Blast off online!
(image by Jeffery Brooks)

You might remember me from such topics as “How to Boost Your Non-Profit Career, Part One.” In that post, I covered face-to-face career-building tips. Now we have graduated to the big leagues and are ready to tackle online tips. Andiamo!

Step 1 – keep educating yourself

Yes Smarty Pants, this is a repeat from Part One. But if you’re too busy to go to campus there are a zillion online courses available too. Don’t be afraid to network with your online classmates to claw back some of those “in-person” benefits. Great online offerings can be found at BCIT, Georgian College, Ryerson and many others, and are usually worth points towards a CFRE certification.

Step 2 – stay on top of current trends

Follow a few select blogs and online newsletters. Not too many or you’ll never read them! Charity Village’s weekly news round-up is good. Nonprofitquarterly.org is even better and a bit more global in scale. Tom Ahern’s blog is super for donor-centered fundraising and you may as well throw in 101fundraising.org as well.

Maintain sanity by setting filters on the incoming emails to skip your inbox and land in a reading folder. The next time you are spacing out at work and can’t bring yourself to start something new, read something from the folder for inspiration. Why bother? Because staying in the loop means the difference between knowing only your organization’s best practices versus what’s current for the whole sector. You don’t want to be the person who insists that “this is the way we’ve always done it”…do you?

Step 3 – create an online voice

Let’s focus on Linkedin. Oh sure, I know the story. You already signed up, have 11 connections, and haven’t been back in over a year. Well here’s what worked for me, in ascending order of snazziness…

• Sign in and connect to people – Linkedin makes it easy.
• Read the things your peeps post and share the items you think are good. Bonus points if you add a comment when sharing an item!
• Start posting things you think are cool – items from your reading folder, professional events you’re interested in, sector-specific books, links, conferences, whatever.
• Keep it work-related. This is not the place to post videos of your latest dance moves.

Step 4 – create an online space

Once you get hooked on sharing information with like-minded connections, you will want to do more. That’s when you head to WordPress and take five minutes to start your own blog. And once you’re roaring along, why not submit one of your posts to Charityvillage.com or 101fundraising.org and get your genius literature published?

Do you kind of see how easy it all is? And fun. For real!

–          Siobhan : )