Great storytelling has the power to prompt action, while creating meaningful connections with donors, funders, and supporters. How can nonprofits develop a sustainable system for collecting and these sharing stories? This week, Lynn Fitch, Development Director at Growing Gardens joined Driving Participation to discuss best practices for nonprofit storytelling, and channels for distributing and re-purposing that content.

At its best, marketing automation exists with the goal of growing your database and keeping your audience engaged. This software is designed to help you prioritize and execute your marketing tasks in a more streamlined and efficient way. Many organizations are starting to welcome email autoresponders and marketing automation systems to deliver highly-targeted, personalized messages. This week, Joe Moran, Chief Creative Officer at True Colors Fund joined Driving Participation to discuss the tricks and tools to start an automated marketing campaign.

Thinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop and approach products, services, and strategy. If you want to make your organization more innovative, creative and member-focused, it starts with a set of principles known as design thinking. Design thinking offers a structured framework that helps associations evaluate ideas and move projects forward. This week, Garth Jordan and Keith Chamberlain, Co-founders of RevvCrew, joined Driving Participation. Keith and Garth discuss how to improve internal organization and team culture through design thinking.

While nearly all nonprofits engage in some form of online marketing, an increasing number are using social media to raise awareness and increase donor retention through online campaigns. When successful, these online campaigns provide an avenue to tell your story, engage with supporters and get results. This week, Debra Askanase, founder and digital strategist of Community Organizer 2.0 joined Driving Participation to explore what it takes to design and execute a successful online campaign.

Stories are the basic building blocks for reaching our goals. They have the power to attract donors, win support and raise money. Yet effective storytelling is still one of the biggest challenges facing nonprofits and organizations. To better understand these challenges, Nation Hahn, Chief Growth Officer at EdNC, joined Beth to discuss the basics of storytelling, and how to implement stories that engage communities.

To have a high-functioning organization, it is critical that all members, donors, volunteers, partners, and staff understand what value they provide a community and what change they exist to create. This week, David Rhode, Founder and the Executive Director of Pitch In For Baseball, joined Driving Participation to explore how to build a foundation for long-term success. Pitch In For Baseball, is an organization that works to provide baseball equipment to children around the world. As an executive director, it is critically important for David to mobilize and engage with volunteers, nonprofits, business and government agencies. Building awareness and support is essential to creating a culture of philanthropy at Pitch in for Baseball.

It's no secret that the traditional website redesign process is broken. One of the biggest mistakes is jumping into execution before understanding the needs of your visitors, customers and prospects. This week, Margaux O'Malley joined Driving Participation to discuss implementing a customer-centric approach in the website redesign process. For Margaux, principal of Grand Junction Design, creating a valuable, optimized site starts with careful research, discussion and measurement. Beth and Margaux explore building a website that invites participation, as well as the top platforms for web redesign.

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What if nonprofits had the same marketing, technology, HR and strategy resources as corporations? Taproot, a service that connects organizations with passionate, skilled volunteers through pro bono work, aims to do just that. Pro bono services enable organizations to drive social change with a connection of resources. When successful, these engagements build overall engagement, and open up channels for growth. This week, Alexandra Hallock, Senior Program Manager for the Taproot Foundation, joined Driving Participation to explore the relationship between an organization and its volunteers. Beth and Allie discuss the necessary components for a pro bono partnership, and what nonprofits can do to make the volunteer experience rewarding for all parties involved.