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Finally, a way to benchmark your non-profit marketing and communications budget. Find out how your budget stacks up againsgt the benchmark set by marketing expert John Suart. Easy, simple and flexible, the benchmark system is the only one of its kind anywhere. 

The 3% Give or Take system is Canada's only non-profit marketing benchmarking system.

"The 3% Give or Take Budget Benchmark is designed to give non-profits the information they need to benchmark their marketing and communications budget. It is simple, flexible and easy to use. It is admittedly not the most sophisticated of benchmark systems. Some may find it to be simplistic and argue that a more complex approach is needed. That may be true. However, this benchmark has advantages. It is applicable to almost every kind of non-profit, large or small. Being simple and flexible makes it more usable, and that will be welcome news to the many non-profits that have neither the time or the skills to do anything more complicated. And, at the end of the day, The 3% Give or Take Budget Benchmark is one of the only budget systems of its kind available. If it is better than nothing, than that is a step in the right direction because there is nothing else."

What do alumni want and how can we give it to them? That was the question the University of New Brunswick Associated Alumni asked in 2010 when it selected the Wright Agency to create a new communications strategy for its 80,000 members. The result was an innovative new strategy called New Beginnings which changed the way universities and colleges think about alumni affairs. The lessons from this new strategy is now available in a special white paper from the Wright Agency – Reforging the Bond.

Reforging the Bond dispels many of the myths surrounding alumni affairs. It asks “what is pride?” and “do alumni really care about the value of their degrees?” Many of the yardsticks used in measuring the strength of the alumni relationship aren’t really measurements at all. In fact, most universities and colleges know more about they want from alumni members than they do about what the members want from them.

The white paper looks at generational differences that are making today’s new alumni members much different from their predecessors. Things like student debt, unemployment and the mass market nature of many post-secondary institutions has shaken the relationship between student and university. Reforging the Bond says the result is that more than ever today’s student are unprepared for entry into their alumni associations.

Reforging the Bond spells out all this and more, including simple, easy-to-use strategies and tactics that will invigorate your alumni communications

Canada’s non-profit organizations received a failing grade in marketing for 2010. That’s one of the conclusion of a new report by the Non-Profit Marketer, a leading national blog that focuses on non-profit marketing and communications. The report, the Non-Profit Marketing Year in Review, says stakeholder relationships was the key issue for non-profits in 2010, but most lacked resources, skills, data and vision to deal with it.

2010 saw the continued rise of social media across all age groups. Canadian non-profits are increasingly turning to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to attract and keep stakeholders, but the medium is still very young. Research from the US shows that while a majority of donors now use social media, only 6 percent actually give money that way.

Non-profit marketing continues to be consistently underfunded. Research shows that spending on marketing varies widely between organizations. Data collection, a key tool in the marketing arsenal, has been hampered by a lack of up-to-date practices, like the collection of email addresses. Skills was the soft underbelly of most non-profit marketing operations in 2010. The larger operations, especially those in fundraising, could afford to hire top quality talent. But for most non-profits, this continues to unattainable. The churn in budgets and skills coupled with the lack of vision and poor data creates marketing programs that tend to follow, not lead.

The report recommends a clearer mandate for marketing departments and better, more consistent funding. Further, it calls on stronger integration and measurement to make sure marketing dollars are spent wisely.

Canadian hospitals are failing to give the public the information they want online. That’s the conclusion of a new white paper called Page Not Found: Canadian Hospitals and Their Websites.

The report was created by the Non-Profit Marketer, Canada’s leading not-for-profit marketing and communications blog, and published by JohnSuart.Com, a Kingston, Ontario third sector marketing agency.

Page Not Found: Canadian Hospitals and Their Website, which brings together several sources along with first-hand experience in the Canadian health care sector, concludes that while Canadians are increasingly going online to get health information, the websites of many hospitals do not meet basic standards. 

Facebook is a good example. At many Ontario hospitals, staff are not allowed to go on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube from a workplace computer. In order to start a Foundation Facebook page staff working for one hospital in Ontario had to request access in writing from the head of IT. It took more than a week, and even then parts of Facebook continued to be blocked, preventing them from uploading any pictures. The hospital’s attitude was that social media was a “waste” of time and only personal benefit could come from it. 

 "The public that Canadian hospitals serve is increasingly going online to get information. At the same time, the websites of many hospitals do not meet basic standards, and many hospital communications departments don’t have the resources and skills to make an improvement. And, on the horizon, change is coming in the form of a new mobile universe that will leave many hospitals even more behind in online communications."