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Write to your nonprofit board members to keep them involved

September 8, 2009 | Posted in: Fundraising, Nonprofits | Tags: annual meeting, blogpost, board meetings, board minutes, editing emails, Fundraising, nonprofit, not-for-profit, organization, PR, private donors, Public Relations, raise funds, social media, Twitter, volunteers, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com |

Today’s post is for those of you who operate a nonprofit organization. To be successful, your organization needs dedicated volunteers and board members. The best way to secure that dedication is by keeping these folks in touch with your activities.

This can be done through email messages, a post on your blog or social media such as Facebook or Twitter. (Keep in mind, some members might not be familiar with social media. Take the time to learn what modes of communication are most useful for your board.)

If board members are kept current with the organization only through meetings and minutes, they could get the idea they exist only to rubber stamp your plans. If you’re relying on board members to raise funds, remember you probably will get back about as much time and attention as you give to them.

Board members cannot promote a program they know little about. If they aren’t sufficiently involved in accomplishments, how can they “sell” your organization as a good investment?

When the organization is launched or after the annual dinner, there is a feeling of togetherness among board members, volunteers and staff. They are working for a cause that all embrace. You need to follow up with continuing contact to maintain the momentum. Frankly, keeping volunteers is all about momentum. (more…)

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Grammar Girl (referencing AP Style) takes on “To tweet or to Twitter”

July 11, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, Outside the Lines | Tags: AP, AP style, AP Stylebook, Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, tweet, tweeting, Twitter, Twittering, We Write For You, writing, writing tips |

This is really little more than a link to a recent post by Grammar Girl, a/k/a Mignon Fogarty, who does some fun writing about all things grammar at her site.

As Ms. Fogarty notes, the Associated Press recently released its 2009 AP Stylebook, which many organizations use to determine their default “style” for word usage. It’s an invaluable reference that we at We Write For You use as our style guide as well.

In her post, she points out that the AP ultimately decided that you can say a Twitter user is Twittering or tweeting, whichever verb you prefer. Note that “tweet” and “tweeting” are not capitalized, while “Twittering” is. There’s some more interesting stuff here, so we highly recommend you check out the post here.

P.S. If you Twitter or tweet, be sure to follow us on Twitter. You can find us here, and you can check out Grammar Girl right here.

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The Best Writing Tip Ever: “Have went,” NEVER. “Have gone,” sure.

June 12, 2009 | Posted in: General Writing, The Best Writing Tip Ever | Tags: "have gone", "have went", English 101, grammar, tweet, Twitter, We Write For You, wewriteforyou.com, writing, writing tips |

Tom Petty HAS GONE to the theater. The Heartbreakers HAVE GONE to the theater. (Now maybe Petty SHOULD GO for a haircut and a shave.)

Tom Petty HAS GONE to the theater. The Heartbreakers HAVE GONE to the theater. (Now maybe Petty SHOULD GO for a haircut and shave.)

We’re going with the assumption that virtually anyone reading this blog already knows this, but maybe we shouldn’t: there is no such phrase as “have went.” Not ever. Never, ever, ever.

We bring this up because we recently “officially” joined Twitter (shameless plug: click here to follow us on Twitter), and one of our followers claims to have three undergraduate degrees. He further claims to be working on a postgraduate one.

We have no reason to doubt these claims, yet he recently “tweeted” that a certain talk show host’s rating “have went up” in recent days.

Ouch. Total fail, man.

Presumably this particular grammatical issue hasn’t hurt him so far — he’s apparently well-educated and always well-spoken (well, at least until now). But maybe it has.

Maybe writing “have went” cost him a fellowship here or a promotion there. He’ll never know. An employer just passed him by, not knowing he’s a very bright guy making one very bad grammatical error.

For the record, it’s “I went to the store” or “I have gone to the store,” and so on. You never say “I should have went to her birthday party.” You should have gone.

(Speaking of which, you really should have gone to her birthday party. What, were you too cheap to buy a present?)

As usual, we won’t bore you with the English 101 details. Just understand that “have” and “went” should never be adjacent. (And next time, go to the party!)

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