Missions to Movements

LinkedIn Year-End Strategies for Nonprofit Leaders: Grow Your Thought Leadership and Mission

• Dana Snyder

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LinkedIn represents an untapped goldmine for nonprofit leaders seeking to grow recurring giving, with 80% of its billion-plus members wanting to give back. 

People are watching your content even when they don't engage, building relationships that can turn into donations, speaking opportunities, and partnerships when the time is right.

• Block 2-3 hours weekly to write and schedule LinkedIn content for consistency
• Think of posts as mini-newsletters that inspire conversation, consideration, or conversion
• Study nonprofit leaders like Tarika Barrett (Girls Who Code) and Courtney Johnson (Culinary Care) for effective examples
• Create a "three by three" content strategy with three pillars and three weekly posts
• Keep a running list of post ideas in your notes app to capture inspiration anytime
• Update your profile with a clear banner, accurate headline, and featured monthly giving page
• Remember that authentic storytelling resonates more than perfect marketing

Leave a review on Apple or Spotify if you enjoy this short-form tactical episode style, and stay tuned for upcoming episodes on event activations, PR opportunities, and email marketing strategies for year-end giving.


This show is brought to you by GivingTuesday! GivingTuesday is a global generosity movement that started in 2012 with a simple idea: a day to do good.

This year, on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, join the conversation: share your favorite nonprofit’s campaign, volunteer for a cause you care about, share an act of kindness, or encourage your audience to do the same.

Use #GivingTuesday, tag @GivingTuesday, and visit GivingTuesday.org/Participate to get involved and inspire others!

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the first bonus episode of this four-part series. As we end September and we head full throttle into giving season, I wanted to do these kind of quick, short-form, solo, non-edited episodes for you speaking to four very tactical individual things that I think can really help you grow your recurring giving this end of year with not adding, hopefully, a ton of time and things to your plate. So this first episode shocker is going to be on my favorite social platform and that is LinkedIn, and LinkedIn was the partner of this podcast for the first half of this year. I am obviously a huge fan of the platform and I think it's one of the most underutilized platforms for nonprofit leaders for you, and yet it is where decision makers, donors and your potential partners are hanging out. They're chilling every single day.

Speaker 1:

In a previous episode it was 178, if you wanna go back and listen to it, it is with Ariana Unai. She is the head of LinkedIn for nonprofits and she shared a wild stat that 80% of LinkedIn's billion plus members want to give back. Now, if we know this, how can we use the platform in the best way? And I want to share a quick personal story that I think it was three years ago now, on International Women's Day, I was looking for and if you have read my book, you know this story I was looking for an organization, a female founded organization locally, ideally based in Atlanta area, to support, and I was on LinkedIn and I stumbled across a post that the founder of the Hope Booth, gloria Umana, had posted, referencing the work of the Hope Booth, being a female founder on International Women's Day. So I had kind of heard about their organization before, but it was seeing this post that she created on LinkedIn that led me to click on the link, go to her website and sign up to be a monthly donor of the movement. And again, that's three years later I've hosted a movement party for them at my house, like lots of different things. So today I wanted to really tactically show you how to use LinkedIn like your personal mini newsletter, how to showcase your mission. You can use it to grow your email list, get featured on podcasts, attract those people who are quietly watching you, sometimes for years before they'll finally reach out and I promise they're there because I've been doing this for years.

Speaker 1:

I have built an audience there of nearly 13,000 followers, 6,400 connections and millions of impressions this year alone on my content, and the year's not over yet, so I'm going to share with you some examples from leaders like Tariq Barrett at Girls who Code, courtney Johnson at Culinary Care, and they're just telling some really powerful stories on LinkedIn that drive connection and action. So I cannot tell you how many times I've had people reach out to me or see me at events or jump on a call with me and say, dana, I've been following you and seeing all your content on LinkedIn for years Now. They may never once have commented or liked a post, but they have been watching and learning and when the time is right, they have either reached out to me to partner, invited me to speak or joined one of my programs, and that's the magic of LinkedIn. So even when you feel like you are posting into the void, trust me, people are seeing it and if you use LinkedIn strategically, over time, it's going to build those relationships. So you have so, so so many stories you can share on this platform, and we overthink it a lot in a keynote that I share. The keynote is your story is worthy, too.

