20 New Year’s resolutions for nonprofit PR pros

2. Start taking social media seriously. If there’s anything we’ve learned in the last few years, it’s that social media is fundamentally changing the way donors, supporters and friends relate to causes they care about. Educate your board on social media. Empower one (carefully chosen) person in your organization to handle social media. Then let them run with it.

3. Start engaging people online. Stop blast tweeting pre-scheduled Twitter and Facebook updates, news releases and bits of your mission statement. Learn how to use social media and email marketing to engage. Have conversations. Listen to your donors.

4. Stop telling your story. Donors don’t care about you. They care about what they can do through you. Stop focusing on yourself and start telling stories of the people benefiting from the help you offer, as well as your volunteers, your donors and other people connected to your work.

5. Target all communications. Sounds simple, but you’d be surprised how many nonprofits still use “spray-and-pray” marketing. Know your audience. Then treat them the way they want to be treated, and target all interaction with them.