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Marketing and Communication

Course Overview

Through communications, we craft narratives, messaging, and images that persuade people to take action or think differently. With an effective communications strategy, you can bring consistency to all areas of your work, identify and engage your key stakeholders, refine how you talk about your work, and present your organization as an authentic, polished, and relevant force for good.

Your website, social-media presence, and email communications are most likely the most important way—if not the only way— your stakeholders can involve themselves with your mission. So make sure they are doing the job you need them to do. Learn how to obtain and interpret marketing data to track your impact and refine your approach, so you can send the right message to the right people at the right time.

Included in your registration is expert-coaching specific to your nonprofit's communication and marketing program. Everything in this Credential centers on equipping you to create and deliver the messaging you need to support your mission.

Successful completion of the course will deliver the following to you and your organization

  1. Strategies for creating and re-purposing content to drive your readers to action.
  2. Information on website optimization for donors, volunteers, and corporate partners.
  3. Ways to tell an effective story that inspires action and supports your goals.
  4. A variety of tools to support you in your marketing efforts.
  5. Information on how to use social media, blogs, emails, and videos in your organizational marketing strategy.
  6. The concept of marketing personas to ensure your marketing material is getting in front of the appropriate audience(s).
  7. Ideas on how to use goals to guarantee that your marketing plan is in alignment with the organizational goals.
  8. A deep understanding of inbound marketing, content marketing, email marketing, video marketing, and social media marketing.
  9. How to position yourself as a marketing professional.

Marketing and Communication Nonprofit Credential will be held in March 2024.

Each of the nine UNA Credential courses is offered online, once in a calendar year. Please check the UNA Event Calendar for all upcoming courses.

Cost:
UNA Member Rate: $180 for the first person/$40 for each additional participant
Not-Yet-Member Rate: $360 for the first person/$80 for each additional participant

Marketing and Communication Badge Requirements

Successful completion of the Credential in Marketing and Communication requires that your organization submit the following items for review. Once all the items have been submitted, UNA and the Subject Matter Expert will review them. A passing review of all the items earns your organization the Badge in Marketing and Communication and gives you the satisfaction of completing important substantive work. Please follow specific guidelines in the participant folder, as they are always going to be the most current.

Marketing Persona
Provide an example of one marketing persona that matches your data base—not your office staff or what you assume your client's look like and believe in. Remember that your personas might be a different race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic group

Editorial Calendar
Provide a copy of your editorial calendar that contains, at the minimum, the channel, messaging, timing, and author. This can be a 30, 60, 90 day or one-year calendar

Website

  • Document when and by whom your website has been most recently reviewed and critiqued.
  • Describe who viewed the review findings and what was done with the information received.

Email Marketing
Provide evidence that you have segmented your email list and have sent at least one email to one of the segments.

Video Marketing

  • Provide a link to a new (brand, personalized, or event) video that you created on a cell phone and have posted on social media.
  • Remember to use people who represent your clients. This might be a different race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic group. It's critical to people that match your database, not your office staff or what you assume your client's look like and believe in.
  • Please indicate if your video is Brand, Humanize, or Event.

Social Media

Post Examples
Provide (can even be a screen shot of something that you have already posted) an example of 3 types of social posts:

  • Industry post
  • Promotional post
  • A post about your organization's Why vs. What
  • Social Media Policy

Social Media Policy

Provide a copy of the organization’s social media policy that directs employees on appropriate use of personal social media as an employee of your organization.

Repurposed Content
Provide an example of where you expanded a piece of content to repurpose it for another channel. This can be a Facebook post expanded to an email or a blog. Or an Instagram post expanded to a Facebook post, etc. .You can also use content from a mass email where you select a piece to use in social media.

Show examples of diversity
Examples can include age, race, socioeconomic, gender diversity. Not all types of diversity have to be demonstrated in each area. Simply one type per area will work.

  • Website
  • Alt text
  • Video
  • Social post
Justin Anderson

Subject Matter Expert: Justin Anderson

Justin B. Anderson has three decades of marketing strategy and communication experience, with over 20 years in the nonprofit sector. He has represented many established and startup nonprofit organizations while also teaching marketing strategy and tactics to both undergraduate and master’s-level students at Westminster College in Salt Lake City and through the Utah Nonprofits Association Marketing Communications Credential. He has also authored the book series, “Mission Marketing: A Survey of Nonprofit Marketing Strategy.”

With a genuine love for marketing and an abiding respect for the audiences we engage, Justin believes in the power of professional communication, as both a tool to help organizations succeed and a positive public resource. Good marketing is a service—a genuine and committed agreement between organizations and their stakeholders—that brings value to all participants.