Book Reviews

Conducting Successful Focus Groups
Judith Sharken Simon

Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, Publisher
Here is a complete, step-by-step guide to conducing focus groups. Everything is included: sample timelines and invitation letters, facilitator scripts and summary sheets. If you have never done a focus group, this short, well-written field guide will be an invaluable addition to your library. Another great tool from the Amherst Wilder Foundation.

 

Mobilize People for Marketing Success
Gary J. Stern

Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, Publisher
Anyone who has attended GB3 Group's "Marketing for Nonprofits" workshop knows that one of the greatest challenges in nonprofit marketing is moving from planning to getting people to take action. Once you have created the marketing plan, recruiting, training, and motivating the right staff, board and committee members, and volunteers is critical to your marketing success.

Mobilizing People for Marketing Success is an in-depth, step-by-step workbook that shows you how to get people to participate directly in your marketing (and promotions) campaigns. Complete with sample letters, volunteer and staff training outlines, and lots of planning worksheets, this workbook offers some of the most practical, hands-on guidance for getting staff and volunteers to take marketing action that we have seen.

A great companion to GB3 Group's popular "Marketing for Nonprofits" workshop, Mobilize People for Marketing Success is an invaluable toolkit for all of the marketers in your organization. When you order, you'll also receive the "Pocket Guide for Marketing Representatives," a nifty little booklet that summarizes the tips and main themes in the larger workbook, in an easy-to-carry format perfect for volunteers. The pocket guide provides a place to jot down specific "sales" info about your organization, to make training notes, and to record key contact information of people in the organization that will be supporting your marketing efforts.

This is a "people book" and offers wonderful advice for cultivating, recruiting, and supporting the people that will become your organization's top marketers, and your most valuable resources.

 

Marketing Social Change
Alan R. Andreasen

This workhorse volume presents both a theoretical framework and practical, step-by-step tools to help nonprofit organizations develop a social marketing orientation. The reader is reminded again and again that social marketing is about behavior change -- not simply communicating a message. Andreasen suggests several low-cost marketing models that should appeal to nonprofits of all sizes. While we felt the work would be especially helpful to health, social welfare, and environmental organizations, the ideas expressed by the author and the solid marketing strategies he lays out, will be applicable to nonprofit organizations serving a variety of issue areas.

 

Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World
Shel Horowitz

A great, practical volume that should be on every nonprofit manager's bookshelf. The work is full of great ideas, tips, and tricks to help nonprofit marketers promote their organizations on a realtively small budget. Horowitz provides an abundance of practical and cost-effective marketing ideas, carefully explained and generously illustrated.

 

Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step By Step Guide
Nedra Kline Weinreich

Written in a friendly, engaging style, this book leads the reader throughout the steps involved in developing, implementing, and evaluating a social marketing program. Hands-On Social Marketing also includes comprehensive worksheets and practical sidebars providing expert advice. This "how-to" book is both instructional and functional, with an emphasis on low-cost methods and do-it-yourself guidelines.

 

Direct Marketing for Nonprofits
Kay Partney Lautman

This no nonsense A-Z guide on how to do nonprofit direct marketing shows you everything from creating the direct mail pieces to working with the mail house. This guide has it all and is choc full of great examples of successful direct marketing packages. Lautman offers lots of great tips and ideas for donor acquisition, renewal, and upgrading techniques. Anyone running an annual fund should spend some time with this volume. Another winner from Aspen's Fundraising Series for the 21st Century.

 

Storytelling for Grantseekers
Cheryl A. Clarke

Finally, a no nonsense guide to "telling it like a story." At GB3 Group we have long held that most proposals miss the mark because the writer simply failed to tell his or her story. As an ex-journalist, GB3 Group president and founder, Gerald Bartlett made his segue into the nonprofit world by writing proposals as though they were feature stories. It is an idea that he as glad to see is finally taking hold, and this outstanding volume gives grant writers a systematic way to approach their writing, along with the tools to organize their story line. Well-crafted stories are always more engaging than dry recitations of mission statements, facts, plans, and goals. Great stories give us context, draw us into the lives of the people being affected, and if well conceived, nourish us along the way. To engage a reader (even a busy foundation program officer), you need to tell your story! This is a must-have for both neophytes and experienced grant writers.

 

Writing for a Good Cause
Joseph Barbato & Danielle Furlich

An authoritative, irreverent, gritty and non-nonsense guide for nonprofit staff and volunteers who write for fundraising letters, proposals, and marketing collateral. This is one of our favorites! If you need a "quick-start," this is the book to own.

 

Elements of Style
William Strunk & EB White

The essential pocket guide to correct grammar and usage of the English language. Every proposal writer should have one. This is a staple on the reading list of most college "Intro to Writing" classes, and a great desktop reference.

 

On Writing Well
William Zinsser
This is a terrific, concise, how-to book for those who want help writing non-fiction. The writer illustrates common writing pitfalls and offers simple, effective solutions. Writers of proposals, reports, memos, letters, white papers, etc. will do well to keep this book on their desk, and close at hand.

 

AP Stylebook & Libel Manual
Norm Goldstein, Ed.
The AP Stylebook belongs on the desk of every PR writer. The "journalists bible" with more than 5,000 entries, contains rules on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and usage for all news and press release writing. A must-have for anyone doing news writing. We've given more copies of this book away to colleagues and friends as gifts than any other!