Episode Overview
Most nonprofit marketing tries to sound like a Fortune 500 company: polished, professional, scrubbed of personality. Racheli Edelkopf, founder of The Pedal, says that’s the mistake. She joins Cherry to explain why imperfect emails outperform corporate ones, and why three months of silence sends a louder message to your donors than any post you could have written.
Key Takeaways
The biggest nonprofit marketing mistake is going quiet.
- Try a voice-note instead of writing. The way you’d describe your program to a friend in the car is the way it should sound in the email.
- Write to one specific donor you actually know, not to a faceless list. You can’t fall into stuffy nonprofit language when you’re addressing someone you’d grab coffee with.
- Keep a shared doc of tiny wins. Not the going-from-A-to-Z success stories. The one client who got a job interview outfit. The fifteen-second video clip from a program last Tuesday.
- Email more often, not less. If Target sends seven emails a day and you barely notice, your donors will not riot if you go from quarterly to weekly.
- Stop waiting for the big polished story. Donors who hear from you eight times build a fuller picture than donors who hear from you twice, even if the eight stories are smaller.
Episode Highlights
1. Why 'Polish' Costs You Donors
Nonprofits send emails that sound like they were written by a bank. The fear behind it is real: sound too casual, lose the credibility, lose the grant. But the passion and proximity to the mission are the actual asset, and corporate language is exactly what strips them out.
Racheli’s example is a founder who refused to put her face in marketing materials. She was young and short. People who met her in person fell in love with the organization, but she was convinced an online audience would dismiss her. Racheli’s read: the thing she was hiding was the thing converting people in real life.
The fix isn’t a brand overhaul. Voice-note yourself describing the work. Write the email to one donor you’d actually call a friend. Both pull you out of corporate register fast, because nobody talks to a friend the way they write to a “mailing list.”
2. Stop Waiting for the Big Story
Nonprofits sit on stories every day and don’t share them. Someone walked in needing an outfit for a job interview, you handed her one, she got the job. To the staff member, that’s Tuesday. To a donor, that’s the moment that makes them care.
The fix is mechanical. Build one shared doc, a Slack channel, a Google sheet, or a Monday board, where anyone on the team who’s been in the field that week can drop a sentence about what happened. No formatting, no story arc, no editing for greatness. Just: “Mrs. R. came back today and brought her granddaughter.”
3. Silence Talks
If a donor gave in December and hasn’t heard from you by April, they don’t think “the team must be heads-down doing important work.” They think you took the money and ran.
It’s not fair. You probably are heads-down doing important work. But communication isn’t optional just because you’re busy. Silence is interpreted, and the default interpretation is the worst one. If two nonprofits got your donation in December and one has emailed you eight times since and the other has emailed you zero, it doesn’t matter that the silent one is doing twice the work. Not in the donor’s head.
Racheli’s threshold: email weekly. Not because every week justifies a full update, but because the floor for “engaged” has moved. Target sends seven emails a day and donors barely notice. One tiny win from you every Friday is not what they’re worried about.
FAQ
How do I improve nonprofit messaging with a small team?
Small teams can improve messaging without adding headcount. Voice-note yourself describing the program, then convert that to email. You’ll naturally sound like a person, not a bank. Write each piece to one specific donor you actually know. Keep a shared doc where anyone who interacts with the work can drop one-line stories, and pull from it weekly. The fix is process, not budget.
What’s the difference between everyday marketing and campaign marketing?
Everyday marketing is your weekly drumbeat. Small posts, small wins, the recurring email. Campaign marketing is a bounded push for something specific: a fundraising drive, an event, a program launch. Racheli’s split: keep about 50% of your monthly content evergreen so you can bump it for an in-the-moment story. For campaign content, plan it tight. The rhythms are different on purpose.
Is it worth investing in marketing for nonprofits with limited resources?
Yes, and the cost of not investing is hidden. Donors interpret silence as inactivity, even when the team is working flat out. A nonprofit emailing donors weekly with small updates will hold attention better than one emailing twice a year with polished campaign launches. For a small nonprofit, marketing is the part of the mission that decides whether anyone funds the rest of it.
Tools and Resources
- The Pedal on Instagram: Bite-sized nonprofit marketing tips, posted two to three times a week.
- The Pedal newsletter: Racheli’s monthly email for nonprofit marketers, one issue a month.
- A shared doc, Slack channel, or Monday.com board for capturing tiny wins from the team as they happen.
How to Apply This
Pick one upcoming email and try Racheli’s voice-note method. Open your phone’s recorder, talk about the program like you’re describing it to a friend, transcribe it, and edit lightly. You’ll spot the difference between your speaking voice and your default writing voice immediately.
Set up a one-doc system this week, Slack channel or shared sheet or whatever your team already uses, and ask everyone who works directly with the program to drop in one sentence whenever something small happens. Don’t curate. Don’t edit. Just collect for two weeks and see what’s there.
Then commit to a weekly email, even if each one is three sentences and a photo. The point is presence, not volume. Going from quarterly to weekly will feel uncomfortable for the first month and obvious by the third.
About Racheli Edelkopf
Racheli Edelkopf is the founder of The Pedal, a nonprofit marketing studio. She started her career inside nonprofits, spent five years building a marketing function from scratch as a program director at a mid-sized organization, then went full-time on nonprofit marketing six years ago. She’s worked with hundreds of nonprofits since, from founder-only shops to organizations raising tens of millions a year.
Follow Racheli on Instagram at @thepedal.co for bite-sized nonprofit marketing tips, or subscribe to her monthly newsletter at thepedal.co.
Next Steps
Watch the full episode for Racheli’s direct advice to nonprofit founders, including how to vet a marketing agency before hiring one and what to ask your team for when stories aren’t surfacing on their own.
