• It Started With a Really Bad Resume

    It Started With a Really Bad Resume

    Paint splatters. A skull with a bow. A font choice that probably should have disqualified me immediately.

    That was the resume I showed up with when I knocked on the door of a small agency a few streets over, hoping they might take a chance on an intern.

    Somehow, they did.

    Before that moment, I was on a completely different path. I had even considered switching my major to theater stagecraft and set design. But everything changed during a trip to Chicago, when I had the chance to shadow at an ad agency my cousin worked at. The second I stepped inside, I knew. The energy, the creativity, the pace of the work, it just clicked.

    I went home, changed direction, and started pursuing a degree in mass communications with a focus on advertising at the University of South Florida. Not long after, that very questionable resume landed me my start with Go Do Good (previously Sulzer Agency) and the beginning of what would become a 12-year journey.

    In the early days, I was helping with simple design tasks, updating copy, placing images, supporting wherever I could. I didn’t have formal creative training, but I was eager and pretty tech-savvy. One of my first projects was designing a logo for Women in Philanthropy. I came up with the idea of a dandelion, with seeds blowing in the wind to represent the spread of generosity and impact. They loved it. That was my first real taste of creative ownership, and it was invigorating.

    As time went on, I realized that while I enjoyed design, my strengths were leading me somewhere else. I found my place in account management and project management. I’ve always been a list person. I love organization, clarity, and the satisfaction of checking things off. What started as notebooks filled with color-coded pens eventually evolved into building systems that helped our entire team stay aligned as we grew.

    Over the years, I stepped into roles as a project manager, account manager, and senior account manager, even exploring people and culture along the way. But at the core, I found my passion in helping teams and clients move work forward in a clear, thoughtful way.

    There are so many moments that stand out, but one that always makes me smile is when we turned our conference room into a full fulfillment center for a client project with Accelerate Learning. We had an assembly line going, building boxes, wrapping iPads, and inserting materials. It was one of those moments where you could see all the strategy, design, and effort come to life in something tangible. And of course, there are the everyday moments too, like Michelle’s voice-to-text messages that somehow manage to turn everyone’s name into something completely unrecognizable.

    What has made this journey so meaningful, though, is the people behind it all. Michelle and Rob have built something that truly reflects who they are. The shift to Go Do Good feels like a natural evolution of that. They genuinely want to do good for others, and that intention shows up in the work, the clients we choose, and the way we operate as a team.

    Being part of that has shaped me in more ways than I expected. It’s given me a space to bring both my creativity and my love for structure together. It’s helped me grow into a role where I can support meaningful work while also building the systems that make it possible.

    Now, 12 years in, what excites me most is where we’re headed. The continued focus on nonprofit organizations has made the work even more meaningful. You can see the impact. You can feel the purpose behind what you’re building. And being part of helping those organizations show up more clearly and connect more deeply with the people they serve is incredibly fulfilling.

    Twelve years later, I’m still just as excited about the work and even more confident in the impact we can make.

    Marissa Wilkins
    Senior Account Manager

    Michelle Sulzer

  • From Marketing Manager to Mission Architect: How Non-Profit Marketing Leaders Make the Leap to Organizational Strategist

    From Marketing Manager to Mission Architect: How Non-Profit Marketing Leaders Make the Leap to Organizational Strategist

    Here’s a scene you’ve probably lived: You’re in the boardroom, you’ve just crushed your campaign metrics, donor acquisition is up, social engagement is through the roof. You’re waiting for the conversation to shift toward a bigger strategy, toward your seat at the real table. Instead, someone asks if you can make the font on the next mailer a little larger.

    If that hits close to home, you’re not alone. And you’re not stuck. You’re just at the inflection point.

    The jump from marketing manager to organizational strategist is not about doing your current job better. It’s about doing a fundamentally different job. One where you stop executing on strategy and start building it. One where your marketing lens becomes the organization’s most valuable strategic asset. One where the font on the mailer is genuinely someone else’s problem.

    This is the playbook for making that leap. Not by working harder. By thinking differently.

    Why Most Non-Profit Marketing Leaders Get Stuck at the Execution Layer

    The nonprofit sector has a structural trap built into it, and it catches talented marketers at the worst possible time. Organizations hire smart, mission-driven marketers, bury them in campaigns, content calendars, and deliverables, and then wonder why their strategic vision feels disconnected from their audience.

    Think of it like this: you were hired to be a great chef. You’re excellent at it. But the restaurant is struggling, and what the restaurant actually needs is someone who can redesign the entire dining experience, renegotiate with vendors, train the front of house, and tell the owner which menu items to cut. None of that happens from behind the stove.

    The transition to strategic leadership requires you to step away from the stove on purpose. That means deliberately creating space for high-level thinking, building influence with your leadership team, and reframing the value you bring in organizational terms, not just marketing terms.

    1. Learn to Speak the Language of Your Executive Team

    If you walk into a leadership meeting and lead with impressions, engagement rates, and click-through numbers, you are speaking French to a room full of people who only speak Spanish. It is not that the numbers are wrong. It is that they are not the numbers your executive team cares about.

    C-suite and board-level leaders at non-profits think in terms of mission advancement, donor retention, program scalability, and operational sustainability. Your job as a marketing strategist is to become fluent in those concerns and then show how your marketing decisions directly impact each one.

    Start reframing every marketing report you present. Instead of “our email open rate is 34%,” lead with “our email strategy contributed to a 22% increase in recurring donor retention this quarter, which translates to approximately $47,000 in protected annual revenue.” That is the language that gets you a seat at the table.

    2. Own the Donor Experience End to End

    Here is a mindset shift that changes everything: the best organizational strategists do not think about marketing as a department. They think about it as the end-to-end experience a donor has with their organization, from the first Instagram post they ever see to the thank-you call they receive five years later.

    When you own that full journey in your mind, your influence naturally extends beyond your formal job description. You start having informed opinions about the donation page UX, the volunteer onboarding process, the language your program staff uses in community meetings. Those opinions, when backed by data and communicated constructively, make you indispensable.

