How to Create a Content Bank for Your Nonprofit

Pop quiz time. What's the biggest mistake non-profit's make when it comes to creating content? 

Answer: Thinking they have to constantly create more and more content. 

That's right, your biggest communications opportunity isn't creating more content for your channels, it's doing more with what you've already got! 

When I talk to clients and students about re-purposing their content, one of the concerns I hear most often is this. Won't be be turned off by seeing content they've already seen? 

Here's my challenge to this -- what portion of your audience is actually seeing your content the one and only time you post it? 

It can be a hard reality check, I know. 

But the truth is that only a small portion of your audience sees that content when you share it once. Plus, those that do see it may not remember it. You can see the evidence of this in your social media analytics, email analytics, and website analytics. 

And this is where your biggest opportunity lies. You can get more mileage from you content and there are so many ways to do so!

• Take that newsletter article and turn it into a series of social media posts
• Reuse email copy for blog posts
• Take graphics you shared on social media and use them in your newsletter
• Share an OpEd that got published in a local paper in your next email
• Turn pull quotes from a story interview into social media graphics

There are endless possibilities for re-purposing your content. Ready to try re-purposing your content? 

It's a whole lot easier to re-purpose content when you have a content bank set up to catalog and track all that you've created. 

How to Set Up a Content Bank

A content bank doesn’t have to be super complicated.

I use Trello boards to set up content banks for various communications channels. You could also use Asana, Google Drive folders, Dropbox, or other content storage systems. You just need to pick a tool and commit to your system.

To give you some step-by-step guidance as to how to set up your content bank, I'll be using Trello as an example. You can apply the same principles to whatever tool you choose to use. 

Initial Set Up Instructions for a Content Bank

Here's what you'll need to do for initial set up. 

1. Create a new board in Trello
2. Enable the following power-ups: Google Drive or Dropbox (depending on where you store your content) and the Calendar
3. Create separate lists for each type of content: Videos, Blog Posts, Graphics, Emails, Newsletters, Social Media (you can create a separate list for each channel)
4. Set up labels for each category of content you create. These are the themes or topics that you commonly cover. Having these labels will help you further organize your content.

Here's a peek at my content bank for The Storytelling Non-Profit. 

Adding Content and Managing Your Content Bank

Now that you've got your content bank set up, it's time to start adding your content to your content bank and managing it on an on-going basis. You may want to start by adding in all content you've produced in the last week. If you have the time (or inclination) you can go back even further to add more content to your content bank. 

Here's the process for adding content within each list on your Trello board.

1. Create a card for each piece of content
2. Enter a title for the content on the card. For blog posts, this might be the title of the post. For emails, you could enter the subject line of the email. 
3. Attach a link to the published content for easy reference
4. Attach the original copy of the content. You can enter this in the description box or you can upload an attachment. 
5. Drag an promotional images on to the card
6. Add a label for the content category

Going forward you can continuously add new content to your content bank. I like to do this on a monthly basis and I have a recurring 2-hour block in my calendar to remind me of this task. 

As you continue to work on your content, you can go back through your content bank to see what you've already created and how you can re-purpose it in new ways.