Your nonprofit or foundation could be one of this year’s Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Award (a.k.a. The Taggies) winners! And this year, for the first time, you can submit your organization’s program, fundraising campaign and/or and special event taglines, in addition to your organizational tagline. So enter here now.

A strong tagline does double-duty—working to extend your organization’s name and mission, while delivering a focused, memorable and repeatable message to your base. It’s one of your most basic, and effective, marketing tools, but a GettingAttention.org survey showed that 72% of nonprofit organizations don’t have a tagline or rate theirs as performing poorly. The awards program is designed to help close this gap by providing both motivation and models.

All entrants will receive a free copy of the fully-updated 2010 Nonprofit Tagline Report in late 2010. It’s the only complete guide to building your organizational, program, fundraising or special event brand in 8 words or less—filled with how-tos, don’t-dos and models.

Here are the winners of previous Nonprofit Tagline Awards (selected by more than 4,800 voters in the field in 2009). This could be you in 2010! Please take 3 minutes now to enter your nonprofit’s taglines today while it’s on your mind.

The deadline for entering is July 28.

We’re proud to be a sponsor of this year’s awards, in addition to Blackbaud, Event360, and Eventbrite.

P. S. Follow the tagline award news on Twitter via the hashtag #taggies.

I did a webinar today for about 400 professionals from America’s YMCAs about the web and membership marketing. I will write more about this, but I was reminded of my audience and their questions while reading Seth Godin’s online discussion on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s web site.

You can see the conversation with Seth here. A highlight for me was the question about brochures. Here’s the full, unedited exchange on that subject:

Question from Tennessee Nonprofit:
Are brochures dead?

Seth Godin:
and buried

What’s your message? It might depend on your number–501(c)3 or 501(c)4 or 527.

Because this is an election year, many of our projects have a political bent. But how much of one? Well, that depends on the type of nonprofit status a client holds. Most of our clients are 501(c)3s, but some are 501(c)4s or 527s. The degree to which they can speak out on political issues or campaigns is determined by their designation. Some of our clients, like the Sierra Club, have all three designations, in which case, their money has to be divided into different funds with c3, c4, or 527 designations, and used appropriately. (There are actually 28 different 501c designations! But we’re only going to talk about three here).

501(c)3s are defined by the IRS as charitable, religious, scientific or educational organizations and mostly consist of public or private foundations such as Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity. The money they use for media is generally to educate viewers about issues or an organization’s mission, with or without a call to action at the end, such as “join us” or “donate now”. Although they can heighten public awareness about certain issues, they aren’t allowed to show political affiliation or urge people to vote for or against a specific candidate. They can only use a small percentage of funds to lobby. They can issue a “Tell Congress you’re fed up” statement, as it is not specific to any candidate, or release a non-partisan report on a politically charged issue such as global warming, but they must stop short of advocating for or against a particular candidate.

What we hear often is that many (c)3s don’t go as far as they can because they worry that if they violate the restrictions, they will lose their nonprofit status.

c4 funds are different. 501(c)4 organizations are described in the IRS code as non-profits that promote social welfare; but unlike a (c)3, a 501(c)4 organization can lobby for specific policy change. Examples of prominent c4s include NARAL Pro Choice America and Moveon.org Civic Action. Here is an example of the difference: A 501(c)3 can tell you how important it is that you use your right to vote, but a c4 can ask you to sign a petition to Congress about a specific piece of legislation. However, c4 money cannot be used in election campaigns on behalf of or against any candidates.

A 527 group (or 527 funds) can influence the nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates for public office. 527 money can be used on behalf of or against candidates; for instance, Political Action Committees (PACs) are 527s. Here is where it gets confusing if it isn’t already. A 527 is NOT allowed to coordinate with a specific election campaign. Rather, it must be an “interest group” who is advocating on issues or mobilizing voters. Not surprisingly, sometimes 527s get into trouble for pushing the limits. For example, in the 2004 election cycle, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was a famous 527 that was eventually accused of coordinating with George Bush’s campaign in its anti-John Kerry ads during the presidential campaign.

Are you confused yet? Well, let me tell you, it can be hairy trying to work out messaging for these various organizations or funds in the video and social media marketing campaigns we undertake on their behalf. But we really enjoy the challenge and are happy to be doing a lot of work this cycle around the critical elections this fall.

The last session I attended at the NTC in New Orleans was:

E-Advocacy: Mission over Membership
Designed by Mr. Charles Lenchner | DemocracyInAction.org

E-Advocacy can mean different things to different people. What if we were able to separate the organizational self interest to build membership and raise funds from the planning of issue based advocacy campaigns? What would campaigning look like if we only cared about the real world result? Our panelists will discuss this issue using real world examples of successful campaigns, along with insights that can help YOUR organization plan better advocacy campaigns.
Takeaways:

1. Guidelines for getting mission driven results
2.Strategies and tactics that work
3. Cheat sheet: how to plan your next online advocacy effort

On the panel was Colin Delany from e.politics

Here’s 2 minutes of Colin talking about how he was part of a campaign that went after Toyota on environmental issues as part of the campaign to increase fuel economy standards. He offers some advice on online advocacy campaigns.