Speaker 1:

I break down a worthy story framework for who to speak to and how to use LinkedIn, and so I'm going to share a few tips to get you started, even if you might be strapped for time. So tip number one is really time planning. If you can block out a two to three hour block of time one day a week to write and schedule out all of your content, it can be for one post a week. You can start with. You can do it every day, you can do it three times a week. Just stay consistent and block off a period of time Like Mondays are my day where I record all of my podcast episodes. It makes it easy, it makes I'm prepared. That's my whole day is spent basically just doing this, recording podcast episodes, and it is a Monday as I'm recording this to you. So stay consistent. And I like to write as if you're writing your own mini newsletter. So don't overthink it. Think of them as short public newsletters. You can think about behind the scenes lessons, a piece of wisdom from a donor story or experience, a takeaway from your work.

Speaker 1:

And something I share in the Worthy Story framework is that every post should either inspire a conversation, consideration or conversion. Now, conversion is usually where all of our heads go right. They download what you reference, they join an email list, they give a gift, but the other two are just as important. So conversation and this is honestly where I would focus a lot of your time on LinkedIn is they stay on the post or they stay on your platform? They write a comment, they DM you, so that's a conversation Consideration. They're going to go to your website, they're going to continue learning about you, they're going to listen to something that you shared and then again, obviously, conversion, what I just mentioned before. I want to share. My favorite way of learning is by just seeing others who might be doing something really interesting.

Speaker 1:

And so a couple of leaders that I mentioned just a few minutes ago Tariqa Barrett, ceo of Girls who Code. Recently she posted and you can go to her profile to see this about Legos and they did a. She Built that campaign and I want to read to you the post. And this wasn't just a corporate partnership highlight that she shared. It's also about thought leadership. She's showing her audience what matters to her, her mission and why, and it's just a really creative campaign that they did. So here's what she shared. Legos aren't just for boys. A global survey of over 32,000 children and parents revealed that 80% still view boys as better builders and most envision a builder as a man in a hard hat. Introducing hashtag she built that.

Speaker 1:

The Lego groups new powerful campaign that's using music to challenge gender stereotypes around STEM and innovation. The campaign re-imagines run DMCs iconic track it's like that and challenges gender stereotypes around building and creativity. She goes on to talk about how the Anthem recasted and says representation ignites confidence. When girls see themselves as creators, their imagination expands, inspiring them to be anything they want to be. And then she shares a linked out to the article about this new campaign that was featured, so it's also about it's. It's focused on what she's centered on right, challenging gender stereotypes, girls and coding a corporate partnership. So I love she does a great job at being consistent, sharing posts on lots of different things. It gives this article legs. If you or your organization have recently been featured in a press article, share that on LinkedIn. Don't just let it live one life on the article itself, but get more eyeballs to it and more of a broad audience on LinkedIn. Don't just let it live one life on the article itself, but get more eyeballs to it in more of a broad audience on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

Another one Courtney Johnson from Culinary Care. She shares in this example, specifically a behind the scenes story. So she wrote for years we've been dreaming of a video that shares Culinary Care's mission, story, progress and impact, something our community can proudly share and say. This is what I'm a part of. Yesterday I got to head into the impact networking as they worked to bring this vision to life as part of hashtag make an impact day, then hopped on a flight to make it home in time to say goodnight to my son. It was a good day. In this post, she shares a series of photos of her being interviewed. I think there's like a green screen of the behind the scenes of this video being captured.

Speaker 1:

So both leaders in these posts they weren't selling, they were sharing. They were connecting emotionally with what you might be able to feel and reference and have something powerful. And read the comments in these posts and they're leaving the door also open for deeper engagement and connection with their audience. So how can you do this? Linkedin for nonprofits also has a great resource hub and they teach this three by three kind of rhythm of content. So what I would recommend and you can do this in the least barrier way and this is typically how I do it is on my iPhone, I have a notes. Well, I use the notes app function and I will just write ideas as they come to me. I could be out for a run, I could be shopping at the store, it could be on a plane reading a book, whatever it is but kind of figure out your three pillars, your buckets, and then under each of those you can just pull ideas that you have all the time. So maybe one pillar is mission impact, maybe similar to um Tariqa what she did with the story of the corporate partnerships around kind of mission impact. Maybe one pillar is your personal experience. In your notes app.

