The Nonprofit Marketing Guide. Kivi Leroux Miller

PREFACE: THE STORY BEHIND THIS BOOK

      When I wrote the first edition of this book in 2010, it came largely from my personal experience. I started consulting as a freelance writer for nonprofits in 1998, after nearly a decade of working for nonprofits as a staff member, dedicated board member, and volunteer.

      My freelance writing career was quickly revolutionized like everything else by the exponential growth of the Internet. Soon I was learning HTML and Photoshop, and then creating marketing strategies, drafting communications budgets, and attempting to calculate return-on-investment for all of this work that was, in so many ways, brand-new to the nonprofit sector.

      The job of the modern nonprofit communications director was born, and I was one of the people trying to fill this new role for several different nonprofit clients. Throughout that decade from 2000 to 2010, I learned how to be that nonprofit marketing department of one. I experimented all the time, producing both successes and failures, but always learning.

      I didn't, however, have any kind of roadmap for this work. It just didn't exist because the job was evolving just as fast as the Internet. I vowed that at some point I would write it myself.

At the same time, I began teaching workshops, first through the Social Action and Leadership School for Activists (SALSA) program in Washington, D.C., and then through Duke University's certificate program in nonprofit management in North Carolina. Because I enjoyed teaching so much, in 2007 I transitioned my business from primarily consulting to primarily training. I launched NonprofitMarketingGuide.com, including a blog and weekly webinar series.

      My hunch that staff at thousands of nonprofits were in the exact same situation that my clients and I had been in for many years was right: they too were communications departments of just one or two people who had to do it all themselves and didn't know where to turn for help. The response to Nonprofit Marketing Guide the company was so positive that I knew it was time to write an eponymous book, which was published in 2010.

      The nonprofit communications profession has continued to evolve in leaps and bounds since then. I was pleasantly surprised to see many college and university certificate and degree programs begin teaching about marketing in the nonprofit sector, assigning this book as required reading. I was especially tickled one day in 2016 when one of my best friends from high school posted a photo of her daughter's college textbook on Facebook – and it was this book!

      Throughout 2010–2020, I too was studying nonprofit communications and marketing in earnest. At Nonprofit Marketing Guide, we launched an annual Nonprofit Communications Trends Report sharing the results of survey data from thousands of nonprofits. We also launched a number of training, coaching, and mentoring programs for nonprofit communications staff that allowed me to see the inner workings of hundreds of nonprofits. Over the years, we studied not only the communications tactics nonprofits use, but how the required skill set is changing, the challenges staff in the job face each day, and what communications effectiveness looks like in the nonprofit sector.

      I shared what we continued to learn in two additional books, the award-winning Content Marketing for Nonprofit: A Communications Map for Engaging Your Community, Becoming a Favorite Cause, and Raising More Money (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and CALM not BUSY: How to Manage Your Nonprofit's Communications for Great Results (Bold & Bright Media, 2018).

      I think of those books as the 201 and 301 texts for nonprofit communicators. As 2020 and another new decade approached, I knew it was time to revisit the 101 book. I've updated The Nonprofit Marketing Guide for a new generation of communications professionals and career changers getting started in the sector.

While these new members of our profession are on my mind as I write and edit this edition, I am also surrounded in spirit by literally thousands of generous souls who have helped me learn every lesson that I am sharing in this book. It is truly a collective effort, and for each and every interaction and conversation that culminated into the thinking and experiences shared on these pages, I am eternally grateful.

      Kivi Leroux Miller

      September 2020