Content development process

Goal

Embolden’s objective is to help community foundations save time creating materials, learn about charitable giving topics, and more effectively engage audiences to help meet your objectives for achieving community impact.

Value

Embolden is here to share not only knowledge (which is of course plentiful online) but more importantly, wisdom. Our experience in the field and working with hundreds of community foundations enables us to help you not only learn, but also take action and achieve results.

Strategy

  • Our team is constantly listening to our 300+ community foundation clients to hear about topics that are relevant to you as you engage your audiences. We’re also listening closely for topics where your team would like to learn more—that’s because many of our community foundation clients circulate the newsletters each month for staff and board development purposes.

  • Based on client feedback and suggestions, as well as our combined 20+ years of experience in executive roles at community foundations (and 15+ years practicing tax and estate law), we build an annual content calendar so that the editorial plan meets community foundations’ priorities for engaging audiences.

  • During the Monthly Peer Working Sessions that are part of our Premium Content & Training Subscription, we review the monthly articles and share not only what is in the materials, but also why we selected the topics, who among your audiences the topics are most likely to engage, where to incorporate the articles, and how to use the content to engage specific people.

Process

  • Every morning, we review as many articles as we can find that mention community foundations and donor-advised funds that have appeared in technical and financial publications over the past 24 hours. We spend multiple hours each day reading and researching.

  • We read at least three articles per day in depth if they pertain to trends we are also hearing from our 300+ community foundation clients.

  • We talk with dozens of community foundations each week.

  • We research original IRS documents, Tax Court cases, and private letter rulings to gain more insight into emerging tax law changes. 

  • We personally talk with attorneys and financial advisors each week and listen for trends in how they are interpreting recent developments in estate planning, wealth planning, and charitable planning with their clients.

  • In addition to continuing the daily research, during the second half of each month, we work each day to analyze the trends from our research and from our client conversations to distill the themes into three compelling topics for each audience (professional advisor, donor/fund holder, nonprofit, and, once a quarter, scholarship donors). Then we conduct additional research on those subjects, especially to look at historical trends.

  • We finish writing, editing, and reviewing the articles during the last week of each month for distribution on the first day of the next month.

  • In the articles, we strive to link to sources that are both current and historical where the historical articles shed light on what is going on right now, or where a particular historical article does a particularly good job of explaining a market dynamic or charitable giving tool.