Marketing in nonprofits: a necessary evil? Try essential.

Flickr / EmaStudios

I saw three separate, yet intertwined posts this week highlighting the importance of marketing in nonprofit organizations.

In an insightful post, Sasha Dichter dissects the difference in respect given to nonprofit program staff as compared to those responsible for an organization’s marketing and development.  Her take?  All too often, the attitude is that:

“Program” is where the people who do the “real” work go, the ones with the PhDs who really know what’s going on and what works.  The development staff just run off and package the “real work.”  Ancillary and low status.

She goes on to discuss why this viewpoint is misguided:

When done right, marketing helps us discover solutions to our problems, influences how people see the world, and helps them make decisions.  When done wrong, it’s peddling something someone doesn’t quite need and quickly regrets buying.

Network for Good’s Katya Andresen makes a similar point, likening marketing to the spine of an organization:

In treating marketing as a decorative and disconnected afterthought, we deprive ourselves of the great benefits that marketing thinking can bring to the entire spectrum of our work.  A marketing mindset can help us design more effective projects, better meet the needs of people we want to help, win us more resources and support and motivate people to act.  Failing to incorporate marketing into the earliest stages of our work often means we’re left to market a product or idea that is so far removed from our audiences’ interests and reality that no amount of sales savvy can get people to buy.

Best practices aside, new research underscores the fact that marketing can be a nonprofit’s saving grace during tough economic patches.

The Johns Hopkins University Nonprofit Listening Post Project recently found that while the recession was putting intense pressure on nonprofits, those that pursued entrepreneurial strategies and marketed them effectively were more likely to be successful than those who just cut back.

You can read a summary of the report’s findings or download the full report (pdf).

The upshot?  It’s more critical than ever that nonprofits build marketing into their strategic planning process. It’s not optional and should never be sidelined.

Forget the glitz. Reach people on their terms.

Flickr / karenwithak

As anyone who’s dieted or initiated a New Year’s resolution knows all too well, unless you really want to make a change, it’s unlikely that the change will stick.

By the same token, it’s unrealistic to expect that just because you put a new technology out there, your audience will flock to you. They may check it out, but unless your new approach fits into how they normally gather information, they’re unlikely to keep coming back for more.

So, before you make an investment in a new technology (and each one IS an investment because even the free ones take time to learn and manage), it’s critical that you understand how your audience communicates now. Where do they get their information?

Remember: When you assume, you…

Many of us think we understand our audience. But do we? In a Philanthropy Journal post, blogger Stacy Jones makes just this point.

As she puts it:

No matter who the intended audience may be, the reality is that nonprofits are often faced with more questions about their audience than they have answers. In response to uncertainty, nonprofits make assumptions, guess about their audience’s habits and find they struggle to get the word out about their organization. Conducting market research is the key to unlocking the answers and getting to know your audience better. Market research can be simple, informative and even affordable.

Jones advocates a few time-tested solutions:

• Track what’s working.
• Survey your own constituency.
• Conduct focus groups.
• Talk to others.

If your research supports it, by all means, launch a new social network on Ning.  Connect through Facebook. Post videos on YouTube and share them via Twitter.

But if it doesn’t, stick with what works. Write your newsletter with such vibrancy that your audience wouldn’t think of casting it aside. Your goal is to forge connections. But in the end, your audience will decide how best to connect with you.

Make it easy for them.

How to ensure your newsletter is *not* read

White space focuses attention on your content

Have you ever pitched aside a newsletter because its text was too dense?  I have.  I do it all the time.

I’m not alone.

It’s a shame, really, because the stories in those newsletters may be packed with good information.  I’ll never know because their editors committed a critical mistake.  In their efforts to save space, and in turn, money, they overlooked the importance of white space.

White space – the blank area around blocks of text or other design elements – gives context or meaning to the words it surrounds.  It helps focus your attention.

When Writing, Less is More
Incorporating white space is a tactic used all the time by high-end retailers. Think of an upscale brand – Tiffany & Co., Hermès, Jimmy Choo.  Their shelves are uncluttered. Peaceful. Each shelf displays a single item, transforming it from a potential purchase into a work of art.  Much like a gallery, the eye has place to rest and take in the unique nature character of each piece on display.

Translate that experience into writing.  If constructed correctly, each story in your newsletter should be a gem: informative, actionable.  But if that information is crammed into a too-small space, no one will notice it.  Unless they have a clear reason for wanting to dig for the good stuff, people will leave.  Your newsletter just became the written version of TJ Maxx.

I’ll be blunt: this is going to mean more work.  Writing concisely is always more difficult than writing at length because the words you retain must be more descriptive.  There’s no room for imprecision.  You have to make hard choices.

But as Keith Robertson points out in his essay “On White Space”:

“The image of what you present is more important than the paper you could be saving.”

And when it can spell the difference between your newsletter being read or pitched, making room for white space is a smart investment indeed.