Freelance Writing for Nonprofits

All freelancers who write not just for pleasure but to pay the bills as well have learned one important skill and have successfully put it to work: repurposing content. There is absolutely no shame in recycling your material, as long as (1) you own the copyright (i.e. you haven’t sold all rights to a magazine or written as work-made-for-hire for a client) and (2) you invest a bit of time in making substantive changes.

Say you are a blogger. Where else do you write for publication? Your blog posts could be recycled into articles for your or a client’s website, print newsletter, e-newsletter, press release, e-book, workshop lesson plan, etc.

Use one or more of these techniques to freshen up your original article each time you use it elsewhere.

Change the angle. If you emphasized one particular element of the story, emphasize a new one now. If you told the story from one person’s perspective, tell it from the perspective of someone else in the story.

Change the person. If you wrote the article in third person (”She walked away . . .”), change the article to a first-person account (”I walked away . . .”). You’ll need to ensure that the person telling the story approves the new version told from her point of view.

Make it shorter. Cut out some of the extra details and focus in on just one key point or message.

Make it longer. Add in some additional material from your original research or interview notes.

Rewrite the lead paragraph. Start the article in a new way.

Turn it into a how-to article. What did the story’s participants learn and can that be shared with others? Turn those lessons into a how-to or step-by-step article for others.

Get the most out of the time you spend researching and writing articles by using that material in many different ways.

Need an example? This article is repurposed from one I just wrote on my other blog, Nonprofit Communications. That version emphasizes how nonprofits can recycle their best stories to market their organizations in different ways. To recycle that post for this blog, I pulled out one of the four steps from that article, changed some of the wording to address freelance writers instead of nonprofits, and added a new title and lead paragraph. I spent nearly an hour drafting the first post, but only ten minutes on this one. See how well this can work?

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Being self-employed means you often have to take responsibility for tasks outside your areas of expertise. You become an accidental computer technician, bookkeeper, advertising executive, and, if you have a website, search engine optimization expert. It can all be very overwhelming.

To make at least one of these jobs — online marketing — a bit more manageable, here are seven extremely easy ways that writers can market themselves online.

Comment on blogs. Most bloggers accept comments on their posts. Read blogs related to writing or your areas of expertise and submit comments on the posts. In most cases, a link to your website or blog will be included with your comment. You can search for blogs at technorati.com. For nonprofit blogs, see the Nonprofit Blog Exchange.

Join e-discussion lists. Participate in email discussion lists (sometimes called listserves) to become well-known as an active and knowledgeable writer in your area of specialty. Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups are good places to start. For nonprofit lists, also check out N-TEN’s Affinity Groups.

Spend time on your website page titles. Page titles are used heavily by search engines to determine the relevance of your site. Spend some time making sure they are full of keywords, not just your website name.

Use search engine friendly URLs. Search engines also look at the actual names of your files in your website. Place keywords in your file names to improve their rankings. For example, nonprofit-writer.htm is a better file name than aboutme.htm.

Create an email signature. Every email you send, especially those to e-discussion lists with archives online, should include an email signature with your contact information and a bit of information about the kind of writing you do.

Keep family and friends in the loop. Word-of-mouth referrals are a big source of work for most successful freelance writers, so when you communicate with friends and family via email, be sure to give them an update on the work you are doing and the kind of work you’d like more of. Just about everyone has been involved with a nonprofit for some reason at some point in their lives, so you never know where that next referral could come from.

Recycle your articles. Take something you’ve already written and repurpose it as a marketing piece by submitting it to an online article directory like EzineArticles.com. People can download and use your article for free, but they must include your author information which will naturally include a link to your website.

I’m offering more online marketing tips like these in “25 Easy and Low-Cost Ways for Writers to Market Themselves Online,” which is a free download when you claim a keyword at 500Writers.com.

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I’ve started a fun new directory of writers at www.500writers.com. It’s based on the wildly successful site by Joel Comm, 500words.com. I figured writers deserved to have some “word cloud” fun too!

Here’s how it works: There are only 500 words/phrases on the site, including writing genres, topics, and locations. Only one writer can claim each word, which is then linked to the writer’s website. Find the keyword that describes you or your writing, and make it yours before someone else does. If you don’t see your ideal word in the cloud already, you can suggest a new one.

I’ll be placing paid ads for the directory on search engines, as well as taking advantage of other marketing tools, so the directory should take off quickly. By claiming your keyword now, you get the search optimization benefits of the link and a shot at all the traffic I’ll be buying. Word clouds pique curiosity, so you are likely to get visitors who would have never found your site otherwise.

I’m also offering a free download for writers who claim words: 25 Easy and Low-Cost Ways for Writers to Market Themselves Online.

Once the 500 words have been claimed, that’s it. No more will be added. Check it out today!

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I’ve found that teaching writing workshops is a great way to accomplish several goals:

1. Getting out of the house — a big goal if you work at home!
2. Meeting new people

3. Diversifying my income

4. And best of all, keeping in touch with the challenges writers in the nonprofit sector face and learning what questions they have.

Teaching may not be something you enjoy. After all, many freelancers write for a living because it means they don’t have to do much talking. But if you do enjoy teaching, I highly recommend developing a workshop or two. I have learned as much about the nonprofit sector’s communications needs by teaching workshops as I have by actually working with clients.

Many community colleges are thrilled to add new courses to their continuing education programs, and many larger universities offer certificate programs that need instructors. Also check with associations in your state that address the issues or clientele you are focusing on to see if they will co-sponsor your workshop with you.

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I teach several writing courses online (business writing, annual reports) and I also teach several more for Duke University’s Certificate Program in Nonprofit Management. When I add up the time I spend creating the course materials, devising the exercises, copying all the handouts, driving back and forth, teaching the course, and doing the Duke paperwork, I make less than $10 per hour.

That’s fine with me, because I don’t do it for the money. I don’t do it to meet potential clients either, although it’s nice when the occasional student does become a client or takes an online course.

So why do I bother? Because I like giving back to the greater nonprofit community from which I make my livelihood. The nonprofit community comes through for all us where the free market and governments fail. I like helping nonprofits succeed. If I can teach an executive director how to better communicate with supporters and donors, I feel like I’m helping them make the world a better place.

At the same time, I am self-employed and my income is very important to my family, so I can’t spend much time on projects that produce $10/hour. Therefore I further justify teaching the Duke workshops by thinking of them as focus groups for my business.

By seeing how students react to the materials, I learn what parts of my lectures and exercises are likely to be successful as new online courses or tip sheets. The questions they ask clue me into where I should expand the materials or even develop new courses.

I encourage all freelancers to find an activity like teaching that allows you to give something back and feel good about what you are doing, while also creating some business benefits, even if they don’t produce much direct income. After all, feeling good about how you spend your work life is one of the biggest benefits of self-employment.

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