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In the perfect world, marketers would have enough time to conceptualize and churn out high-quality content consistently. But a reality check will show you the limited time and resources that marketers have to manage their multifaceted jobs. The good news is that quality content is abundant and you can simply curate it, using a content curation app such as DrumUp.

Why curate content for a non-profit organization?

Content curation can offer several benefits for your nonprofit organization. Among them are benefits that address serious challenges that not-for-profit organizations typically face.

Establish trust, authority and reputation as a non-profit organization

Brand managers of nonprofit organizations can get target donors, partners and volunteers to buy-in to a cause by sharing unbiased, factual information about that cause. Non-profit brands can share research and studies conducted by Government and Non-government research facilities. These studies can serve as means to establish the problems that your non-profit organization is trying to solve. It can also be the simplest way to get your audience to trust you as a source of information.

Curate content that shows your audience how much you care. Stats, facts, whatever helps them understand the problem and ready themselves to contribute.

Earn favor with donors and volunteers by giving them what they want

There’s no shame in admitting that you’re busy and you don’t have the resources to conduct your own surveys and create your own content. As a non-profit organization you’re very aware of the issue that you’re trying to solve. By curating content from other reputed sources, you are giving people what they want even if it’s not directly from you. Content curation gives you a way to share more content with your target audience, which you wouldn’t be able to do without content curation.

People will appreciate the fact that you’re sharing content created by other organizations, leveling the playing field and focusing on your cause.

Build goodwill among other nonprofits, research organizations and donors

Content curation is majorly about playing nice with everybody, and collaborating on content and more. This may mean working with other not-for-profits who you may see as your competition. Content curation gives you the opportunity to engage with experts, influencers and your own colleagues to explore new concepts, content and expand your reach towards new audiences. And curated content sharing is a great way to show your audience how committed you are to sharing the best content with them, even when it’s not yours.

Begin your curation efforts with content created by other organizations, your donors themselves and volunteers to show that you’re team-players.

What’s the most effective way to curate content for a nonprofit organization?

So what happens during the content curation process? Contrary to popular belief, content curation isn’t a set-it and forget-it process. Content curation is about filtering a lot of information available on the internet and sharing the cream of it with your audience. You can edit curated content to increase benefits by doing one of the following.

• Summarize – Write a one or two-liner intro to the content you share, to set a context for your target readers.
• Annotate – Add insights and labels to your content, especially on images if there are any.
• Organize – Arrange content you have curated into sections that can be easily navigated by your readers.

There are several non-profit organizations that implement this strategy well. Using these organizations let us discuss the different types of content that you can curate for your non-profit outfit.

1. Curate research and studies related to your causes

There are different contexts in which you can use research, case-studies and stories. For instance, when the Guardian publishes a study on welfare of infants, whose rehabilitation and support is your core cause – you should share that research with your audience.

Yet another instance is where an organization similar to yours shares a study delineating the extent of affliction in a cause you’re working to alleviate. Share those stats and studies with your social media audience, so they can see the depth of the issue that you’re working to resolve. “Awareness” is an important aspect of running a nonprofit organization that makes real impact, and research and studies can help you create awareness among the right people.

So, what’s the simplest way to curate research and studies related to your causes? Use DrumUp to setup the following processes in minutes.

• Set-up RSS feeds of research organizations that typically publish research and statistics related to your causes.
• Check-in on your RSS feeder, in this case DrumUp, everyday, so you can find and share the latest research with your audience.
• Setup keywords related to your causes on DrumUp to curate research and statistics that haven’t be covered by the RSS feeds that you have chosen.
• Create a content library for “Research and statistics” so you can save research that you want to use at a later date.

 

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2. Curate quotes and sayings by infamous volunteers on social media posts

Quotes are typically popular as social media posts. And what better way to inspire or move your social media audience than share a nice quote by a famous personality? For instance, if your nonprofit organization aids the economically weak section of the society, sharing something said by Mother Teresa, who’s well-known for her service to the poor or by Mahatma Gandhi, who’s infamous for the battles he fought on behalf of them is a smart idea.

There are other types of quotes that you could also consider sharing. For instance, if you are a local non-profit organization and there are local heroes, tycoons or politicians actively involved in your cause, request them for quotes to mobilize the rest of your community.

How to use DrumUp to curate quotes and ideas.

Setup keyword groups targeted at finding quotes related to your cause. Think about keywords that people are likely to use when talking about these issues. Setup keywords such as “insert issue here” + quote and “insert issue here” + reduction or alleviation.

