On Wednesday, I suggested a few ways that nonprofits can show their personalities, following up on a post where I listed a bunch of different personality traits and asked you to select three to describe your nonprofit.
Personality is important, because it’s essentially your brand — what you are known for and how people perceive you. The content you produce and share has a great deal of influence on the kind of personality traits your supporters would attribute to you.
Want to be known as helpful?
I would focus my attention on understanding what’s hard for people, what bugs them, what problems they have, etc., and focus on content that directly addresses those needs.
Want to be known as caring?
Create content with lots of storytelling that shows how your staff interacts with people.
Want to be known as optimistic?
Talk often about your hopes for the future and what you are doing to make that future brighter.
Want to be known as trustworthy?
Be transparent about where you get your money and how you spend it, and even when you have bad news, share it in a timely, forthright way. Use testimonials from others to talk about the impact of your work.
Want to be known as friendly?
Use the first and second person (I and You) in your writing, ask a lot of questions, and smile (even in writing).
One final note on personality types . . . I stumbled on the Typealyzer tool the other day that analyzes text on a website and matches it with one of the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types (It says enter “blog” but you can use any URL).
I’m not sure how meaningful this really is, but here’s how Typealyzer tagged these nonprofits:
Red Cross, Feed the Children, Planned Parenthood: ISTJ — The Duty Fulfillers
GreenPeace, ASPCA, PETA, Save the Children: INTJ — The Scientists
The Nature Conservancy, St. Jude’s, Second Harvest: ENTJ — The Executives
What kind of personality are you trying to project with your content? Share in the comments.
To learn more about putting personality to work for your nonprofits, join us for these two webinars:
June 9: Funny Ha Ha! Using Humor in Nonprofit Marketing and Fundraising
June 14: Get Real! Use Your Org’s Personality to Build Rapport with Supporters
