Content marketing for nonprofits: Strategy, channels, and KPIs

With supporters looking for information across more channels than ever, your nonprofit marketing plan needs to meet them in the places they already trust and use. That still includes traditional channels like email, direct mail, organic search, and your website, which remain crucial for building credibility and deepening supporter relationships.

However, today’s supporters are also discovering success stories on social media platforms like TikTok and asking questions about nonprofit initiatives using artificial intelligence, or AI, tools like ChatGPT. In fact, surveys show most ChatGPT users treat it like a search engine, with nearly 1 in 4 turning to AI before Google when looking for information.

For nonprofit marketers, this presents both an opportunity and a challenge. To keep reaching supporters as their habits change, your content strategy needs to support the channels that already work while expanding into newer spaces where supporters discover, share, and search for causes. That means creating content that performs across trusted touchpoints, AI search, and social media feeds.

Build your nonprofit content marketing foundation

Content marketing for nonprofits is the practice of creating and distributing valuable, relevant content—like blog posts, social media updates, videos, and email newsletters—to attract, engage, and retain supporters. Unlike direct fundraising appeals, content marketing builds trust and awareness over time by providing information, stories, and education that supporters find useful, turning passive awareness into active giving, volunteering, and peer-to-peer fundraising.

Before choosing a channel or format, though, you must determine your strategy. Defining your audience, goals, and content themes up front ensures every piece you create has a clear purpose rather than simply filling channels with posts.

Define your audience and their content preferences

It’s critical to know who you want to reach and how they prefer to consume content. A donor base aged 50+ behaves differently from a volunteer base aged 25–35. Survey existing supporters, review website analytics for demographic signals, and check which existing posts generate the most engagement by segment. These answers should drive every channel and format decision that follows.

Set goals tied to your fundraising calendar

Content marketing goals should connect directly to fundraising objectives. Use a content calendar to map content output to key moments in the fundraising year, such as the year-end giving season, Giving Tuesday, spring activations, and program launch moments. Each content piece should have a clear purpose—whether it’s awareness, engagement, donor conversion, or retention—so you can evaluate what works.

Choose channels based on performance and capacity, not trends

Your team doesn’t need to post everywhere at once. Trying to manage social media platforms, a blog, emails, YouTube, and more can stretch limited resources and make it harder to create quality content consistently.

Instead, prioritize two or three channels where your audience is most active and your content already drives meaningful action, such as clicks, donations, sign-ups, shares, or returning visitors. A focused, consistent presence on the right channels is more effective than an uneven presence across too many.

Plan content in themed batches, not one-off posts

Instead of posting one-offs, build your content calendar around two or three themes that connect to your mission and fundraising goals. Themed content is easier to plan, faster to produce in batches, and simpler for supporters to follow.

Each theme should also connect to a clear supporter action, such as donating, volunteering, sharing, or following. Over time, this consistency can help your content show up more reliably across AI search results and social media feeds.

Optimize content for AI search and discovery

Search no longer works as it once did. Today, many people go directly to ChatGPT or Google Gemini to ask questions instead of sifting through pages of Google search results. Queries are more conversational, and voice search continues to grow.

In fact, 60% of U.S. adults use AI to search for information, and that number jumps to 74% among adults under 30. At the same time, AI summaries in search results can reduce clicks to websites by as much as 79%.

This means your nonprofit’s digital marketing content, such as your website and blog, needs to serve search engines and answer engines. This marks a shift from prioritizing traditional search engine optimization (SEO) alone to considering generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) in all your content creation processes.

The question is: What should you optimize? Start with the landing pages that matter most:

• Your main program and fundraising pages
• High-traffic blog posts
• FAQ and resource pages that explain your mission or impact
• Pages already getting traffic from large language models (LLMs)

Pages with clear, complete information and strong links signal to AI trustworthy answers.

Search and AI discovery checklist

Once you’ve identified the pages to start with, use this quick checklist for each optimization:

• Answer real questions. Add short Q&A sections to your blog posts and key pages when it fits naturally. For example: “How can I support wildfire response?” This works well on pages covering timely campaigns, frequently asked topics, or ways supporters can take action.
• Use clear, simple language. Write the way people speak. Short sentences work best.
• Target long-tail questions. Evolve your writing to address more conversational queries. Instead of optimizing for a broad keyword like “water charity,” try a specific question like “What’s a trustworthy water charity I can donate to on Giving Tuesday?”
• Update old pages. Refresh high-value pages every few months with new facts, quotes, metrics, or examples.

