Contribute Articles

Thank you for your interest in contributing to The ENGAGE Blog, an award-winning thought leadership blog for the social good community! With over 31,000 visitors each month and a social media reach of more than 100,000 people, ENGAGE is a trusted source for best practice sharing and expert perspectives for across the ecosystem of social good organizations. We’ve also been named a “Top Philanthropy Blog” by Feedspot and one of the “Top 25 Nonprofit IT Blogs” by BizTech.

To submit a story idea, please complete the form below. Your idea is most likely to be accepted if you’ve read and followed the guidelines below. While you may submit an article for consideration, we recommend that you first submit a 2-3 paragraph pitch that covers the following questions:

What is the central idea of the proposed article?
Why is this idea important?
How would ENGAGE readers use your article to inform their work?
What real-world examples, research or other content will be cited in your article?
Why are you qualified to write about this topic? What is your current role, professional background, etc? Have you written for other publications?

Please note that we do not pay for content, and we will only accept content that has not been published elsewhere.

Editorial Guidelines

Audience

Articles are written keeping in mind the needs of those who lead, work in and support social good. This includes leadership and staff of of nonprofits, education institutions, healthcare institutions and foundations, as well as corporate stakeholders focused on corporate social responsibility.

Topics and Types of Posts

ENGAGE content includes the following types of posts:

Best Practices/How-to: practical pieces to with actionable steps readers can incorporate into their organizations and/or roles (example)
Thought Leadership: opinion editorial in style (example)
Research: analysis and commentary on data and sector-related studies (example)
News: social good related commentary on current events (example) – *please note that news-related posts should not take the form of political opinions or take sides on a controversial issue, but instead strive to educate readers on how they can learn from an event, or implications they might need to think about for their organization.

We encourage a broad range of topics relevant to our audiences, but specifically we look for content that covers:

Advocacy
Board governance
Corporate social responsibility
Educational institution management and fundraising
Financial accountability and transparency
Foundations and grantmaking
Giving and donation trends
Healthcare institution grateful patient and fundraising programs
Human resources and staff management
Impact measurement
Nonprofit marketing and communications
Nonprofit fundraising best-practices
Organizational leadership and culture
Research and evaluation
Leveraging technology to improve organizational outcomes
Volunteerism and volunteer management

Our goal is to provide content and perspectives that are applicable and relatable particularly to the following types of organizations: arts and cultural, corporations, foundations, healthcare institutions, higher education, K-12 schools, and nonprofits of all kinds. General approaches (e.g. email fundraising best practices) and specific approaches (e.g. email fundraising best practices for museums) are both encouraged.

Headlines

Write headlines with a goal of drawing in traffic and generating social media sharing (short is better). Headlines that are specific about what the reader can expect in the post often trumps creative yet vague titles. We can help you with that and your headline might be reviewed/modified before posting.

Style and Formatting

The structure and format of each article should be designed to enable maximum understanding of your topic in a compelling manner. In addition to being informative, posts should use clear and concise language and be written with “scannability” in mind. Guidelines include:

Word count of 750 – 1,500 (submissions with fewer than 500 words will not be accepted)
Break up large blocks of text with headings and subheadings
Bullet your major points where possible

Linking and Source Attribution

With our blog goal of being a credible source of information, it is important to support data, research claims and other key information. This can be done with hyperlinking your content to its online source. Text or phrases, if sourced out from either web or print resources, have to be attributed to the origin using hyperlinks.

While we do encourage links to outside blogs and websites that supports the content or issue being discussed, we aim to keep our blog free from promotional or advertorial type content. In line with our commitment to our readers that ENGAGE, best practices, not promotional or advertorial. Please keep the following in mind:

Guest bloggers from social good organizations can link to your organization’s website in your author bio and, if relevant, in the body of the post. No solicitations for support, financial or otherwise, should be made.
Guest bloggers from businesses, consulting agencies or elsewhere can link to your company’s website in your author bio and, if relevant, in the body of the post (no more than two links to your company’s website within the article). No direct references to products or services, please.
No more than three external links per article.
Internal linking to other ENGAGE blog posts is encouraged and appreciated.

ENGAGE editors reserve the right to edit any proposed backlinks included in an article.

Images

ENGAGE editors will choose the feature image to accompany each post, however you may submit an image for consideration if desired. You may also include other images (photos, charts, infographics) as long as you hold the copyright and/or can provide proof that the image is royalty-free. If the image requires credit, please provide the necessary sourcing information so it can be attributed properly.

Content Review Process

Submissions will receive of an initial review within two weeks of receipt.

For quality control and consistency, ENGAGE editors will review all submissions prior to publishing. If revisions are required, the draft will be returned to you with comments to be reviewed again prior to posting. In most cases it is to address the structure of the post, clarity and conciseness.

What We Can’t Post

While we encourage our guest bloggers to share their points-of-view we will not publish anything:

That has been published elsewhere. We will only post original content.
That is partisan in nature.
That may be considered promotional or advertorial in nature that highlights the benefits of one specific product or service over others.
That focuses on the author’s business model (for example, a fundraising consultant should not submit an article focused on why nonprofits need to hire fundraising consultants).
Deemed to be hateful or disrespectful of organizations, causes or individuals.

Republishing Your Article and Copyright

While we will only feature content that has not be previously published, we are happy to allow our published authors to repurpose their blog posts elsewhere with the following stipulations:

That there is a two-week window between time your blog post goes live on the ENGAGE website and the time it is published on another site.
All subsequent publications of your post must cite ENGAGE as the original source and provide a link to the original article. We also strongly encourage you to add a rel=canonical tag when possible.
ENGAGE does not provide monetary compensation for guest blogger articles.
Blackbaud and ENGAGE reserve the right to promote the article on multiple digital media channels, including social media, email and other Blackbaud-owned websites.

We do encourage all guest authors to share their articles on their own social media channels to gain greater exposure for their content and ideas.

Questions? Complete a general inquiry form below.