of those today.

Gena1:05And I would say that these are mistakes that not only the writers make but the editors make as well. You can sometimes find that even if you write with the things in mind that we're talking about. Sometimes you'll come across editors that will want to edit these things out because they are going toward these mistakes they're doing these things that they haven't necessarily studied some of the things we're going to talk about today. And I do want to point out though that these are things that we've learned over the years that we have been taught from mentors who are mentoring us in the nonprofit space and things that we have learned that just work and that we want to keep in mind.

Gena1:50And once you make the shift here for the non profit, you will quickly realize it when you are writing it. You will quickly be able to see what we're talking about.

Christopher1:59What's [00:02:00] interesting about some of these items too is that they really apply to more than just non profits. Some of these are just general marketing or writing techniques and

Gena2:09strategies

Christopher2:10strategies to consider and so even if you don't write for nonprofits I think you'll find this actually quite insightful.

Gena2:17Yeah and I think you'll also see that when you are someone who is being written to you'll be able to say yeah that's true I don't want that I want this. Let's get started.

Mistake 12:28Overemphasis on the Ask

Gena2:28The first mistake that we find that people make, that writers make, is constantly focusing on the ask and never giving the donor, the reader, the chance to celebrate the win.

Christopher2:47So I think you've got to break that down for us.

Gena2:48I've got to break that down a little bit.

Christopher2:50What does that mean?

Gena2:50So when we're talking about the ask, if you're a non profit who is raising money for some type of an awareness in your area and you're [00:03:00] needing money, we're going to talk locally, say there's something in your local area that you want to bring awareness to. And you have this nonprofit idea and you're wanting to raise some money so that you can expand your reach. If you are constantly focused on give us money, your people, your readers will begin to tune out. Where if you can say give us money, and oh look guys, we've got this much money, look at what we're going to be able to do.

Gena3:31People get excited. People want to be a part of something successful and they want to feel a part of that.

Christopher3:37I think that's the key. People want to be a part of something successful. And it, you're saying money. It doesn't even necessarily have to be money, right? It could be that if you're a local non profit and you're just asking people to come help. We need volunteers. Please come help. If that's the message people hear all the time, but there's never the celebration of what [00:04:00] their help is doing, then people become very fatigued with that. They begin to feel like, ah, they're just asking for help again.

Gena4:08They just want more help. Or, I helped last time and I keep helping and I keep trying to make a difference, but it doesn't seem like it's doing anything. You know what? I'm going to stay home.

Christopher4:16Yeah, so how might you celebrate a win in a letter or another form of media?

Gena4:22I think you have to work in not only again, ask what you need to ask. And we'll talk about that a little bit later, but ask what you need to ask. But then maybe if you're looking for volunteers to help with something, maybe you spotlight a volunteer. Maybe you take time to spotlight a volunteer or maybe you say, just a simple, thank you guys so much. We're so thankful that this many people came out to help us or we've raised this much money and we're going to be able to do XYZ because of the money that you gave. Let people [00:05:00] celebrate that win. Rather than just constantly pounding them with this is what we need.

Christopher5:05So you're not necessarily saying it's one or the other you could include both in the same letter or on the same web page or on the same form of communication, even if it's social media, you can have a couple posts, one that celebrates the win and one that's asking for help.

Gena5:20Absolutely, and you should. You've got to make your ask because that's what you need to do, whatever it is that you're wanting to do. But you want to also work in the win. And I think there's a way you, I will say you do want to work in the win without making it feel like a manipulative thing. We raised this much money, now give us 1, 000 more. You don't want it to feel manipulative, but you want to be more and that's where I would probably lean towards in, in one where I was highlighting the win.

Gena5:51I would highlight the win and then do a soft sell for the ask in that one, not just a, we've [00:06:00] done this, now let's do this, give me some more money. But I would do a, let's celebrate this. Look at what your donations are doing. Isn't that fantastic, imagine what we could do with this much more.

Christopher6:12Yeah, that's good. That's good. All right.

Mistake 26:14Inconsistent Branding Message

Christopher6:14So another mistake that writers make when they're writing for nonprofits is that they'll often switch the branding message midstream. Here's what I mean. If you ever heard a really good motto or slogan or a tagline that you're like, wow, that's great. And then a lot of times non profits, they hear that slogan so much internally in their organization, they think that it's tired and it's used and they get rid of it in less than a year and they go on to something else.

Christopher6:50And they do that because they're thinking everyone's tired of that, everyone's heard that. But the truth is, if you've heard your slogan a thousand times, your [00:07:00] listeners have probably, or your readers have probably only heard it four or five times. Like they haven't really associated with you yet. And so as writers, we need to try and keep bringing those slogans, those taglines, those phrases back and keep those associated with the brand message. It's really about branding, right? And I think it's funny that sometimes non profits have a hard time with this because if you look at businesses that are for profit, they don't have any trouble with this at all, right?

