By Guest

Are you curious how your nonprofit’s marketing stacks up against your peers? Which marketing channels are most important to your peers? Do you share the same challenges faced by your peers?

All of these questions are answered in the Nonprofit Marketing Guides’ 2016 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.

Highlights include:

• Top goals for nonprofit communication directors in 2016: brand awareness & engaging community.
• Your website is still the most important communications channel.
• Facebook, Twitter and YouTube remain the top three social media sites for nonprofits.
• Your peers are posting to Facebook at least once a day.
• The goals of Executive Directors are more aligned with Development than Communications.
• 59% of nonprofits will pay for Facebook advertising in 2016.
• Recipe for nonprofit comm success? More dedicated staff, bigger budgets and more internal cooperation.

What’s changed over the past three years?

With 6 years of data, the Nonprofit Communications Trends report also shows how things are changing for the better! For example:

• Retaining donors has become increasingly important to Executive Directors. Retention is also a top goal for Development and Communications.
• For Development Directors, retaining donors is now more important than acquiring new donors.1
• The “Big Six” communications channels – websites, email, social media, in-person events, print marketing, and media relations/PR – won’t change in 2016.

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Predictions are a tricky thing. They’re mostly comprised of strong currents of the present, past habits and a big dose of educated guessing. When it comes to nonprofits, there’s also an element of hopefulness that’s thrown in, at least in my list of predictions for 2016.

2015 has seen much innovation in technology and communication. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were recently approved and organizations and countries have started working towards the newly revamped goals. We’ve also seen the world change dramatically – terrorism in all its new iterations is ever present, and we’ll be seeing how nonprofits and global development and relief organizations respond to the current challenges on and off the ground. Here are my predictions for 2016 that reflect our changing global dynamics and expectations.

Social Media – Both large and small social good organizations will be capitalizing on hashtags in much more proactive and creative ways. We’ll be seeing more organizations use mainstream hashtags that aren’t necessarily exclusive to the nonprofit sector, such as #finance #innovation and #smallbiz to inject themselves into digital conversations that are related to their causes. We’re also going to be seeing the hashtags #globalgoals and #SDGS become increasingly popular unifying hashtags as social good organizations and countries come together to work on the newly approved United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We’re also starting to see nonprofits dip their toes into social livestreaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat, and the capacity it has to take us to places and share experiences largely unseen by supporters and donors.

Global Development – As the world continues to counter terrorism, war and violent conflict, and natural disasters, we’ll be seeing governments and mainstream media work much more closely with both large and small NGOs, in an effort to tap into local knowledge and expertise. We’ll see nonprofits respond cautiously but proactively in their new role, and invest more resources into communications and messaging.

Intrapreneurship – As social entrepreneurship continues to rise in the social good sector, more and more nonprofits are looking at the model that incorporates not only profit-making capacities, but also relies strongly on innovation and an ability to pivot quickly when needed, as potential new ways forward. Intrapreneurship, often led by solution and innovation-focused staff members, will continue to pick up speed as nonprofits start looking at new ways of creating revenue, exploring new partnerships and collaborations, and expanding their ability to sustain themselves beyond their present fundraising strategies.

Transparency & Accountability – Nonprofits will continue to make greater investments and improvements in monitoring and evaluation methodologies and staffing, improve on their impact storytelling, specifically using data visualization and graphics. We’ll see more nonprofit websites, social channels and blog posts that speak to us ways in ways we better understand, with more institutional knowledge and opinion shared, as more “fortress” nonprofits embrace communication and openness.

Content Marketing – As blogging continues to be the most rewarding content marketing tool for nonprofits, we’ll see more nonprofits train and encourage program and other staff members to share their field stories and expertise. Traditionally in the hands of communications staff members, we’ll also see more CEOs and Executive Directors creating more content on various platforms, in an effort to increase their organization’s visibility, positioning, and thought leadership.

The challenge for nonprofits in the new year, as it is every year, is finding the internal staffing and financial resources (and often the organizational will because of limited capacity) to move forward on new initiatives that help move the ‘mission needle’ forward. It will be exciting to see how nonprofits take on their various challenges and show us that the social good sector is innovating and moving forward in the most meaningful ways.

This post was originally published on The Huffington Post.

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As a consultant and trainer in the nonprofit community, I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the Nonprofit Communications Trends Report. And it’s here! Kivi published the first Nonprofit Communications Trends Report back in 2011, surveying 780 nonprofits.

For the most recent report, Kivi surveyed 1,535 nonprofits – mostly in the US.

Highlights from the 2015 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report are presented in an infographic (below), which includes the following eye-openers:

• Nonprofits no longer have new donor acquisition as a primary goal. Instead, retaining current donors and engaging their communities is becoming more important.
• Communications Directors and Development Directors have conflicting goals. Development, of course, wants to retain and acquire donors. Communications wants to focus less on fundraising and more on brand awareness and engagement.
• Nonprofits are planning on sending more email and direct mail appeals in 2015. 45% of the participants said they will send monthly appeals, and 36% said they will send quarterly direct mail appeals.
• Facebook is still the king of social media channels. 96% of participants have a Facebook page.
• Nonprofits still say their website is the most important communications channel, followed by email and social media. This is as it should be.
• Communications Directors are challenged with lack of time to produce quality content.
• Facebook takes up more time than blogging or email marketing.

Check out the full infograph below, and download your copy of the report here.

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