ARTICLE
Motivating Your Nonprofit
Co-workers to Create Effective Content
Last updated: Dec 6, 2024
Do you need stories, blog posts, or expert articles for your website? It can sound easy: pick a topic, get a co-worker with the expertise to agree to write it, set a deadline, and check in later. But if you've tried that route, you know it's not that simple.
It's difficult for staff members with urgent tasks (which is pretty much everyone at a nonprofit!) to put in focused time to create content. Writing for your website is important but it’s hardly ever urgent, so people tend to put it off. It can be even harder if the people you're asking to write aren't in your department or report to different people. They might not share your priorities, and you might not have any official authority over what they do.
What should you do? Perhaps you can make the lift easier for them:
Can you create a first draft? It’s a lot easier to comment or edit than to write from scratch. Could you create a first draft yourself, even just to start the process? Could you interview your colleague and use the information to put together something for them to review? It may be easier for your coworkers to schedule a call than to write something themselves. The resulting article doesn’t have to be an “interview” format—you could “ghost write” it from their perspective or even in first person with your co-worker as the “I”.
Can you repurpose things they already created? Don’t forget about the possibility of taking things that are already written and converting them for your website. For instance, a printed annual report or research publication may have great anecdotes, examples, or stories of impact that you start with to write a web-friendly articles.
Can you hire someone else to write a first draft? If you have any budget at all, it’s worth thinking about working with a freelance journalist or technical writer to interview your colleagues and write from there. Professional writers have to be good at getting up to speed quickly on all sorts of different topics, and there’s great writers that are comparatively inexpensive ($40-$60/hour).
Or if those tactics won’t work, maybe you can manage your colleagues (or leadership) in a different way:
Do your co-workers reasonably have time to contribute? If they're already working 60 hours a week on other things, you're likely going to be fighting a losing battle to try to get your co-workers to write a story, even if they agreed to do it. If no one has the time to write what’s been planned, that’s an issue to flag to your boss or your leadership team. The organization either needs to free up staff time to create content, provide budget to hire someone, or reduce their expectations of how much content can be published.
Can you be "transparent" about who is (and isn't) getting you things on time? Consider sharing a list of who's on track and who's not. A simple spreadsheet or chart pasted into an email that shows everyone's progress (or lack of it) can encourage people to meet the schedule. Publicly making people feel uncomfortable about missed deadlines in front of their peers can be a powerful motivator. But be cautious, as this approach may not fit every work culture.
Can you create a "working group" of people assigned the content? This group would make plans as to what to write, and meet periodically to check on how things are going. They’d then be responsible to each other to make sure content is written, rather than you being personally responsible.
Are you updating your own boss? Make sure you're communicating with your own boss and leaders about problems and potential missed deadlines. A weekly status email that simply repeats the same risks and problems over and over again every week can be a powerful tool, if you’re at the limit of what you can do. If you can’t get what you need, your leadership will either need to help you or to accept that it’s not possible to put up new web content.
Being in charge of website content can feel like a never ending battle to get other people to pay attention. Often, one (or multiple) of the tactics above can be really useful. But it’s also important to recognize that it’s really hard to manage all the relationships and priorities that are often needed to put up diverse web content, and sometimes things just don’t come together. Sometimes, you’ve done all that you can.
Try not to feel like it's a personal failing if organizational goals don’t align perfectly with content creation. Culture can be powerful, and it can be a big driver of whether your colleagues prioritize helping you with the website or not. If you’re finding it a slog to directly try to get your colleagues to contribute, consider asking for more time or resources to be able to at least kickstart content yourself.