    Map the complete donor journey at your organization. Identify every touchpoint. Then identify where the gaps are between the experience you are currently delivering and the experience that would build the deepest possible loyalty. That gap analysis is your strategic agenda.

    3. Build Relationships With Your Board Before You Need Them

    Most marketing leaders engage with their board of directors reactively, showing up when asked to present a report, answering questions, then retreating back to their lane. This is the equivalent of only calling your most important donors when you need money. It is transactional, and it limits your strategic influence to the moments when you happen to be in the room.

    Start building proactive relationships with board members who have relevant expertise, particularly those with backgrounds in marketing, communications, or fundraising strategy. Request informal conversations. Ask for their perspective on organizational challenges. Share your thinking on strategic questions before formal board meetings, not during them.

    When board members know you, respect your thinking, and trust your judgment, they become advocates for your strategic contributions at the highest level of the organization. That kind of influence cannot be earned in a quarterly presentation. It is built over time through genuine relationship.

    4. Develop a Point of View on Where Your Organization Needs to Go

    This is the one that makes most marketing managers nervous, and understandably so. Having a strategic point of view means putting a stake in the ground. It means saying “here is where I believe this organization should focus its energy over the next three years, and here is why.” That is a vulnerable position to take when you are not yet sitting in the CEO’s chair.

    But consider the alternative. Leaders who wait until they have formal authority to develop strategic opinions never develop them at all. The strategic muscle atrophies from disuse.

    Start small. Develop a clear perspective on one big organizational question: your positioning in the market, your primary donor acquisition strategy, the one program initiative that would most benefit from a marketing-led redesign. Write it down. Test it in conversation with a trusted colleague or mentor. Refine it. Then, when the opportunity arises, bring it to the table with confidence and evidence.

    Your point of view does not need to be perfect. It needs to be informed, mission-aligned, and genuinely yours.

    5. Stop Being the Person Who Says Yes to Everything

    There is a specific career trap that generous, mission-driven marketers fall into with alarming regularity. It looks like helpfulness. It functions like a ceiling.

    When you are the person who says yes to every request, responds to every Slack message within four minutes, and personally ensures that every piece of content is perfect before it goes out, you become indispensable at the execution level. You also become completely invisible at the strategic level, because your calendar is too full to think, too full to lead, and too full to demonstrate that you are capable of more.

    Strategic leadership requires strategic time. Build it into your week deliberately. Block time for thinking, for research, for relationship-building conversations that do not have an immediate deliverable. Protect that time the same way you would protect a major donor meeting. Because that is exactly what it is.

    6. Become the Person Who Translates Mission Into Market

    Every non-profit has a mission statement. Most of them are written in the same language: serving, empowering, transforming, advancing, strengthening. They are accurate. They are also nearly indistinguishable from each other.

    The most valuable strategic contribution a marketing leader can make is translating the genuine, specific, irreplaceable nature of their organization’s work into language that resonates deeply with the exact people who need to hear it. Not just donors. Foundations. Government partners. Corporate sponsors. Media. Policy makers.

    This is not a copywriting exercise. It is a positioning exercise. It requires deep organizational knowledge, genuine market understanding, and the strategic clarity to say: this is who we are, this is who we are not, and this is why that distinction matters. The leader who can do this consistently and compellingly becomes the strategic voice of the organization, regardless of their title.

    7. Measure Your Impact in Organizational Terms, Not Just Marketing Terms

    The final shift is the one that makes everything else stick. When you measure your personal impact in organizational terms, you stop being a marketing leader and start being an organizational asset.

    Track and communicate how your strategic marketing decisions have contributed to donor retention rates, average gift size, volunteer retention, program expansion, and earned media value. Build a running narrative of your organizational impact that goes beyond campaign metrics.

    When your organization understands what it would lose without your strategic contribution, the conversation about your role in shaping that organization’s future changes fundamentally. You are no longer asking for a seat at the table. You are the table.

    The leaders who shape mission-driven organizations are not necessarily the ones with the most impressive titles. They are the ones who built the strategic clarity, the relational influence, and the organizational courage to lead from wherever they stand.

    Michelle Sulzer

  • The Non-Profit Leader’s Guide to Social Media Advertising: How to Get Maximum Results on a Minimum Budget

    The Non-Profit Leader’s Guide to Social Media Advertising: How to Get Maximum Results on a Minimum Budget

    Organic social media is a powerful tool, but there comes a point in every non-profit’s growth where paid social advertising becomes a necessary part of the marketing mix. The challenge is that most non-profit marketing leaders feel underprepared to run paid campaigns effectively, and those who do run them often feel like they are spending money with little to show for it.

    This guide is for non-profit leaders and marketing teams who want to understand social media advertising well enough to run campaigns that actually produce results. You do not need a massive budget. You need a strategy, a clear objective, and the right knowledge to make every dollar work harder.

    Here is everything you need to know to get maximum results from your social media advertising budget in 2026.

    Start With a Single Clear Objective

    The most expensive mistake non-profits make with paid social advertising is running ads without a clearly defined objective. An ad that is trying to raise awareness, drive donations, grow email subscribers, and recruit volunteers all at once will accomplish none of those things effectively.

    Every campaign you run should have one objective. That objective will determine the ad format you use, the audience you target, the copy you write, and the landing page you send traffic to. Common objectives for non-profit paid social campaigns include donation acquisition, event registration, email list growth, volunteer recruitment, and brand awareness among a new audience segment.

    Pick one, build everything around it, and resist the urge to add secondary goals. Focus is what makes paid social campaigns perform.

    Understand Your Audience Before You Set Up Targeting

    Every major social advertising platform gives you the ability to target your ads to specific audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and geographic location. This is an enormous advantage for non-profits because it means you can put your message in front of exactly the right people rather than broadcasting to everyone and hoping for the best.

    Before you open the ads manager on any platform, spend time clearly defining who you are trying to reach. What age range represents your ideal donor? Where do they live? What other causes do they support? What publications do they read? What values do they prioritize?

    The more precisely you can describe your ideal audience before you build your targeting, the more effective your ads will be. Facebook and Instagram’s audience targeting tools are particularly powerful for this and are accessible even at very low budget levels.

