Today’s nonprofit landscape is filled with a whole lot of competition. There are numerous nonprofit organizations out there that are vying for limited funds. And that’s why you should make a concerted effort to set your organization apart through effective marketing and strong branding. Smart nonprofit Executive Directors consistently invest in marketing to avoid losing out on opportunities. In today’s podcast, Jane Pfeiffer from Fieldtrip and Stephen Halasnik from Financing Solutions discuss ‘nonprofit marketing: the cost of lost opportunities.
Summary
Nonprofit Marketing, the Cost of Lost Opportunities
Like for-profit businesses, marketing is critical for the growth and development of nonprofits. More often than not, owners of nonprofit organizations show little or no concern for marketing, believing that an investment in a marketing campaign is a waste of resources that would otherwise be plowed into the profits missions. But the truth remains that marketing is an essential investment strategy, and nonprofit leaders who consistently make a concerted effort towards marketing are recording great success stories in building sustainable nonprofits that deliver on their mission.
People need to hear, understand, and believe in your nonprofit mission. Therefore, it behooves you to create that awareness by building a solid brand that sets your organization apart from competitors. Leverage an effective marketing strategy to tell your story to many audiences so that you can change their mindset. There’s no other way you can get people’s buy-in than leveraging branding, effective communication, and advertising campaign.
What Is Nonprofit Marketing?
Nonprofit marketing is the use of marketing strategies by a nonprofit organization to advance its mission. The aim is to promote the organization and its message, raise funds, encourage membership, engage volunteers, and more.
Nonprofit marketing has become more important than ever. As more and more organizations with a similar mission are sprouting forth day by day, it becomes imperative that you engage in effective marketing to stand out from the pack. Marketing offers numerous benefits to nonprofits, including helping them to attract new supporters for their cause, connect to valuable donors, and inspire and engage their constituents. 
What Are the Benefits of Nonprofit Marketing?
Marketing is critical to the success of every nonprofit; it’s a way nonprofit organizations get their great work in front of people who are sympathetic to their cause. Through marketing, nonprofits identify potential supporters allowing them to get involved either by volunteering or donating. Below are the many, many benefits of nonprofit marketing:
Awareness Creation
Marketing helps you create awareness allowing like-minded individuals to know about your organization so they can support your mission.
In addition, some marketing tools allow you to get to know your community and understand people’s disposition about your organization or what they offer. For instance, your constituents might have innovative ideas to help support your mission and can also spread the message through your marketing platforms.
Promoting Fundraising
Marketing is deeply connected with fundraising. The more people get to know your organization, the more chances you will get more money to finance your programs. In addition, marketing helps you build a strong, recognizable, and resonating brand.
People tend to support organizations they recognize and trust. Plus, with marketing tools, you can set up online donations easily and quickly.
Volunteers Recruitment
Besides funding, nonprofit marketing helps you acquire talents and a workforce. In other words, regardless of the size and position of your nonprofit, you need employees in the form of volunteers to help cater to the many tasks your organization does.
Volunteers will more readily want to work with a nonprofit with a strong brand, and you can build your nonprofit branding through effective marketing.
Showcasing Your Service and Impact
Marketing allows you to communicate the services you offer to the people who need them most, helping you connect with people who can benefit from what your nonprofit provides.
On the other hand, marketing can also help you bring to the limelight the impact of your program to the public, which will foster trust and bring in more support.
What Are the Nonprofits Marketing Tools?
There are numerous marketing tools for nonprofits to leverage to get their mission in front of many audiences. Below are tools that facilitate nonprofit marketing:
- Email Marketing: This marketing strategy allows nonprofits to use personalized emails to educate their target audiences about their mission. In other words, you can leverage email to convince your audiences to support a specific cause in various ways.
- Video Marketing: As a nonprofit marketing technique, video marketing allows you to attract the interest of your audience through visuals. Video marketing is an effective way to inspire empathy and emotions, especially when done with storytelling.
- Social Media: It involves leveraging social media channels to showcase your brand and engage with supporters.
- Website: An agile and user-friendly website will allow users to access important information about your nonprofit at a glimpse. In other words, people will quickly know what you stand for and how they can reach out to support your mission.
- Content Marketing: This is the practice of using SEO-optimized content to educate your audiences about your mission, cause, news, trend, and more.
How to Set Up Your nonprofit Marketing Strategies
Creating an effective nonprofit marketing plan demands you put a system in place to get a desirable result.
Here’s how to create a successful nonprofit marketing Strategy.
Define Your Nonprofit Marketing Goals
Defining your goals beforehand will help keep you on track with your marketing effort. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
For example, do you want to increase your online donation by 60% or do you want to acquire 70 new donors, or do you aim to convert 30% of one-time donors to recurring donors?
Understand Your Audience
Once you have defined your goals, the next thing you’ll want to do is to study your audience to understand what makes them tick, their giving history, the type of message that resonates with them, and more.
The information you gathered will help give you valuable insight that will aid your decision.
Craft and Put Out Your Message
After sifting through your data, you can create compelling messages that resonate with your target audiences. Ensure that the voice and tone of your message are a true reflection of your brand. Plus, the information you put forward aligns with your nonprofit mission.
In addition, leverage the marketing channels your target audience uses the most to achieve a great result.
Measure Marketing Effort
Although your efforts might not bring forth immediate results, it’s pertinent you routinely assess and analyze the performance of your marketing effort to ascertain what’s working, what needs to be improved, and what you need to change.
Have your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) on which you can measure your nonprofit marketing campaign.
Learn About Our Guest
Jane is the Founder and President of Fieldtrip, an Advertising Firm that is a cause-driven agency that amplifies nonprofits and the impact they make. Fieldtrip and its staff dig in deep and develop meaningful solutions.
Learn More About Stephen Halasnik
Stephen Halasnik is the host of the popular Nonprofit MBA Podcast. The Nonprofit MBA podcast’s purpose is to help nonprofit leaders and their teams. Stephen is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Financing Solutions, a leading provider of loans for nonprofits in the form of a Line of Credit. Stephen is a best-selling Amazon author and is considered a leading authority on building great, purpose-driven businesses.
Stephen lives in New Jersey, and his top life mission is to raise his two sons, Michael and Maxwell, to be good men.