Christopher7:33If you say, have it your way, you know instantly that we're talking about what?

Gena7:39Burger King.

Christopher7:40Burger King, right? It's been that way for years and sometimes they'll fade out with it for a little bit and then they'll come back with it or, I'm lovin it is clearly McDonald's. They've been using that for years now. They could have easily rolled it out and a few months later come out with a new one because they've got very deep pockets, right? And they've got all these big marketing crews that can do that, but [00:08:00] instead they keep hammering it home again and again to where you associate that Phrase, Slogan, Tagline with the brand so much so that sometimes you'll see for profit businesses that'll have the name of the business, the logo of the business, and then underneath the logo, the tagline will be up on the building with the business because it's so associated with who they are that it's right there with it.

Christopher8:25So be very careful about retiring taglines that may seem tired and make sure they aren't just tired to you. They may be good for everyone to still see.

Gena8:35And good for years. I love that you brought out the profit businesses, because they do, they keep taglines, slogans, logos for years. They don't just keep churning them out. Because, and here's the thing, is that when, like Chris said, somebody could hear something a thousand times, and what we're talking about that, is it probably appears on every snail mail letter that you send out. It appears [00:09:00] on every email that you send out. It appears on all your social media that you send out.

Gena9:04But imagine even with social media, how many of us see every post that an organization sends out?

Christopher9:12Statistically, you see maybe 11 percent if you're active.

Gena9:1711%. So imagine that. So like Chris said, if an organization has put a slogan or a motto out a thousand times, then 11 percent of that is how many times that person may have even seen it. But how many times did they actually know that they saw it? That's much less, so just like Chris said, be very careful before you retire, that kind of thing.

Christopher9:40You want the brand recognition, and as writers, you can help bring that to the organization.

Mistake 39:45Overuse of Jargon

Gena9:45Okay, so the third one that we've come up with today is that people, and we see this in non profits all the time, they get so connected to a phrase or language [00:10:00] that they use to describe their message that they forget that people outside may never know what you're talking about. So there's a jargon. Now, we're not talking about slogans and logos and taglines and things like that. We're talking about if you have a special name for your donors, or you say you're an active, you're a how about like you're a platinum level blah blah blah, the person on the other side of that email or social media post or whatever may not know what that means.

Gena10:41They don't know what that means. And so you have to, especially people who are new to your message. I'll see this sometimes where people are writing a welcome sequence for people who are just coming on board to their organization. And they'll want to hit them with all this [00:11:00] jargon, all this very specific language that you think if you're someone who's new to this organization, they're not going to know what you're talking about. You've got to be able to break that down, which is what our job is as writers.

Christopher11:15Yeah. It's funny. I can give a personal example of this because when we were coming up with the branding for Writing Momentum. One of the things that we thought would be cool is to call the people who were members of Writing Momentum, and in doing this with us, we said, hey, let's call them accelerators. That's a really cool thing, right? Because like you accelerate, you're gaining momentum. We thought that's cool. We'll call them accelerators. And so we did that for a while until we realized no one knew what that meant, right? And a lot of people couldn't spell it. Accelerator is a weird word.

Christopher11:45Is it E R, O R at the end? I don't know. And so we realized that by using that special language, even though we thought it was cool, it had completely lost its meaning. . And so we ended up getting rid of it. We said we're not gonna do that. We're just gonna say, [00:12:00] Hey, Gena!

Gena12:00We're gonna keep it simple.

Christopher12:01Just use their name. And people tend to associate that with us now. Because we're just, yeah. Keeping it simple. Keeping it real.

12:08Summary and Conclusion

Gena12:08So going back to the three mistakes that nonprofits, we see these specifically with nonprofits or not specifically, I would say, especially with nonprofits, that we see this with, especially with nonprofits. One, it's focusing so much on the ask that you never share the win. Two is switching the branding message, changing that tagline, changing that slogan, changing that phrase or even logo, just constantly, just getting so tired of it internally that you forget that the people outside don't even know what it is yet.

Gena12:42And then three, using jargon, using personal, organizational jargon to describe something without ever breaking it down for your reader.

Christopher12:53That's good stuff.

Gena12:54I know.

Christopher12:54So it hopefully even if you're not writing for a non profit you will still find these very helpful in [00:13:00] your writing And I got a secret to tell you we got more these!

13:03Preview of Next Episode

Christopher13:03These are so good we were like, hey, let's do two episodes on this. So if you found this helpful we hope that you will rate and review subscribe share it with someone else who you think might benefit from knowing some of these common mistakes. Then tune in next week because next Wednesday we're going to have another list of three or maybe four more mistakes that writers make when writing for non profits. Until then don't forget, together.

13:29Sign Off

Gena13:29We have writing momentum.

Christopher13:32Bye bye.