Planning Your Nonprofit Content Calendar

There are myriad reasons why your nonprofit needs to be sharing content regularly on your website and social media. For staying top of mind, reminding people of the work that you do, getting your message out (and furthering your mission), and even basic SEO strategy…content is king.

But between all of the other seemingly more pressing, mission-critical (pun intended) things your team does every day, creating and sharing content seems like a last priority. So while many organizations are aware of the “need” to publish, few do. And even fewer do it with any sort of regularity.

1. Planning Your Nonprofit Content Calendar

Creating a calendar is a simple, effective way of scheduling future posts, but if done right, makes it a lot easier to actually generate those posts. Chances are, you already have a calendar that includes major events like galas, do-good drives, annual events and celebrations, among other things.

That’s actually a great starting point for creating your content calendar, since you know you want to be promoting these events before they happen, and talking about them afterward. Thinking of those events as “content-worthy” ahead of time will likely spark ideas of things you can do and share online well in advance. Put those things on your calendar!

For calendaring and planning, we love the free and powerful Asana (see our review), which can integrate with but the best tool is the one you are most comfortable with…even if it’s the whiteboard in your office.

We recommend keeping an ongoing 1-year, 6-month, 3-month and 1-month calendar. The further away something is, the less detailed the plan has to be. For the sake of sanity, however, anything in the 3-month window should be in prep, anything in the 1-month should be in “production,” one way or another.

Once you’ve got your major dates and content plans, you’ll likely need to add more items. So what do you add? Read on.

2. Create the Right Content for Your Nonprofit’s Audience

This seems simple on the surface: Engage with your audience on the subjects that they’re interested in. The more value you provide and the more you show them that you share their interests and concerns, the more personally connected to you and your cause they will be.

The problem is that most of the time, businesses and organizations focus on just talking about their work; or worse, asking for the sale or donation. Your audience is probably interested in other things, many of which indirectly connect back to the change you want to make in the world.

For example, if you’re a New York City theater company focusing on children’s theater, there are many areas of interest that overlap with yours, which your audience (parents of New York children) might be passionate about, or at least just interested in. New York arts festivals and arts funding news are an easy extension of news you want to share. Then there’s national and local education news, studies about the impact of imagination and storytelling, arts in education, or even that it’s a snow day!

Don’t worry about experimenting and getting it “wrong.” As long as you don’t offend or alienate people, trying different tacks may yield surprising results. With time, the more content you share, the more you’ll see what your fans respond to, with likes, shares, and website traffic. Spending a little time (and possibly sending out a survey) thinking of ideas that your audience will appreciate can go a long way and pay off greatly in the long run.

Sharing content about current events may seem like a full-time job on its own, but with a little planning, it may be easier and less resource-intensive than you might think. Which takes us to the “shortcut” in our next section…