    Use Lookalike Audiences to Scale What Is Already Working

    One of the most powerful and underutilized tools available to non-profit advertisers on Facebook and Instagram is the lookalike audience feature. A lookalike audience allows you to upload a list of your existing donors or email subscribers and the platform will identify other users who share similar characteristics and behaviors.

    This means you can scale your donor acquisition efforts by targeting people who look like your best existing supporters, people who are statistically likely to be interested in your mission, give to causes like yours, and respond to the kind of content you produce.

    Start with a lookalike audience built from your top donors or your most engaged email subscribers. Even a small seed list of 500 to 1,000 people can produce a powerful lookalike audience that dramatically improves your ad performance.

    Write Ad Copy That Leads With the Problem, Not the Organization

    The biggest difference between non-profit ad copy that converts and ad copy that gets scrolled past is this: high-performing ad copy leads with the human problem your organization exists to solve, not with information about your organization.

    Nobody scrolls through Facebook hoping to learn about your programs. But they will stop scrolling when they see a story that reflects a reality they care deeply about.

    Open your ad with a statement or question that immediately connects to the emotional core of your mission. Follow it with a brief, vivid illustration of the problem. Then introduce your organization as the solution. Close with a single, specific call to action. This structure consistently outperforms ads that lead with organizational introductions.

    Test Multiple Creative Variations and Let the Data Decide

    Experienced social media advertisers never assume they know which ad will perform best. They test multiple variations and let the data make that determination for them.

    When you launch a campaign, create at least two to three different versions of your ad creative. Vary one element at a time, such as the image versus a video, two different headline options, or two different calls to action. Run them simultaneously with equal budget and evaluate performance after five to seven days.

    The variation that generates the lowest cost per result wins and becomes the basis of your next round of testing. This iterative approach is how non-profits with small budgets consistently outperform larger organizations that set and forget their campaigns.

    Use Retargeting to Convert Warm Audiences

    Retargeting is one of the highest-return ad strategies available to non-profits and it is often completely overlooked. Retargeting allows you to show ads specifically to people who have already visited your website, engaged with your social media content, or watched one of your videos.

    These warm audiences convert at dramatically higher rates than cold audiences because they already have some familiarity with your mission. A donor who visited your donation page but did not complete the gift is a prime retargeting candidate. So is someone who watched 75 percent of one of your impact videos.

    Set up the Meta Pixel on your website and create retargeting audiences within Facebook Ads Manager. Even a small retargeting budget of five to ten dollars per day can recover a significant number of potential donors who would otherwise have slipped away.

    Measure the Right Metrics and Optimize Accordingly

    The success of a paid social campaign should never be measured by reach or impressions alone. For non-profits, the metrics that matter are cost per result, which tells you how much you are spending to achieve each objective outcome, conversion rate on your landing page, return on ad spend for donation campaigns, and cost per new email subscriber or event registrant.

    Review these numbers weekly during active campaigns and make adjustments based on what the data tells you. Pause ad variations that are underperforming, increase budget on the ones that are working, and never let a campaign run on autopilot without regular performance checks.

    Social media advertising is not a set it and forget it channel. It is a conversation between your organization and your audience, and the data is your guide to making that conversation more effective every single week.

    A small budget with a clear strategy will always outperform a large budget without one. Non-profits that master paid social do not outspend the competition. They outthink it.

    Michelle Sulzer

  • How Non-Profits Can Use Social Media Algorithms to Reach More Donors Without Spending More Money

    How Non-Profits Can Use Social Media Algorithms to Reach More Donors Without Spending More Money

    Every non-profit marketing team has felt it. You put real effort into a post, you hit publish, and then the reach comes back so low it feels pointless. The content was good. The cause matters. So why did barely anyone see it?

    The answer almost always comes back to the algorithm. Social media platforms decide which content gets shown to which people, and understanding how those decisions are made is one of the most valuable things a non-profit marketing team can learn. The good news is that you do not need to increase your ad spend to work with the algorithm rather than against it. You just need to understand the rules of the game.

    Here is what every non-profit needs to know about social media algorithms in 2026 and how to use that knowledge to reach more donors, expand your mission visibility, and grow your audience without spending more money.

    What a Social Media Algorithm Actually Does

    A social media algorithm is a system that decides which content appears in a user’s feed and in what order. Every major platform, including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok, uses its own version of this system, but they all operate on a similar fundamental principle: they show users the content they are most likely to engage with.

    The algorithm makes this determination based on signals. Every time a user watches a video all the way through, saves a post, shares a piece of content with a friend, or leaves a comment, that behavior tells the algorithm something about what that person finds valuable. The more signals your content generates, the more broadly the algorithm distributes it.

    For non-profits, this means that the quality and type of engagement your content generates matters far more than how often you post or how large your following is.

    1. Prioritize Content That Generates Saves and Shares

    Likes are the lowest-value engagement signal on every major social platform. Shares and saves, on the other hand, are the highest-value signals you can generate because they indicate that a piece of content was genuinely useful or meaningful enough for someone to want to return to it or pass it on.

    Design your content with saves and shares in mind. Educational carousel posts that your audience will want to reference later are highly saveable. Emotional impact stories that move someone to share with a friend or colleague are highly shareable. Both of these content types tell the algorithm that your account is producing content worth amplifying.

    Before you finalize any piece of content, ask yourself: would someone save this? Would they send it to a friend? If the answer is no, go back and make it more useful, more compelling, or more emotionally resonant.

    2. Respond to Comments Within the First 60 Minutes

    The first hour after you publish a post is the most critical window for algorithmic performance. Platforms use early engagement signals to determine how broadly to distribute your content, and one of the strongest early signals is comment activity.

    Make it a team habit to respond to every comment that comes in during the first 60 minutes after posting. Reply thoughtfully, ask follow-up questions, and keep the conversation going. Each new comment and reply refreshes the algorithm’s interest in your post and pushes it out to a wider audience.

    This one habit alone can dramatically increase the organic reach of your content without changing anything else about your strategy.