Install DrumUp’s Chrome extension and create a content library labelled “Quotes”. Do a Google Search for “insert issue here” + quotes, and save these posts to your quotes library.

3. Curate heartwarming conversations from social networks, forums and other platforms

According to Buzzsumo, if you observe the most shared posts on social media, you’ll notice a trend. They’re usually posts that have enormous emotional value – posts that move people deeply. As a non-profit organization, you probably want to move people so they’re inclined to participate in your activities. One way to do this is by sharing positive notes or conversations related to your cause from different social networks and platforms.

There are so many types of conversations that can move people. Put yourself in your audience’s minds and try to understand how a particular piece of content might affect them.

How to curate heartwarming conversations from social networks and forums using DrumUp.

DrumUp has an employee advocacy platform that allows content curation from social media feeds. This could be an interesting option for you to explore if you have a network of volunteers and employees who can double-up as your content sharing network.

• Setup the feeds of social media accounts to follow as content sources for such conversations on your DrumUp employee advocacy account. Visit your DrumUp dashboard once a day and add interesting posts to a content library for sharing at a later point.
• Using certain hacks, you can pull content from different forums such as Reddit to your DrumUp account. For instance, take the URL of a subReddit that interests you, and add .rss to the tail of the URL. Add that complete URL to DrumUp’s RSS feed reader to pull this type of content.

 

4. Curate positive news and stories to drive more volunteers and donors to contribute

Everyone loves good news. It’s a real shame that there’s such scarcity for good news in the media today. Positive news is especially important when you’re working in a nonprofit organization trying to work towards achieving certain goals. By sharing positive news stories, you can motivate other people to share and participate in your activities.

There are so many areas that you could consider covering for good news. You could share success stories related to your cause, mentions of your organization in the press and even success stories of organizations like yours to bolster trust and the giving spirit.

How to curate positive news and stories using DrumUp.

Set-up keywords related to your causes on DrumUp. If the keywords for your causes are too generic or wide, you need to narrow them down to get exactly what you desire. Experiment with a few separate streams and fine-tune your sets of keywords.

• How would you do this? Simple. Setup generic keywords in one stream. Setup the same keywords with a negative keyword in the second stream. Setup a third stream with a different set of keywords. Finalize on the stream that curates the best content for you.
• Setup RSS feeds of the top blogs that publish positive news related to your cause.

 

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5. Curate information and pictures of events related to your cause

Events are a big part of non-profit organizations. Events for fundraising, increasing awareness, protesting, providing relief are all as essential part of running a nonprofit organization. While it’s a no-brainer to share content from your events, there’s a lot of sense in curating content from different events that are related to the causes that you support.

For instance, if there’s a politician’s speech that could have a massive impact on your cause, it’s worth sharing about on social media. If there’s a free event that could benefit your social media audience, you should share it with them.

How do you curate information and pictures of events related to your cause using DrumUp?

• Setup social media pages that typically host events related to your cause on DrumUp’s employee advocacy platform.
• Visit your web app once a day to check for the right posts, or download DrumUp’s mobile app to get posts to share with your audience.
• Save year-long, online events or repeatable posts on one of DrumUp’s content libraries for future use.
• Save RSS feeds of event websites’ blogs to DrumUp’s RSS feed reader to discover events as soon as they are announced.

 

6. Curate local interviews, cultural posts and news to build a local community

Building a community in your locale can be challenging, if you haven’t invested in the right channels and content. That’s why it’s essential to curate content that interests your local community, and by that I mean content that is closer to home. Say if you’re a local Government library or community centre, this strategy becomes particularly important.

When focusing on issues or providing services in your locality, your target audience is typically residents of a very specific area. Identify the types of content that really interest them and share that type of content.

How to curate hyper-local interviews, cultural posts and news content for your non-profit organization using DrumUp.

• The trick is in using the right keywords and settings. When curating content for a local audience, your keywords go beyond the causes or services that you offer. For instance, the New York State Library could use “New York” as a keyword to find local news and marvels.
• On DrumUp, you can also choose location to make the results more relevant to your requirements.

Wrap

If marketers had more time in a day, they would be able to create enough content to meet today’s massive requirement. The harsh reality is that the requirement for content is rising everyday, and there’s not enough time to meet that requirement. Content curation is a great solution in terms of meeting content demand and building ties with prospect relationships.

Feature image via Freepik.com