Speaker 1:

Does something happen to you today? You had a crazy phone call or I don't know. Something happened that you want to remember and you put it in there Behind the scenes moments. Let's say you just had a gala or a campaign and you want to talk about oh my gosh, this email just rocked it. Or this gala, we had this specific thing happen. Or this donor said this one thing to me and I want to remember it so that I can share about it later. And it could be just a project that you're working on. So there are, I'm sure, once you start to think about these things, tons of ideas will flood you and in this three by three, can you commit to three posts a week with these different three pillars of content? So you could totally make this up in whatever way works best for you.

Speaker 1:

Monday, tuesday, thursday. Monday, wednesday, thursday People go back and forth on if Fridays and the weekends are good times to post on LinkedIn. Honestly, I think great content does well all the time, so you know your audience better. I would test this week. The weekdays are primarily the best times, but I've also had great success on the weekend, so test what works best for you. Some sample prompts to maybe get you thinking. Here is what was a challenging moment in your career and how did you make it through. Or here's the 20 second math behind $23 a month at our organization. Or we raised $253,000 at our gala last week and here's how we did it. Or this week our team learned blank while serving blank. So really think of each post. Sorry, I just hit my microphone. If you could hear that again. These are not edited episodes.

Speaker 1:

Think of each post as a quick touch point on a topic, a mini newsletter. You're not trying to hit on like seven different things here. It just keeps your audience engaged, curious, excited to learn from you. And some practical things that you can do is if you start to go down your LinkedIn feed and you like someone's examples that they're posting and you're like, ooh, I want to keep them top of mind of, like what this could inspire for me. Or you could do this on mine. And if you go to Dana Snyder on LinkedIn, on everyone's LinkedIn profile, right in the header section, there's a little bell and you can click the bell to get notified of all of their posts. And now I'm saying don't do this for a ton of people, but maybe three to five people that you really admire, so you can learn their rhythms, their different types of content that they're posting. So check out that little bell icon. That's what that's there for.

Speaker 1:

And while you were in that header section, think about optimizing your profile. Is your image up to date? Does the banner image have like a one line promise? Actually, courtney did a great job of just updating this recently for their gala event that they have coming up. Does your headline title accurately speak to what you do? And then there's a featured section that you can add, that you can pin essentially to your page, and I would recommend pinning your monthly giving landing page and maybe pinning a really high engagement post that you have. So action steps for today or this week, let's say this week.

Speaker 1:

Define your three content pillars, draft one week of posts and again for you that could be one episode or episode, because I'm recording it could be one post. That could be three posts and add your monthly giving page. Hope you have. A monthly giving landing page is what I'm referencing to your featured section so people can easily find it. If you want a bonus, you can follow the two women I referenced in this post, notice how they make you feel and really try to model that energy in your own way. So this is where, especially this time of the year, linkedin is where thought leadership meets visibility. Tag me in the post that you write. I would love to check them out. I will comment, I will cheer you on and please remember, people are watching, even when they're silent. I promise when the timing is right they will show up, they will connect with you. Hopefully they'll give to you and just overall, connect and be so supportive of your mission.

Speaker 1:

So this is episode number one, talking about LinkedIn. In the following episodes I'm going to be talking about event activations. If you are hosting a year end gala or an event, how to make monthly giving the centerpiece. I'm going to be talking about PR, so there's some really creative ways. And listicles holiday gift guides are really popular, so I'm going to talk about how to get your nonprofit featured on those gift guides. I'm going to be talking about some email marketing. So, again for the next four Mondays I guess technically three now, since this one went live the next three Mondays there'll be a Monday and Wednesday episode. These are going to be your short form ones. Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify, if you like this style of episode, and maybe a takeaway that someone might be able to learn just from reading the review, and I will see you on Wednesday or Monday, depending on when you're listening to this. Have a great day.

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Dana Snyder

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