    3. Use Native Content Formats on Every Platform

    One of the most common mistakes non-profit teams make is creating content on one platform and simply cross-posting it everywhere else. Sharing a link to your Facebook post on LinkedIn, or posting an Instagram graphic directly to Twitter, tells the algorithm that your content was not made for that platform. As a result, it deprioritizes your reach.

    Each platform rewards content that is designed specifically for its environment. LinkedIn favors long-form text posts and documents. Instagram rewards Reels and carousels. TikTok and YouTube Shorts reward vertical video with strong hooks. Facebook still responds well to community-focused content and video.

    Take the time to adapt your content for each platform rather than simply duplicating it. A single story told in five different native formats will always outperform the same post copy-pasted across five channels.

    4. Post Consistently Rather Than Frequently

    There is a persistent myth in social media marketing that posting more often automatically leads to more reach. This is not accurate. What algorithms actually reward is consistency over time.

    An account that posts three times per week, every week, for three months will build more algorithmic trust and reach than an account that posts ten times in one week and then disappears. Platforms want to show their users content from accounts they can rely on. If your account goes quiet for two weeks, the algorithm will reduce your distribution.

    Build a posting schedule that your team can sustain without burning out. Consistency is the single most powerful algorithmic advantage available to non-profits, and it costs nothing.

    5. Lean Into Video Because Every Algorithm Is Prioritizing It

    Across every major social platform, video content receives preferential algorithmic treatment. This is because video keeps users on the platform longer than any other content format, and keeping users on the platform is the primary goal of every algorithm.

    For non-profits, this means that even modest video content, a 30-second clip of your team at work, a one-minute volunteer testimonial, or a quick update from your executive director, will almost always outperform a well-designed static graphic.

    You do not need a production budget. You need a smartphone, good natural lighting, and a compelling story. Start there and build your video confidence over time. The algorithm will reward the effort immediately.

    6. Use Hashtags Strategically, Not Excessively

    Hashtags remain a useful discovery tool on Instagram and LinkedIn, but the strategy has evolved significantly. Flooding your captions with 30 generic hashtags is no longer effective and, on some platforms, actively suppresses reach.

    A more effective approach is to use five to ten targeted hashtags that are specifically relevant to your mission, your audience, and the content of the post. Mix broad mission-focused hashtags with niche community hashtags that your specific audience is actively following.

    Research your hashtag choices the same way you would research keywords for a blog post. Look at what your peer organizations and your target donors are following and engaging with, and build your hashtag strategy from those insights.

    7. Analyze Your Best Performing Content and Reverse Engineer It

    The algorithm is essentially giving you a roadmap every time it amplifies one of your posts. When a piece of content dramatically outperforms your average, it means the algorithm has identified strong engagement signals in that content. Your job is to understand what created those signals and repeat them.

    Review your top ten performing posts from the last 90 days. Look for patterns in format, topic, caption length, posting time, and call to action. When you find what those posts have in common, you have found your algorithm advantage. Build more content that mirrors those patterns and watch your organic reach grow without spending an additional dollar.

    The algorithm is not your enemy. It is a system that rewards genuine value. Build content that truly serves your audience and the reach will follow.

    Understanding and working with social media algorithms is one of the highest-leverage skills a non-profit marketing team can develop. It levels the playing field between organizations with large ad budgets and those operating on limited resources.

    Michelle Sulzer

  • 7 Reasons Your Non-Profit’s Social Media Is Not Converting (And What To Do About It)

    7 Reasons Your Non-Profit’s Social Media Is Not Converting (And What To Do About It)

    You are posting consistently. You have a growing follower count. Your content looks good. So why are donations, volunteer signups, and event registrations not increasing?

    This is one of the most frustrating positions a non-profit marketing team can find itself in, and it is more common than you might think. Social media presence and social media performance are not the same thing. There is a gap between showing up and actually converting your audience into supporters, and that gap is almost always caused by one or more of the following seven issues.

    Here is what is likely holding your social media back, and exactly what to do about it.

    1. You Do Not Have a Clear Call to Action

    The most common reason non-profit social media fails to convert is simple: the audience does not know what to do next. A beautiful post with a moving story that ends with no clear direction is a missed opportunity.

    Every single post your organization publishes should have a purpose, and that purpose should be obvious. Are you asking your audience to donate? Tell them specifically. Are you inviting them to register for an event? Give them a direct link. Are you trying to grow your email list? Make the next step frictionless and clear.

    Vague calls to action like “learn more” or “join us” underperform consistently. Be specific. Tell your audience exactly what you want them to do and exactly why it matters right now. The more specific and urgent the ask, the higher your conversion rate will be.

    2. Your Content Is Organization-Centric Instead of Audience-Centric

    Here is a truth that is hard to hear: your audience does not follow you because they care about your organization. They follow you because they care about the people your organization serves and the change your mission creates.

    If the majority of your social content focuses on your programs, your team updates, and your organizational achievements, you are talking about yourself. And when you talk about yourself, you lose your audience’s attention quickly.

    Shift the lens. Put the people you serve at the center of your content. Show the impact from the perspective of the beneficiary, not the organization. When your audience sees themselves in the story, or sees someone they want to help, conversion follows naturally.

    3. You Are Ignoring Your Analytics

    If your team is creating content without reviewing performance data, you are essentially running a marketing program with your eyes closed. You might occasionally stumble onto something that works, but you have no way to replicate it intentionally.

    Every major platform gives you free access to detailed analytics. Instagram Insights, Facebook Page Analytics, and LinkedIn Analytics all show you which posts drove the most engagement, which formats your audience responds to, and when your followers are most active.

    Review your analytics at least once a month and let the data guide your content decisions. If video consistently outperforms static images on your account, make more video. If posts about a specific topic drive three times the engagement of others, build a content series around it. Your audience is constantly telling you what they want. You just have to look at the data to hear them.

    4. You Are Prioritizing Vanity Metrics Over Conversion Metrics

    Follower count. Likes. Impressions. These numbers feel good when they go up, but they do not pay for programs. They do not recruit volunteers. They do not fund your mission.

