Starting Point - Marketing Nonprofits

Many of us spend countless hours serving on boards, working on committees, and volunteering for good local causes. Not because we want something in return, but to improve the overall good of our communities. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, more than 1.5 million nonprofit organizations are currently registered in the United States. 

We know there are mega organizations and unfortunately, there are some who might be less than reputable. For our discussion’s sake, let’s focus on the 60% of the organizations in the middle. This gives us 900,000 public charities, private foundations, and other types of nonprofit organizations, including chambers of commerce, fraternal organizations and civic leagues. 

When it comes to helping out with fundraising, advertising or promoting causes, many boards, committees and/or volunteers struggle to understand where and how to get started. If this topic interests you, read ahead and let’s see if we can’t get that ball rolling…

Marketing Discussion

Your non-profit might consider working aggressively, using multiple marketing initiatives simultaneously to promote your services, efforts and your mission. Let’s never consider the idea that suggests nonprofits shouldn’t employ marketing enterprises to actively promote themselves. Marketing a good cause is an honorable endeavor and legitimate causes offering a strong value proposition to those in need, should let the world know what they’re doing and what they need to do it.

As an organization actively seeking support, your staff and supporters should be in the business of persuasion. A high priority should be placed on consistently becoming more educated to the cause and convincing, so the organization becomes better at encouraging people and businesses to donate, support, or partner with its mission to advance the success of your cause at every stage of business development. While doing so, your organization should always stay true to its core mission.

Building an effective marketing plan will allow you to meet your audience where they are both physically and mentally. Messaging should represent your organization honestly and promise only what the organization can deliver. In that way, you’ll quickly gain a competitive advantage over other nonprofits marketing themselves in less than reputable ways, i.e.: promising what they can’t deliver. 

To get the most out of your marketing efforts there should be a well-organized and strategic marketing plan. In order to do so, you’ll first need to do some analysis.

When it comes to marketing, what is the current state of affairs within the organization? What’s available, how is it being used, what’s actually happening and what’s not? What's the return?

Next, we should define your audience. You should know know from your mission statement, your prospective clients’ makeup, needs, demographics, structures, geography, etc.

Who else is there? Who comprises your existing and potential donor base? Do you have volunteers who’ll regularly come in to assist with projects? Are there specific people or businesses you’d like to target for particular programs? What about local officials or top executives you’d like to have embrace your mission? 

Strongly consider being targeted and honest in creating a list of everyone your organization comes into contact with and how that contact came to be. This list will help determine what you should be saying to them, when and how it should be said.

Now, we should define the organization’s messages. Since we’ve identified to whom we’re talking, lets time to map out what messages we want to communicate to them. Consider the following:

• What is our tagline? Does it effectively brand the cause?
• Do we have mission and vision statements? How do we promote them?
• Elevator pitch? How do we consistently describe our impact in 20-30 seconds?
• Are we all congruent with our messaging, mission and branding?
• Who’s writing our messages? How effective and consistent have the messages been? 

Test: Ask several staff members, volunteers and others involved: What does the organization do? How are we different? Then, ask a few of your supporters these same two questions. Varying opinions may be eye-opening. 

Goal: Everyone’s on the same page. We want everyone correctly repeating your true identity.

Once all of this data is gathered it won’t be of much value unless it’s put to use. We should now gauge the quality and effectiveness of the organization’s marketing communications. Some of your previous research may drive this analysis, but we’ll want to be sure to cover some basic branding considerations:

• Are the messages, graphic treatments and logos consistent? 
• Are your communications brief and on point?
• Are the materials how you want them to be? What should be changed?
• Are your graphic elements sharp and compelling? Are you always using photos?
• Do we perceive the organization the same way others see it? 
• How is this perception reflected in your messaging?
• Are your communications heavily weighted on fundraising vs. other types of outreach?
• Does your tagline set you apart from comparably structured organizations?

Are there any audiences you hadn’t considered prior to this fact-finding?

Setting Goals & Building a Plan

An organized plan should aptly support itself. For every goal there will be objectives; every objective should be obtained by employing specific strategies. Be careful to guard against using the terms goal, objective and strategy interchangeably.  These terms are not the same and a lack of precision with these tactics can create problems.

Goals - A goal is where you want to be within any given area of your organization’s existence. While attaining a goal signifies the end of a specific plan; objectives and strategies are the means to attaining the goals.

Objectives - Objectives are more focused, specific and most importantly, result in measurable outcomes. More often than not, you’ll require multiple objectives to attain a single goal. Objectives always begin with action verbs and should include four parts: identify a specific audience; have a measurable outcome; a set a level of attainment and always; have a deadline.

Strategies - Strategies are how the work gets done. One strategy should never be enough to fully accomplish a particular objective.  However, it’s not unusual for a single strategy to serve varying objectives. In this case, your strategies will be comprised mostly of marketing communication channels including, but not limited to: press releases, SEM, brochures, pitches, newsletters, PPC, blogs, websites, videos, emails, print ads and much more.

Finally, its time continue with suggestions of various initiatives from which your organization may begin to engineer a strong, strategic marketing plan with little to no monetary investment. There are many ideas and initiatives which tie to the idea of grass-roots efforts which tend to work very well within committee settings and non-profit organization. Your plan outline should work as a fluid document which can be added to/deleted from as the time and events progresses throughout the coming year and, as well, for years to come.

Looking for freelance help creating an organizational analysis or marketing plan for your nonprofit organization or small business? Contact Andy Brennan at: 904-742-5621 or [email protected] - I'll be happy to help.