Once again, I’m taking a defibrillator to this blog.
On March 26, 2009, five days before my 40th birthday, I signed a contract to write a nonprofit marketing how-to book, to be published by Jossey-Bass in Spring 2010. It was a MAJOR professional goal of mine to have a book deal before turning 40 and I just made it! I’ve had various outlines of the book on my desk for the last ten years and finally got to the place where I was not only ready to write it, but also had the right connections to get a publisher interested. The process of working with my editor, Jesse Wiley, to get the green light and then working with my agent, Mollie Glick, to hammer out the deal took about six months. But now it’s done, and the hard work begins.
As is usually the case with me when starting big writing projects, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about how much time it is going to take. I daydream a lot about writing the book (without actually writing anything) and do the math every which way, converting the 70,000 words I am contracted to write by August 28 into numbers of hours per week I’ll need to write between now and then, numbers of weekends I think I’ll have to work, numbers of words per day, etc. (again, not actually writing a word).
I used to worry that these mental mechanics were procrastination, but I realize now that it’s just part of the process for me. I do this kind of thing all the time, and when I actually do sit down to write, I’m much more productive.
I’ll be meeting Jesse in person for the first time while attending the Nonprofit Technology Network’s conference in San Francisco April 26-28. I’m seeing that meeting as the deadline for all the processing to stop and the real writing to begin.
I’m planning to chronicle this undertaking here, along with anything else I come up with on the business of freelancing for nonprofits. Posts related to the actual content of the book (marketing advice for nonprofits) will be shared, as always, at my Nonprofit Communications blog.
Thanks for reading!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Congratulations! That is such a great accomplishment. I too am someone who spends a lot of time in the “planning” stage, which usually entails a lot of stressful thinking and worrying–but even that is probably helpful in the end.
It’s always inspiring to hear from others who’ve reached their goals–congrats to you!
Congratulations, Kivi, on realizing your dream. I hope to follow in your footsteps with a book on surviving ParentCare for boomer kids. I would love to be part of your feedback loop on input for your book. Issues or items I could comment on include how to help non-profit teams apply the principles of the commercial marketing world in a non-profit environment. This is particularly important for those of us who are working in health care…which is now a business rather than just a care-giving entity. Also, our hospice, here in California, is growing by leaps and bounds and, alas, there really IS competition, even in hospice. So we are about to grow our organization of 60 workers into a very up-to-date, state of the art hospice. That has included a complete rebranding, rebuilding of our web site, digitizing medical records, and moving to a new location later this year. But the part that is daunting for us is how to capture all of the data of our donors and supporters in a rather outdated database and convert them all to email. We are in the process of developing our strategies for that as we speak…beginning with a basic response device in a direct mail piece to get the email addresses and offering the ‘opt-in’ permission aspect.
So we would be a great model for all the other groups you may be helping as we will have great anecdotal comments on how we began with baby steps to enter the online marketing world…how we did it and what we learned. It will all come to pass by end of summer and our process has already begun.
Please keep us/me in mind for these two aspects of non-profit marketing and any others you need feedback on. I have followed you for quite awhile…since way back when you were helping that little day care agency…and can bring you over 25 years of experience in the marketing and promotion of non-profits.
Be Well and Best Wishes
Kathy Padro