    The metrics that actually matter for a non-profit are click-through rate on links you share, conversion rate on donation landing pages driven by social traffic, email list growth from social media traffic, event registrations attributed to social posts, and direct messages or inquiries that come through your platforms.

    Reorient your reporting around these action metrics. When leadership sees that social media drove 200 new email subscribers last month and 35 first-time donors, the conversation about the value of your social presence changes entirely.

    5. Your Visual Identity Is Inconsistent

    Trust is visual before it is rational. When someone lands on your social profile for the first time, they form an impression within seconds. If your feed looks inconsistent, your brand colors change from post to post, your typography is all over the place, or your image quality varies dramatically, the subconscious message you are sending is one of disorganization.

    Donors want to give to organizations they trust. Visual consistency communicates professionalism, stability, and reliability. These are the exact qualities that make someone feel comfortable handing over their credit card details.

    Create a simple brand guide for your social content that includes your approved color palette, your font choices, your logo usage rules, and a bank of approved image styles. Canva Pro allows you to lock brand elements so that every team member creates on-brand content every time.

    6. You Are Not Using Video, or You Are Using It Wrong

    If your organization is still relying primarily on static images and text posts, you are working against the current on every major social platform. Every algorithm, from Instagram to LinkedIn to Facebook, is built to favor video content because video keeps users on the platform longer.

    But posting video is not enough on its own. The first three seconds of every video you produce are make or break. If you do not capture attention immediately, the viewer scrolls past and the algorithm penalizes your content.

    Open your videos with your most compelling hook. Lead with a question, a surprising statistic, or an emotionally charged moment. Save the organizational context for after you have earned the viewer’s attention. And always include captions because the majority of social media video is watched without sound.

    7. Your Posting Frequency Is Inconsistent

    Social media algorithms are designed to reward accounts that show up consistently. When your organization disappears for two weeks and then floods your feed with five posts in a day to compensate, you are actively working against your own reach.

    Consistency is more important than volume. Three posts per week every single week will outperform seven posts one week and zero posts the next. Pick a frequency your team can sustain and commit to it. Use a scheduling tool like Buffer, Later, or Hootsuite to plan your content ahead of time so that a busy week does not result in a silent social media presence.

    Your audience needs to see your organization regularly to feel connected to your mission. Connection drives conversion. Consistency drives connection.

    Social media that does not convert is not a content problem. It is a strategy problem. Fix the strategy and the results will follow.

    If you recognized your organization in more than one of these scenarios, you are not alone and you are not behind the point of no return. Every one of these issues is fixable with the right strategy and the right support.

    Michelle Sulzer

  • Go Do Good Announces Strategic Partnership with Mercy Chefs to Support Digital Growth and Expanded Impact Across the World in 2026

    Go Do Good Announces Strategic Partnership with Mercy Chefs to Support Digital Growth and Expanded Impact Across the World in 2026

    Tampa, FL — Go Do Good, a purpose-driven creative and marketing agency, today announced a new strategic partnership with Mercy Chefs, a nonprofit organization known for providing chef-prepared meals in response to natural disasters and humanitarian crises across the globe.

    Go Do Good partners with organizations whose purpose is people, helping mission-driven teams turn clarity into connection and connection into action. This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to ensuring that meaningful work is communicated with clarity, intention, and impact.

    Mercy Chefs has built a national and global reputation for delivering restaurant-quality meals in times of crisis. From disaster relief efforts to ongoing community support, their work is grounded in dignity, care, and responsiveness. As demand for their services continues to grow, the organization is entering a new phase focused on scaling both operations and outreach.

    “At a time when both speed and trust matter, Mercy Chefs continues to lead with both,” said Go Do Good. “This partnership is about strengthening how that impact is experienced and understood by the people who support it.”

    Building a Digital Experience That Matches the Mission

    As part of the partnership, Go Do Good is leading the development of a new website for Mercy Chefs. The initiative is designed to better reflect the scale of the organization’s work while improving accessibility, clarity, and user engagement.

    For Mercy Chefs, the website serves as a critical front-facing platform where donors, volunteers, and partners make decisions to engage. As the organization has expanded, the need for a more streamlined and scalable digital experience has become increasingly important.

    The new website will focus on:

    • Streamlining pathways for donors and supporters
    • Clarifying messaging across programs and impact areas
    • Creating a more intuitive and accessible user experience
    • Supporting future growth through a flexible and scalable structure

    This effort extends beyond design. It is a strategic alignment of Mercy Chefs’ digital presence with the reality and urgency of its mission.

    Turning Engagement Into Action

    While awareness for mission-driven organizations is often strong, conversion remains a key challenge. Mercy Chefs has a compelling and proven impact story. The opportunity lies in translating that story into a digital experience that enables immediate and meaningful action.

    Through a combination of clear messaging, thoughtful user experience design, and action-oriented structure, the new platform will support deeper engagement. The goal is to convert interest into participation by making it easier for individuals to contribute as donors, volunteers, and advocates.

    A Partnership Rooted in Purpose

    This collaboration is grounded in a shared belief that impactful work deserves to be clearly seen, understood, and supported.

    Mercy Chefs exemplifies that belief through its direct, compassionate response to communities in need. Go Do Good’s role is to help expand the visibility and accessibility of that work without changing its core identity.

    The new website is currently in development, with a focus on creating a digital experience that honors the mission while extending its reach.

    Because when impact is this real, how it shows up matters. And when it shows up clearly, more people step in to help.

    All photos provided by the Mercy Chefs Team.

    Michelle Sulzer

  • How to Build a 30-Day Social Media Content Calendar for Your Non-Profit (Step-by-Step)

    How to Build a 30-Day Social Media Content Calendar for Your Non-Profit (Step-by-Step)

    One of the most common pain points we hear from non-profit marketing teams is that social media feels overwhelming. There is always something else demanding attention, the content well runs dry mid-month, and the pressure to post consistently without a clear plan leads to either burnout or radio silence.

    The solution is a 30-day social media content calendar. When your team knows exactly what is going out, when it is going out, and who is responsible for creating it, social media shifts from a source of stress to one of your most reliable channels for donor engagement and mission visibility.