Track the content marketing KPIs that matter

Following the checklist above helps make your content AI- and search-ready, but successful content marketing doesn’t stop there. You also need to track how your pages and content pieces perform, adjusting as supporters’ needs and search habits evolve.

First, keep in mind that it’s normal for click-through rates to drop when AI answers appear in search results. That alone isn’t a bad sign. What matters most is whether your site visits, donations, and sign-ups stay steady or, better yet, grow.

If you see website traffic and conversions fall across the board, that’s your signal to revisit your nonprofit organization’s content. Verify that it provides clear, helpful answers written in the same way your supporters ask their questions today.

Search success isn’t just about landing in the top three blue links anymore. It’s about being the best answer to your supporters’ questions, wherever they look for them.

Here are the specific nonprofit marketing key performance indicators, or KPIs, to track:

• Search and website KPIs: Organic sessions, LLM referral traffic, pages per session, bounce rate on high-value pages, and conversion rate from organic traffic
• Social media KPIs: Engagement rates (such as likes, comments, and shares per post), reach and impressions, follower growth rate, link clicks to fundraising pages, and video completion rate
• Fundraising impact KPIs: Donations attributed to content-driven traffic, average donation value from content sources, donation or sign-up conversion rate from LLM referral traffic, new donor acquisition rate from content channels, and peer-to-peer fundraiser activation rate from social media posts

Tracking nonprofit visibility in AI search

In addition to traditional SEO and content marketing metrics, track how often your nonprofit appears in AI-generated answers and AI-powered search results. These signals can help you understand whether your content is visible in the places supporters now use to ask questions and discover causes.

• AI brand visibility: Monitor how often AI-generated responses mention or recommend your nonprofit. Test relevant prompts across leading AI tools or use third-party platforms that automate AI visibility tracking.
• AI search citations and visibility: Measure how often Google AI Overviews mention or cite your content and other AI-powered search experiences for your target keywords. You can monitor this manually or use SEO tools that support AI visibility tracking.

Create social content that drives engagement

In addition to search, social media is one of the most powerful ways to amplify your marketing efforts and, therefore, your mission.

Content focusing on organizational updates, achievements, or branded graphics tend to underperform, especially against content that centers on the people your nonprofit serves and the supporters who make it possible.

The highest-performing nonprofit social media content tends to fall into one of these categories:

• Impact stories featuring real people
• Behind-the-scenes moments from program delivery
• Urgent and time-sensitive fundraising asks tied to specific outcomes
• Peer-to-peer fundraiser spotlights celebrating supporter generosity

Social media content checklist

Before you start posting your social media content, decide which channels make the most sense for your team and target audience. Then, learn how each platform works to share the types of content that fit naturally in people’s feeds, whether that’s personal stories, testimonials, thought leadership articles, videos, or impact infographics.

Use the checklist below to guide your nonprofit social media strategy:

• Tell your story first. Lead with people, emotion, and impact stories rather than program updates.
• Create for the platform. Use native videos, photos, and captions, not just links, as these typically perform best on today’s fast-paced, visually driven channels.
• Make it accessible. Add subtitles, alt text, and clear descriptions.
• Post with purpose. Establish a content calendar and stick with it to build audience trust.
• Track what matters. Monitor views, engagement rate, shares, and traffic to your fundraising pages.

You can also check out some of our other guides for additional tips to take your social media posts to the next level:

• How to build a winning social media strategy for your nonprofit
• Social media fundraising tactics to mobilize your supporters

Best practices by platform

Once you choose where to focus your efforts, consider best practices by platform.

Facebook

Facebook remains the largest social media platform in the world, with more than 3 billion monthly active users. It’s also where most established nonprofit donors are most active.

If you want to celebrate your nonprofit’s mission, build trust, foster community, and encourage sharing among supporters, Facebook is a great choice. It’s especially effective for converting warm audiences (people who already know your organization) into recurring donors and peer-to-peer fundraisers. Groups and live videos are the two features with the highest organic reach for nonprofits on this platform.

To reach more supporters on Facebook:

• Use Groups to create spaces for volunteers, advocates, or peer-to-peer fundraisers to connect.
• Pin active fundraisers to the top of your page for increased exposure.
• Ask direct questions in posts to generate comments and conversation.

Instagram

As reported by Pew Research Center, about half of U.S. adults are on Instagram, and they’re increasingly using the Reels (short-form videos) feature to discover new causes, trends, and ideas, making it a powerful tool for growing awareness and engagement.

Instagram works best for nonprofits with strong visual storytelling, such as programs with visible impact, compelling photography, or short videos showing beneficiaries or volunteers in action. Reels consistently outperform static posts for reaching new audiences and are worth prioritizing even for teams with limited video production resources.

