There are more than 1.5 million tax-exempt organizations in the United States, comprised of churches, neighborhood associations, universities and charitable organizations.

If you’re one of those nonprofits, you’re likely on a tight budget so you can use the most funds possible to achieve your organization’s goals.

That means you might not have a full-time marketing person (or even a part-time one!) and a few goals to get your marketing strategy off the ground effectively.

Fortunately, the internet is full of marketing materials that you can download and customize to suit your organization’s needs. Welcome to the world of templates!

Whether you want to quickly create professional images or design an entire website, there’s a template for that. Keep reading to learn about four kinds of templates that can totally change your nonprofits’ marketing strategy.

1. Canva

Canva is a time-saving online design wizard with numerous templates. The basic signup is free, but if you use their images, you may have to pay a small fee of $1 for each. You can also use their templates and replace the image they’ve used with your own uploaded image.

Canva’s social media post templates are particularly helpful for marketers. There are templates for specific social media sites — such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest — as well as a general template. You can either use the template as-is or use for inspiration to create your own designs.

2. Buffer

Posting regularly on social media can gain you additional followers and help convert browsers into loyal fans. Buffer is a social scheduling app that allows you to schedule your posts ahead of time. They have a basic template that allows you to upload an image, add some text and choose which social media sites you want the post to appear on and when.

Buffer is a huge timesaver for those doing their own social media marketing. You can pre-schedule posts weeks in advance, so you never have to worry about falling behind and leaving social media silent.

The site also includes this helpful post on their blog with social media reporting and headline templates that you can use.

3. Google Docs

At first glance, you might overlook Google Docs as too simplistic, but the built-in brochure, project proposal and newsletter templates give you endless possibilities.

If you haven’t yet tried a cloud-based organizer, you’re going to love the flexibility of these templates, and how easy they are to share with other team members for editing.

Google’s “G Suite” includes Docs, which offers flyer and resume templates, and Sheets, which is similar to Excel for creating functional spreadsheets and forms.

Meanwhile, Slides offers templates for slideshows, and Forms is home to templates such as polls, pop quizzes and lists. All these free tools are available through Google Docs.

4. WordPress Themes

WordPress is a popular website designing and content management system that can help you get blog posts going or just give you a simple Internet presence.

However, finding just the right theme that matches your overall vision for your brand can be quite a challenge. You can pay hundreds of dollars for someone to design a custom theme, but what if you aren’t yet ready to budget that much into your website costs?

WordPress.org offers free themes uploaded by the open-source community that you can use. Some of the themes have additional features you can add on later for a fee, but these themes at least give you a good template to start with and impress your visitors.

These tools give you a head start on your marketing work. Starting with a theme, then customizing it, saves you time and lets you work smarter, not harder.

When it comes to making the most of your marketing time for your nonprofit, templates allow you to keep your budget in check but still get some traction with the public.

The post 4 Resources to Transform Your Nonprofit’s Marketing Strategy appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.

Source Taken From: Nonprofithub.org