    Here is how to build one from scratch.

    Step 1: Define Your Content Pillars Before You Plan a Single Post

    Before you open a spreadsheet or a scheduling tool, you need to define the content pillars that will anchor your calendar. Content pillars are the core themes your social media presence will consistently revolve around.

    For most non-profits, a strong set of pillars includes impact stories that show your work in action, educational content that builds awareness around the issue you address, community content that features your donors, volunteers, and team, calls to action that invite your audience to give, sign up, or get involved, and behind-the-scenes content that humanizes your organization.

    Three to five pillars is the sweet spot. Too few and your content becomes repetitive. Too many and your brand message loses focus.

    Step 2: Choose Your Platforms Strategically

    Your organization does not need to be everywhere. Trying to maintain an active presence on every platform is one of the fastest routes to content team burnout.

    Choose your platforms based on where your primary audience actually spends time. If your donor base trends older, Facebook and LinkedIn are your highest-priority channels. If you are trying to reach a younger generation of supporters, Instagram and TikTok deserve your attention. If you are a thought leadership organization, LinkedIn is non-negotiable.

    Pick two to three platforms and commit to showing up on them consistently. A strong presence on two platforms will always outperform a scattered presence on five.

    Step 3: Map Out Your Posting Frequency

    Consistency beats frequency every single time. It is better to post three times per week reliably than to post seven times one week and disappear for two weeks after that. Social media algorithms reward consistency, and so do audiences.

    A realistic and effective posting cadence for most non-profit teams looks like this: three to four posts per week on Instagram, two to three posts per week on Facebook, two posts per week on LinkedIn, and daily Stories or short-form video content where possible.

    Build your calendar around what your team can actually sustain. Starting at a lower frequency and building from there is far smarter than committing to a pace that burns your team out in week two.

    Step 4: Build Your Content Calendar Structure

    Now you are ready to build the actual calendar. A simple spreadsheet works perfectly for most organizations. Your calendar should include the date of each post, the platform it is going to, the content pillar it falls under, the caption or key message, the visual or video asset that will accompany it, the call to action included, and who is responsible for creating and approving it.

    Tools like Notion, Airtable, or even Google Sheets work well for collaborative content calendars. If your budget allows, platforms like Hootsuite, Later, or Buffer let you plan, schedule, and auto-publish content in one place, which is a significant time saver for lean teams.

    Step 5: Plan Content Around Key Moments and Campaigns

    Your 30-day calendar should not exist in a vacuum. It needs to align with the broader moments that matter to your organization and your audience.

    Before you fill in your content slots, map out any giving events, awareness days relevant to your mission, organizational milestones, fundraising campaigns, or community events happening in the month. These are your anchor posts, the high-priority pieces of content that drive toward a specific outcome.

    Fill the rest of your slots with your pillar content to support and amplify those anchor moments. This approach ensures your calendar feels cohesive rather than random.

    Step 6: Batch Create Your Content

    One of the biggest productivity gains available to non-profit marketing teams is batching content creation. Instead of writing a caption and designing a graphic the morning of each post, set aside one or two dedicated content creation sessions per month to produce the bulk of your content at once.

    Block three to four hours at the beginning of the month to write captions, design graphics in Canva, record short-form video content, and load everything into your scheduling tool. Your future self will thank you every single week.

    Batching also produces better content because your team is in a creative mindset during those sessions rather than scrambling to fill a last-minute content slot.

    Step 7: Schedule, Monitor, and Engage

    Once your content is created and scheduled, your job is not done. Social media is a two-way channel, not a broadcast medium. Your team needs to actively monitor comments, respond to questions, and engage with your audience in real time.

    Set aside 15 to 20 minutes each morning to check your social platforms, respond to comments, and engage with content from your community partners and supporters. This level of active engagement signals to algorithms that your account is active and worth promoting. More importantly, it builds the kind of genuine community that translates into long-term donor loyalty.

    Step 8: Review Your Analytics and Refine for Next Month

    On the last day of each month, sit down with your platform analytics and evaluate performance. Look at which posts drove the most reach, which generated the most engagement, which pillar themes resonated most strongly with your audience, and whether your calls to action produced the results you were targeting.

    Use these insights to inform your next 30-day calendar. Over time, this iterative process will transform your social media presence from a content posting exercise into a finely tuned engine for mission visibility and donor acquisition.

    A content calendar is not a constraint. It is a framework for your mission to show up consistently, strategically, and with the kind of clarity that moves people to act.

    Building this system for the first time takes effort. Maintaining it becomes a rhythm your team looks forward to. If your organization needs support building a social media strategy from the ground up, Go Do Good is here to help.

    Michelle Sulzer

  • 9 Social Media Content Strategies That Actually Drive Donations for Non-Profits in 2026

    9 Social Media Content Strategies That Actually Drive Donations for Non-Profits in 2026

    Non-profit organizations are competing for attention in one of the noisiest digital environments in history. Every day, your mission is up against memes, news cycles, and viral trends that have nothing to do with the work you do. The good news? Social media remains one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools available to mission-driven organizations when it is used with intention and strategy.

    This is not a list of vague ideas. These are nine social media content strategies built specifically for non-profits that want to convert followers into donors, supporters into advocates, and attention into action.

    1. Lead With Impact Storytelling, Not Organization Updates

    The number one mistake non-profits make on social media is treating their platforms like a press release channel. Nobody scrolls through Instagram hoping to read your latest board announcement.

    What people respond to are stories. Real, specific, human stories that connect your mission to a moment in someone’s life. Instead of posting that your organization served 500 meals last month, introduce the person who sat down to eat one of them. Paint the picture. Share the moment. That shift from reporting to storytelling is where social media begins to drive donations.

    Tools like Canva make it easy to create visually compelling story-based posts without a design team. Start there.

    2. Use Short-Form Video as Your Primary Content Format

    If your non-profit is not leaning into short-form video in 2026, you are already behind. Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts are the highest-reach content formats available to you right now, and most of them are completely free to post.

