Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants – Marketing Edition

The big top is back up at Spare Change to welcome the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants as it winds its way across the blogosphere each week. We feature seven of the best blog posts by and/or for nonprofit consultants, and the theme this week is “marketing for nonprofits.”

Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention shares what the University of Minnesota is doing with its Brand Ambassadors program that you could use to harness the enthusiasm of your biggest fans.

Ken Goldstein at the Nonprofit Consultant Blog calls attention to the possible problem of “donor poachers” who compile lists of potential donors from other organizations’ online annual reports.

Leila Johnson at Data-Scribe describes how to apply scientific concepts from chemistry in your marketing to make the process more efficient.

Joe Waters at Selfish Giving ponders how to market your brand without being perceived as too slick, with some lessons from Burger King.

Kate Zimmermann at SearchViews presents her thoughts on Bono’s (RED) campaign from a social network marketing and SEO perspective.

Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog provides some reasons to consider using other research methods besides focus groups in your marketing research.

David Maister contributes a post and its comments with excellent advice for nonprofit consultants that addresses how much up-front work at no charge is reasonable for a potential client before a contract is signed.

And the bonus host post from yours truly is about whether the use of potentially stigmatizing messages in social marketing campaigns is acceptable and/or effective.

Thanks to all of this week’s participants. Next week the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants will be hosted by Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology, with an open call for submissions. If you want to submit a post to be considered for next week, send an email to npc.carnival AT yahoo DOT com with your name, your blog’s name and the URL of the post (not your blog homepage).