Bruce Stapleton - Author

"None of this requires being a perfect parent. It requires being a present one."

That line is at the heart of this week's blog post, and honestly, at the heart of Fathering Strong too. I wrote the book because I spent years focused on providing for my kids and almost missed the chance to actually connect with them — and I know I'm not the only dad who's felt that.

This week's post breaks down how that bond shifts as your kids grow, with real stories from raising my own four kids. If you've got a few minutes, give it a read (link below) — and if you want the full framework behind it, Fathering Strong is where I lay it all out.

A test I ask every nonprofit leader I work with to try, straight from Chapter 16:

Pull up your own homepage right now. Imagine you've never heard of your organization before. You have 15 seconds.

Can you tell who they are? What they do? Why you should care?

Most websites fail that test — not because the people who built them weren't thoughtful, but because they were written from the inside out, organized around how staff think instead of how a first-time visitor searches.

In *Nonprofit Marketing Excellence*, I make the case that your website isn't a brochure sitting off to the side of your marketing. It's the hub everything else — social media, search, email, ads — is quietly working to feed. Get the hub right, and every other channel you run starts paying off in a way it never did before.

This week's article walks through the full framework, Figure Step 4.1, and the exact sequence for turning a visit into a lasting relationship.

So — be honest. What did *you* find when you ran the 15-second test on your own homepage? Tell me below. (Article link in the comments.) 🙌

📘 *Nonprofit Marketing Excellence* — https://books.by/bruce-stapleton

New on the blog this week: how to build a stronger bond with your kids at any age — from toddlers to young adults.

It's one of the ideas I care most about in Fathering Strong: that the relationship you build with your kids isn't a box to check, it's the thing that shapes how they see themselves for the rest of their lives. This post walks through what I've learned about presence, listening, and the small habits that actually stick.

Read the full post (link below), and if it resonates, Fathering Strong goes a lot deeper on this and five other core areas of intentional fatherhood. Would love to hear which part hits home for you.

I've sat with a lot of nonprofit leaders who are proud of their marketing push — the social calendar is full, the search ranking is climbing, the Google Ad Grant is finally running — and still can't explain why so little of it turns into real supporters.

Almost every time, the answer isn't the channels. It's what those channels are pointing to.

One story stuck with me while I was writing Chapter 16 of *Nonprofit Marketing Excellence*: a communications director who inherited a website that was quietly working against her organization. Seventy percent of visitors left after one page. Her Ad Grant campaigns — real budget, real clicks — were landing people on pages that couldn't convert. The website wasn't neutral. It was a barrier.

Chapter 16 became the one I most wanted teams to read before they spent another dollar on a new platform. It's built around a single image — **Figure Step 4.1** — the hub-and-spoke model. Your website is the hub. Social media, search, and email are spokes that only pay off if the hub is ready to catch what they send it: a purpose-built landing page, a real lead magnet, and an automated sequence that keeps building the relationship after someone leaves the page.

This week's article walks through that whole system. Link in the comments. If you've ever wondered why your marketing "isn't working" even though you're doing everything right, this is the chapter I wrote for you. 💙

📘 *Nonprofit Marketing Excellence* — https://books.by/bruce-stapleton

A question I keep coming back to in Chapter 14 — and one I'd love to ask you directly:

What's the one piece of content you keep meaning to make, but never quite get to?

Maybe it's the how-to guide people always ask for. The FAQ. That one participant's story you've been carrying around for a year. Sit with it for a second — because nine times out of ten, that gap is your best next post. It never gets made, not because it doesn't matter, but because every week turns into a scramble.

In Nonprofit Marketing Excellence I make the case that consistency doesn't come from working harder — it comes from a system. Four kinds of content working together, a calendar sized to your actual team, and a simple habit of batching so the "someday" pieces finally get made. Do that, and content stops draining your team and starts carrying your mission.

This week's article walks through exactly how to build that system without burning out.

Share your answer below — I genuinely want to know what's been sitting on your list. (Article link in the comments.) 🙌

📘 Nonprofit Marketing Excellence — https://movementum.com/book/

The best thing you can do for your kids isn't a bigger house or a better school district. It's to love their mother.