    Short-form video allows your audience to see the faces behind your mission, hear from the people you serve, and feel the urgency of your work in a way that static images simply cannot replicate. Even low-production smartphone videos outperform polished graphics in engagement when the story is compelling.

    Commit to at least two to three short-form videos per week. Show up consistently and let authenticity do the heavy lifting.

    3. Build a Monthly Content Pillar System

    Posting randomly is one of the most expensive habits a non-profit can have on social media because it wastes time and produces inconsistent results. The solution is a content pillar system.

    Identify three to five content themes that align with your mission and your audience. For example, your pillars might be impact stories, educational content about the issue you address, behind-the-scenes team moments, donor spotlights, and calls to action. Every piece of content you create should fit into one of these pillars.

    This approach gives your social media a clear, recognizable identity and makes content planning dramatically faster because your team is never starting from scratch.

    4. Deploy User-Generated Content Campaigns

    User-generated content, or UGC, is one of the most underutilized strategies in the non-profit social media playbook. When your volunteers, donors, and beneficiaries share content about your organization, it carries a level of credibility that branded content simply cannot buy.

    Design campaigns that invite your community to create and share content on your behalf. A hashtag challenge, a photo contest, or a simple call to share their story can generate a wave of authentic content that extends your reach exponentially without increasing your content budget.

    Feature UGC prominently on your channels. It shows your community that their voices matter, and it gives potential donors social proof that real people believe in your work.

    5. Optimize Every Post for Engagement, Not Just Reach

    Most non-profits measure social media success by how many people see their content. Reach matters, but engagement is the metric that actually predicts whether someone will take action.

    Write captions that ask a question. Use polls and sliders in Instagram Stories. Respond to every comment within the first hour of posting. These behaviors signal to social media algorithms that your content is worth promoting, and they build the kind of community connection that turns casual followers into committed donors.

    The goal of every post should be to start a conversation, not just deliver a message.

    6. Run Giving Day Countdown Campaigns

    Giving Tuesday, World Giving Day, and your organization’s own anniversary are all opportunities to run urgency-driven campaigns that perform exceptionally well on social media. The key is building momentum before the day arrives.

    Start your countdown at least two weeks out. Share a different story, statistic, or behind-the-scenes moment each day as you build toward the giving event. Add visual countdown elements to your graphics. By the time the giving day arrives, your audience will already feel emotionally invested in the outcome.

    Pair these campaigns with a matching gift opportunity if you can secure one. Matching gifts consistently increase donation rates because they double the perceived impact of every dollar contributed.

    7. Create Educational Carousel Posts That Establish Authority

    Carousel posts on Instagram and LinkedIn continue to be among the highest-engagement content formats available. When used strategically, they position your non-profit as a knowledgeable authority on the issue you address, which builds trust with potential donors.

    Design carousel posts that educate your audience about the problem your organization solves. Use data, stories, and clear visuals to walk them through the issue slide by slide. End with a clear call to action that connects the problem to the solution your organization provides.

    When someone understands the depth of the problem, they are far more motivated to be part of the solution.

    8. Leverage Donor Spotlights and Volunteer Features

    People give to organizations they feel connected to. One of the most powerful ways to deepen that connection is to spotlight the people who are already part of your community.

    Feature a donor each month and share their story of why they give. Interview a longtime volunteer and ask them what keeps them coming back. These posts do two things simultaneously. They make your existing community feel valued and seen, and they show prospective donors and volunteers what it looks like to be part of your mission.

    This is word-of-mouth marketing on social media, and it costs nothing but a conversation and a smartphone.

    9. Analyze Your Data and Double Down on What Works

    None of the strategies above matter if your organization is not tracking performance and making decisions based on the data. Every major social media platform offers free analytics that show you exactly which posts are driving the most reach, engagement, and link clicks.

    Review your analytics at the end of every month. Identify your top three performing posts and ask yourself what they have in common. Is it the format? The topic? The time of posting? Use those insights to inform your content plan for the following month.

    Data-driven social media management is what separates organizations that grow their donor base year over year from those that feel stuck at the same follower count.

    Social media does not drive donations by accident. It drives them through strategy, consistency, and an unwavering commitment to the story behind your mission.

    If your non-profit is ready to build a social media strategy that actually converts, we would love to talk. Go Do Good works exclusively with mission-driven organizations to build marketing systems that create lasting impact.

    Michelle Sulzer

  • How to Use AI for Storytelling That Moves Donors to Act

    How to Use AI for Storytelling That Moves Donors to Act

    Storytelling has always been the heartbeat of effective non-profit marketing. It is the difference between a donor who writes a check once and a supporter who becomes a lifelong champion of your mission. The most powerful donor communications have never been about statistics or program descriptions. They are about people, transformation, and the specific human moments that make your organization’s work real and undeniable. AI does not change that truth. What AI does is give your team powerful new tools to find, develop, and distribute those stories at a scale and consistency that was previously impossible for lean non-profit marketing teams.

    Why Storytelling Remains the Most Powerful Tool in Non-Profit Marketing

    Neuroscience research has consistently shown that stories activate more regions of the brain than data alone, creating emotional responses that drive memory and action. When a donor reads about the number of families your organization served last year, they process that information cognitively. When they read a specific story about one family and what changed for them because of your work, they feel it. That feeling is what drives giving. For non-profits, the challenge has never been a shortage of compelling stories. Your organization is creating them every day. The challenge has been having the capacity to find those stories, develop them into polished and emotionally resonant content, and distribute them consistently across every channel your audience engages with. This is exactly where AI creates a meaningful advantage.

    Using AI to Surface the Stories Worth Telling

    Survey tools enhanced with AI analysis, like Typeform with its AI summary features, can help you gather impact stories from program participants, volunteers, and staff at scale and then quickly identify the most emotionally resonant themes and narratives within the responses. Social listening tools powered by AI can monitor mentions of your organization and your cause area across social platforms, surfacing organic stories that your community is already sharing. These unscripted, unprompted testimonials are often your most powerful storytelling assets because they reflect genuine experience without organizational framing.

