You know the non-profit world. You know how to market your organization to move your mission and vision forward. Marketing a social enterprise is different. Marketing a social enterprise balances your mission with market. To succeed, non-profit leaders must showcase your organizations social, cultural, or environmental impact while attracting, serving, and retaining paying customers. This quick guide shares our insights into successfully marketing a social enterprise.

Host a memorable and engaging AGM that inspires your stakeholders.

Invest in an Annual Report that catches your readers attention and provides them with the important facts... It's about telling your organization's story so invest some time in this irreplaceable marketing document.

Your organization’s annual general meeting report is an information and marketing tool. It’s an opportunity to showcase and celebrate what has been achieved in the past 12 months and to bring members, community champions, funders, and partners up-to-date. While “standard” items need to be included in your annual report, the best annual reports tell a story using data, statistics, stories, images, videos, and facts. When you begin to think about your annual report, consider t

As with most AGMs, the ones I’ve attended often follow a standard agenda: updates on what’s happened throughout the year, progress made toward goals, presentation of financials and financial audit, voting in of new board members, and awards to recognize key volunteers, staff, or leaders. It’s standard fare, and this can be a little mundane for those active in the non-profit sector. So, how does a non-profit add excitement to its AGM agenda to make it more attractive an

Strategic board recruitment is essential. Too frequently, this strategic board priority is overlooked, and the opportunity to ensure a diverse, dynamic, healthy board is missed. Whether your Board is functioning optimally or needs improvement, spring is an excellent time for board member recruitment planning.

Stakeholder Engagement planning is easy. Getting people to show up and share ideas is more challenging.

Planning is required to run successful campaigns. Learn how to craft a community engagement plan to discover stakeholder needs.

Choose who to invite to stakeholder conversations, by defining the purpose (WHY) of the conversation and what it is you want to learn.

In “Mastering Non-Profit Board Recruitment: 6 Steps to Success”, we identify Board Recruitment as a core board function. A function made easier when the board communicates well, makes informed decisions, and oversees operations reasonably and responsibly. In other words, acts as a healthy board. Before starting your recruiting journey, there are a number of pre-planning activities to complete. Do you know what they are?

Before recruiting new Board of Director members, doing an internal Board Evaluation to assess your Board's strengths and areas of improvement is helpful. Knowing how effective your board is, what strengths it brings, and the areas of improvement to focus on in the coming months, provides potential recruits and existing members with confidence that the board is self-aware and committed to ongoing learning and improvement.

What does true non-profit collaboration look like? It’s more than sharing a table—it’s putting community needs ahead of organizational interests. When non-profits collaborate, share resources, build partnerships and make decisions together, limited funding can create greater collective impact. We saw firsthand what’s possible when organizations choose cooperation over competition. What could your community achieve if organizations stopped competing and started collaborating?