Children draw their deepest security not from what you provide, but from watching their mom be cherished and their dad stay faithful. "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." (Ephesians 5:25)

That's why I devoted an entire chapter of Fathering Strong: God's Blueprint for Leading Your Family to building a marriage that lasts — the covenant foundation, sacrificial love, communicating and resolving conflict well, and protecting your closeness through every season. Real tools, and real stories of couples who found their way back to each other.

This week's blog post gives you a taste. The book gives you the whole blueprint.

📖 Fathering Strong is available now. Start with the free Fatherhood Self-Assessment at fatheringstrongbook.com — five minutes, honest results. Get the free 90-Day Devotional app with daily audio devotions when you purchase the Fathering Strong book from the link in the comments.

Tag a husband who needs the reminder today. 🙏

For a while, my wife and I had become excellent roommates — and forgotten how to be married.

We could run a whole day on logistics: who's picking up which kid, what's for dinner, who's more tired. Nothing was wrong. But nothing was close, either. One night it hit me that we hadn't had a real conversation — the kind that isn't about a task — in weeks.

Genesis 2:24 says a husband and wife become "one flesh." One. Before the kids, beneath the kids, holding up the kids — your marriage is the load-bearing wall of the home. And your children feel whether that wall is solid long before they could ever explain it.

That's the heart of Chapter 12 of Fathering Strong: God's Blueprint for Leading Your Family — and it's what this week's blog post is all about.

📖 Read this week's post, then grab a copy of the book. Free Fatherhood Self-Assessment at fatheringstrongbook.com.

👉 What's one small habit that keeps your marriage close in the busy years? Share below.

I've lost count of how many times I've heard a version of the same story.

Someone takes over communications at a small nonprofit, gets told to "be more active online," and pours themselves into it — posting daily, chasing every awareness week, writing long captions late into the evening. Six months later they're exhausted, the numbers haven't moved, and a board member asks the question that stings: "So what are we actually getting out of all this?"

And there's no good answer. Because there was plenty of activity — but no strategy.

When I was writing Nonprofit Marketing Excellence, Chapter 14 became the one I most wanted overworked teams to have. It's not "post more." It's a content system a two-person shop can actually sustain — built on four kinds of content that work as one cycle, a publishing schedule sized to the team you really have, and the batching and repurposing tricks that let you create once and publish many times.

The heart of it is one question I'd ask before publishing anything: does this help us serve our community better — or does it just make us look more impressive?

This week's article is a hands-on walkthrough of that whole system. Link in the comments. If you've ever felt like your content is a treadmill you can't step off, this is the chapter I wrote for you. 💙

The Bible has more than 2,000 verses about money — more than it says about faith and prayer combined.

Not because God is preoccupied with our wallets, but because how a father handles money reveals what he truly trusts.

That's why I devoted an entire chapter of Fathering Strong: God's Resource for Leading Your Family to financial stewardship — the five areas of faithful money management, a step-by-step process for building a God-centered budget, and real stories of dads who went from financial stress to peace.

Like Tom, who eliminated $15,000 of debt in eighteen months, or James, whose weekly money fights gave way to weekly budget meetings and prayer.

This week's article gives you a taste of it. The book gives you the whole blueprint.
📖 Fathering Strong is available on Amazon. Start with the free Fatherhood Self-Assessment at fatheringstrongbook.com — five minutes, honest results.
Tag a dad who's carrying a financial weight right now. 🙏

Here's a question I put near the heart of Chapter 12, and one I'd love to ask you directly:

What's the one thing your organization does that you'd be devastated to see another group claim as their signature?

Sit with it for a second. That instinct — the thing you'd fight to keep — is almost always the beginning of a great message pillar. It's the idea worth building your whole story around.

In Nonprofit Marketing Excellence I make the case that the strongest nonprofit messaging rests on just 3–4 of these pillars: distinctive, memorable, evidence-based, relevant, and true right now. Get them right and everything downstream — your website, your appeals, your team's hallway conversations — starts reinforcing the same story instead of five different ones.

This week's article walks through how to choose yours, and the common mistakes that quietly undo them once you have.

Share your answer below — I genuinely want to hear what makes your work unmistakably yours. (Article link in the comments.) 🙌

📘 Nonprofit Marketing Excellence — https://movementum.com/book/