Hi there! I’m Lauren Creagan, welcome to Unlocking Your Nonprofit Potential, the podcast where you’ll get advice, inspiration and learn how to use social media for your nonprofit.

It’s episode 60! We made it! 60 podcast episodes that are tailor made with your challenges in mind. That’s what this podcast is all about – helping you use the right tools to unlock your nonprofit’s potential. You don’t want to be mediocre. You don’t want to spin your wheels anymore. You want to have a growing, thriving nonprofit that helps people in need. That’s why you’re here! So you can learn to use Facebook, Instagram, and email marketing effectively to get more people in your door, at your events or meetings, and supporting you with their money so you can help more people and make a difference in more lives.

If you’re here and listening to this today, you should be so proud of yourself – you are proactively taking steps to make your nonprofit better than ever.

Now, speaking of making things better than ever… I have a BIG announcement to share with you. 

This is the last podcast episode of Unlocking Your Nonprofit Potential.

WHaaaat!!! I know… But here’s the good news – Unlocking Your Nonprofit Potential isn’t going away; we’re just changing the way we’re doing things. 

Over the past year that I’ve been recording these episodes and interacting with you on social media and reading your emails and because I am always doing research, thinking about this podcast and what’s the best way to help you – I’ve come to understand that the best way to serve you is with a blog that you can read and see what I’m teaching you. I’ll get to why a blog is the right way to serve you in a minute, but first I want to tell you a story…

A couple weekends ago, I went for a hike in the National Forest by my house on a section of the Continental Divide Trail. If you’re not familiar, the Continental Divide Trail is 3,100 miles long and it runs from Mexico to Canada along the Continental Divide (hence the name) — it goes through Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, and it usually takes people about SIX MONTHS to hike it.

I was with my friends Cindy and Kathy, and we met a girl – probably 21-22 years old, from Chicago – who was hiking the trail by herself. Yep, she was hiking all the way to Canada ALONE. We were the first humans she’d seen in days, and she was SO happy to see us – she asked if she could walk with us to the trailhead, which of course, we said yes, and she chatted away the entire time peppering us with questions about our lives and what it was like to live in Wyoming – I’m pretty sure she knows my friend Cindy’s entire life story now, and might have earned herself an invite to Thanksgiving dinner at Cindy’s house.

Anyway, after meeting this hiker, her story and what she is doing really stuck with me. For the next few days, I just sat with the idea of hiking such a long distance. What was it like to start such a journey? Probably scary, exciting, full of rookie mistakes, and figuring things out. What was the day to day like? Probably some days were harder than others, probably full of reminding yourself to focus on the trail in front of you, putting one foot in front of the other and just focusing on that next step. What was it like to finish such a journey? It’s hard to imagine, but I’m willing to bet a person feels an undeniable sense of pride and accomplishment. Six months of little steps forward propelled you 3,100 miles up mountains, down through valleys, across deserts and plains until you accomplish what you set out to do.

As I thought about all of this, I couldn’t help but draw about a million life lessons from it all. 

There is one thought that sticks with me that applies to all of us, as I think about hosting this podcast, and about you, as the nonprofit leader…

Life is a long journey. 

And if something isn’t working and you know you can fix it, you do. I have gotten to know you over the last year and I learned that while you listen to the podcast, you like to read more. You’d like to see more illustrations of what I’m talking about. 

It’s true I have recording equipment and a “radio voice” but, I’m a writer naturally and by trade, and when we work in our strengths, more gets accomplished.

So this will be the last episode of the Unlocking Your Nonprofit Potential podcast, and the beginning of the Unlocking Your Nonprofit Potential blog. This blog will give you easy to read, step by step answers to fix your social media problems.  You’ll learn about new ideas to implement so you can grow your nonprofit, bring in more clients and people who need your help, and when you grow, that gives donors even more reason to give to your organization.  You’re going to become the best your nonprofit’s ever been. 

On the blog, there will also be more visual aids – yes, screenshots from Facebook and Instagram, and templates for how to create posts that make new people begin to know, like and trust your nonprofit. I’ll be giving you videos with instructions and tutorials of how to do all the things on Facebook and Instagram that are confusing and hard to figure out on your own.

I’m still going to be here with you every step of the way – you’ll just be reading articles from me instead of listening to me explain things in this podcast. 

With this blog, I’ll be able to serve you more and better. I’ll be creating courses for you, answering your questions on Facebook Live events, and providing you with more helpful and do-able tips and tricks that you can read (and re-read if need be!) and follow along with step by step instead of trying to listen to the instructions in a podcast. 

BUT…If you just can’t get enough of my voice (ha!), you’ll be happy to know that you can binge listen to this podcast any time you’d like because it will be available on your podcast app and at NonprofitPotential.com, we just won’t be updating it with new episodes anymore.

I am so excited to create this new blog for you with the same great content, with easy to implement social media and marketing steps, but with more information and better visual aids. This shift will allow me to serve you better, answer your questions and help you achieve your goals for your nonprofit.

The new blog is on the same website as before – NonprofitPotential.com. Be sure to sign up for my weekly email on the website – you’ll see the signup box when you visit the website - so you can get the best social media and marketing tips for nonprofits delivered right to your inbox each week. Be sure to follow Unlocking Your Nonprofit Potential on Facebook and Instagram.

We’re going to keep adding to the blog and growing the content there so you will have a reliable place to turn for all your social media and marketing questions. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast – it’s been a pleasure chatting with you each week and I look forward to hearing from you soon with questions you’d like me to answer on the blog – contact me through the blog! Check it out, Nonprofitpotential.com.

Take care! – and thanks for listening to Unlocking Your Nonprofit Potential.

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If links are not visible in your podcast app, visit the Episode Webpage and Show Notes at https://nonprofitpotential.com/60