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September Edition: What We’re Exploring

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From our Director of Communications and Outreach: The Filing Cabinet

How can we share some of the great content we receive throughout the month without clogging up our Communicator’s newsletter?
That is a question our Com Team has been pondering for a while. Our goal with the newsletter is to keep as simple and uncluttered as possible while providing valuable content to CHC Communicators. Yet, each month we each receive so many helpful resources and we don’t want you to miss out on those.
In trying to find a simple way to share these resources, I discovered that Dropbox very easily lets you bookmark links. Using this Dropbox feature, we’ve created “The Filing Cabinet.” We’ll share a link to The Filing Cabinet in our newsletter. For now our filing system is very simple, but we’ll adapt it as we add more items.

P.S.If you want to know how to save your Bookmarks to your Dropbox files, we created this quick tutorial.

From our Communications and Outreach Specialist: Using Your Strategic Plan to Make Better Communications Decisions

A recent Content Marketing Institute survey found that 74% of nonprofits will develop communications materials “without a documented content marketing strategy”.  A communications plan acts as a guide to all of your communications decisions. As you develop a communications plan, it’s important to remember that the communications strategy must support the mission and goals outlined in the strategic plan. Here is one example of how to write a communications plan.

Big Duck has provided five resources to help you put more strategy into practice at your nonprofit. 
Another article by Big Duck asks 6 key questions to ensure your communications strategy aligns with your strategic plan. 

From our Multimedia Specialist: How to Reduce Work-Related Stress

Organizing major events like National Health Center Week on top of your everyday tasks can make your workload seem daunting. As you wind down from a successful NHCW18, check out this article from the Harvard Business Review on the “5 Things to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed by Your Workload” (https://hbr.org/2018/08/5-things-to-do-when-you-feel-overwhelmed-by-your-workload). This article details cognitive therapy techniques that can help you adjust your perspective and reduce work-related stress.