Two Clever Nonprofit Emails

We spend so much time criticizing nonprofit emails, we should at least recognize two recent emails that have a clear call to action and deliver a compelling message.

Sojourners, "a Christian ministry whose mission is to proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice" sent an email entitled "All I Want for Christmas is a Moral Budget" which invited people to host or participate in a "vigil" at their Congressman's office in favor of higher taxes and more government spending on social programs. The email links to a meet-up registration page hosted by DemocracyInAction.

Doris Day Animal League capitalized on the hype surrounding the release of "King Kong" by sending an email inviting readers to watch a flash movie about the use of Great Apes in movies as part of their "No Reel Apes" campaign, coordinated with the Chimpanzee Collaboratory. Even though no apes were used in the making of King Kong, the release of the film provides an opportunity for nonprofits to ride the wave of online hype and draw attention to their issues. Not long ago World Wildlife Fund put up a page on their conservation efforts in Madagascar timed for release of the animated movie. No doubt they shared in the results of people searching for "Madagascar" on Google.

We've long said that nonprofit emails have to have a clear call to action. These do. You should be doing something equally engaging and compelling. Make that a New Year's Resolution.

Rick...

Online Campaigns Manager Job Description

One key to having a good online campaign is to have good online talent. Too many nonprofits are short-staffing their web efforts or mis-staffing them. Here's a job description that puts some serious effort into finding the right person.

"Defenders of Wildlife is a leading environmental nonprofit, dedicated to the protection of endangered species and their habitat. We are looking for an Online Campaigns Manager who will be an editor, writer, and manager for Defenders' email campaigns. With 300,000 e-subscribers, Defenders is an industry leader online. Defenders is focused on further expanding our e-fundraising, e-advocacy, and e-education activities through testing and innovation. The online campaigns manager will play a key role in configuring, writing, editing, and tracking outbound campaign emails and our enewsletter. This person may also become involved in writing, editing, and management for some of our websites. This person should be organized and have a strong attention to detail as we do sophisticated segmentation and tracking of emails.

Full job description can be found at:

http://www.defenders.org/about/jobs/ocm.html "