To optimize your Instagram presence:

• Focus on short-form videos that show real people benefiting from your work.
• Use captions that highlight emotion and impact.
• Keep your fundraiser link easily accessible in your bio.

TikTok

TikTok reaches 37% of U.S. adults, according to Pew Research Center. It’s especially popular with those under 30, making it a prime platform for educational content and younger supporter engagement.

Using it effectively requires authentic, unpolished content rather than sophisticated marketing material. Nonprofits that show real moments from their work—like field visits, beneficiary stories, and behind-the-scenes operations—consistently outperform those posting branded graphics or scripted content.

To increase engagement on TikTok:

• Capture viewers’ attention in the first three seconds.
• Share real, unpolished moments from your work.
• Encourage supporters to start fundraisers and explain why they care.

LinkedIn

With more than 1 billion members worldwide, LinkedIn is ideal for reaching professionals, corporate partners, and potential board members. The platform is particularly popular with people aged 25– 34, with over two-thirds of users engaging with content weekly.

LinkedIn is the highest-value platform for corporate donor acquisition, board member recruitment, and fundraising-driven, professional relationship cultivation. Impact reports and mission-driven thought leadership content consistently generate strong engagement from the professionals most likely to become major donors or corporate partners.

To achieve more on LinkedIn:

• Post impact reports and updates that link back to clear outcomes.
• Highlight workplace giving and volunteer opportunities.
• Share stories that connect your mission to career and community values.

YouTube

With 84% of U.S. adults on YouTube, the platform offers unmatched reach, yet it’s the most underused by nonprofits.

Longer-form impact storytelling on YouTube builds the kind of trust and emotional connection that other platforms cannot match. Its Shorts feature makes it easy for nonprofits to share compelling stories in short-form videos and repurpose that content across other social media channels. Shorts also allow nonprofits to repurpose existing TikTok and Reels content at no additional production cost.

To expand your reach on YouTube:

• Use a mix of longer videos and Shorts.
• Write titles as full questions people might search.
• Turn existing strong TikToks or Reels into YouTube Shorts.

X (formerly Twitter)

While its popularity has dipped in recent years, X remains a crucial channel for real-time updates and public conversations. With over 300 million monthly users, it continues to drive higher engagement than newer competitors, like Threads or Bluesky.

X is most valuable for nonprofits during real-time moments, like commenting on breaking news relevant to your cause, broadcasting live events, or reaching fundraising milestones. It’s best used for immediate commentary and to stir public conversation, not relationship-building. Use it to amplify time-sensitive asks and to engage with journalists, policymakers, and peer organizations who remain active on the platform.

To do more with X:

• Publish a series of tweets to tell short, powerful stories.
• Post during live events, campaigns, or breaking news moments.
• Share links to active fundraisers and encourage others to retweet.

The role of social media influencers

Social media is increasingly shaped by impact creators—influencers who use their platforms to raise awareness and mobilize support for causes that matter to them. In The Social State of Giving, we found that Gen Z and Millennials are especially influenced by these creators, with more than half of Gen Z saying they trust impact creators to donate on their behalf.

For nonprofits, this presents a clear opportunity. Partnering with impact creators allows you to tap into established, values-driven communities and extend your message beyond your owned channels. Whether through livestream fundraisers, short-form videos, or awareness campaigns, these creators offer authentic, platform-native ways for new audiences to engage with your mission.

Consider identifying creators whose values and audiences align closely with your cause, then test a small collaboration, such as a cohosted livestream or a short campaign, to see how creator-led storytelling resonates with new supporters.

Mobilize supporters to take the next step

A strong content marketing strategy doesn’t stop at reach. Once supporters discover your mission, they need clear, relevant ways to act.

GoFundMe Pro helps nonprofits turn interest into action with donation pages and peer-to-peer fundraising experiences built for today’s supporters. Your team can create branded donation experiences that make it easy for people to give when your content inspires them to help. You can also offer flexible ways for supporters to fundraise on your behalf, from campaign-based peer-to-peer fundraising to community-led fundraising that fits their interests, networks, and everyday moments.

When supporters share a fundraiser with their own networks, they bring your mission into trusted conversations across social media feeds, group chats, and personal communities. GoFundMe Pro helps them keep going with built-in coaching, activity tracking, nudges, recommended next steps, premade social media content, and suggestions for who to reach out to next.

With the right content, tools, and next steps, your nonprofit can build a strategy that not only gets discovered but also moves supporters to donate, fundraise, share, and stay connected to your mission.