    Developing Stories with AI as Your Writing Partner

    Once you have a story to tell, generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude become powerful writing partners for developing that raw material into polished, emotionally compelling content. The process works best when your team provides the AI with the specific details of the story, the emotional arc you want to create, the audience you are writing for, and the action you want the reader to take. The AI will produce a strong first draft that your team can then refine, humanize further, and align with your organization’s specific voice and brand standards.

    Personalizing Storytelling at Scale

    One of the most powerful applications of AI in non-profit storytelling is the ability to personalize narratives at a scale that was previously impractical. With AI-assisted email marketing platforms, you can dynamically adjust the stories and messaging within your donor communications based on what you know about each recipient. A donor who previously gave to your education programs receives a story about student impact. A donor whose giving history reflects emergency relief sees a different narrative that speaks to their specific motivations. This level of personalization has been proven to significantly improve email open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

    Adapting Stories Across Channels Without Losing Impact

    A great story told in the right format for the wrong channel loses most of its power. AI dramatically accelerates the multi-channel adaptation process. Once your team has developed the core narrative, you can prompt an AI writing tool to adapt that story for each specific channel and format. Give it the channel, the character limit, the tone, and the call to action, and it will produce channel-specific versions in minutes rather than hours. Your team’s role shifts from production to editorial, reviewing and refining the AI output to ensure it meets your quality and brand standards before publication.

    Maintaining Authenticity in AI-Assisted Storytelling

    The most important principle to maintain as you integrate AI into your storytelling workflow is authenticity. Donors are perceptive. They can tell the difference between a story that reflects genuine human experience and one that feels manufactured or generic. Always root your AI-assisted stories in real experiences, real people, and real outcomes. Never fabricate or exaggerate details for emotional effect. Review every AI-generated draft carefully to ensure it accurately represents the people and situations it describes. The trust your organization has built with its community is its most valuable asset. Protect it in every story you tell.

    Michelle Sulzer

  • 7 AI Tools That Help Non-Profit Marketing Teams Do More With Less

    7 AI Tools That Help Non-Profit Marketing Teams Do More With Less

    One of the most common things we hear from non-profit marketing leaders is some version of the same sentence: we do not have enough people, enough time, or enough budget to do everything we need to do. These are not experimental technologies. They are practical, proven platforms that non-profit marketing teams are using right now to expand their capacity, improve their output, and stretch every dollar further. Here are seven that belong in your toolkit.

    1. ChatGPT or Claude for Content Generation

    If your team spends significant hours each week writing blog posts, email campaigns, social media captions, donor communications, or grant narrative sections, a generative AI writing tool is the single highest-impact addition you can make to your workflow right now. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude can produce high-quality first drafts in minutes based on a prompt that your team provides. The key to getting great results is learning to write effective prompts. The more context you give the AI about your organization, your audience, your tone, and your specific goals for a piece of content, the better the output will be. Treat the AI like a talented new team member who needs thorough briefing to do their best work.

    2. Canva’s AI Features for Visual Content

    Most non-profit marketing teams do not have a full-time graphic designer on staff, which means visual content is either a bottleneck or a budget drain when outsourced. Canva has evolved far beyond a simple drag-and-drop design tool. Its AI-powered features now include Magic Write for generating copy, Magic Design for producing complete design concepts from a single prompt, and AI image generation for creating custom visuals without stock photo subscriptions. For non-profit marketers, this means your team can produce professional-quality graphics for social media, email headers, event promotions, annual reports, and donor campaigns without needing advanced design skills or external vendors.

    3. HubSpot’s AI Tools for CRM and Email Marketing

    HubSpot offers one of the most comprehensive free CRM tiers available to non-profits, and its AI-powered features make it even more powerful. HubSpot’s AI can generate email subject lines and body copy, suggest optimal send times based on your audience’s historical engagement patterns, score leads and contacts based on their likelihood to convert, and provide intelligent recommendations for improving campaign performance. For non-profits managing donor relationships, volunteer pipelines, and community engagement simultaneously, having an AI-assisted CRM that helps you prioritize the right outreach at the right time is genuinely transformative.

    4. Hootsuite or Buffer with AI Scheduling for Social Media

    Keeping up with consistent social media posting is one of the most time-consuming tasks for lean non-profit marketing teams. AI-enhanced social media management platforms like Hootsuite and Buffer remove much of the manual effort involved. Both platforms now offer AI-powered caption generation, content suggestions based on your historical top-performing posts, and intelligent scheduling that identifies the optimal posting times for each platform and audience segment. You spend less time switching between platforms and more time creating the kind of meaningful, mission-driven content that builds genuine community engagement.

    5. Google Analytics with AI-Powered Insights

    Google Analytics 4 includes built-in AI and machine learning capabilities that surface insights your team might otherwise miss when manually reviewing data. The platform’s AI can detect anomalies in your website traffic, predict which users are most likely to convert based on behavioral signals, and generate automated insights that highlight significant changes in your key metrics. For non-profit marketing teams that are already stretched thin, having an AI layer that proactively flags what matters most in your data is enormously valuable.

    6. Grammarly Business for Brand Voice Consistency

    When multiple team members, volunteers, or interns are contributing to your organization’s written communications, maintaining a consistent brand voice becomes a real challenge. Grammarly Business uses AI to not only catch grammatical errors and improve clarity but also to enforce your organization’s specific style guidelines and tone preferences across every piece of content your team produces. You can configure Grammarly with your organization’s specific brand voice parameters, preferred terminology, and communication style so that every email, social post, grant narrative, and donor letter reflects the same professional, on-brand voice.

    7. Zapier for AI-Powered Workflow Automation

    Zapier allows you to connect your existing tools and create automated workflows that trigger actions across multiple platforms without requiring any coding knowledge. With Zapier’s AI integrations, you can build workflows that automatically generate personalized thank-you emails when a new donation is recorded in your CRM, create social media posts from new blog content, add event registrants to the appropriate email nurture sequences, and route incoming leads to the right team member based on AI-powered categorization. Start by identifying the manual, repetitive tasks your team performs most frequently and explore whether Zapier can automate them.

    Michelle Sulzer

Work with Us