Mission-Driven Marketing Basics

The “Season of Giving” is kicking into high gear. Marketers at nonprofit organizations are in the midst of their busy season and are seeing their hard work pay off as people choose which organizations to support with their year-end donations. As critical as this season is, it’s not the only time nonprofits need support. But as any nonprofit marketer can surely attest, getting the message out the rest of the year can be a challenge.

Fortunately, there are some tactics and tools marketing leaders at nonprofits can use to keep their organization top-of-mind. And the good news is that most don’t need a large team or budget to try them out.

First, Let’s Dispel a Myth: Yes, You Do Have Content
When we’ve worked with nonprofits on boosting their online presence we often hear that “we just don’t have the content.” That turns out not to be the case more often than not. It’s just a matter of taking another look at the information you do have.

Statistics and graphs from annual reports can become social posts with a few tweaks. Historical photos can find a home on your social feeds, your newsletters, or both. Having an event? Take pictures and ask participants for a quote while you’re there. Ask your supporters to share stories, photos, art, and videos and showcase them on your marketing channels.

Do a formal inventory of your content and keep your findings in a spreadsheet. You can use that as a guide for when you’re feeling stuck or wondering if you ever produced a certain piece or merely thought about doing it (we’ve all been there).

Another way to get content? Go talk to people! Interview your staff, program participants, or ask a development officer to request a testimonial from a few donors. Stay in the loop with other areas of the organization. Reach out to program staff regularly to check in on progress they’re making toward a goal, recent wins, or other relevant stories that could be turned into compelling content.

Make a Plan and Document It
Once you know what you have you’ll need to figure out how you want to use it. (We have a few suggestions in the rest of this blog post). Creating a content strategy and a content calendar can help even small teams get a handle on developing and sharing content.

Our advice is to look at the year as a whole first and note any major milestones or events you know will be important for your organization. Think about what’s actually doable with the resources you have, and plan out some loose themes to work with.

One important caveat: don’t be so rigid with your plans that you can’t respond to current events or trends that are right for your brand. It’s okay to stray from your calendar a little here and there for the right reasons.

Share Your Story on Social
Organic social media is a great way to build and connect with an audience without a media spend impacting your budget. A consistent presence — regular posting, using images and language that are on brand, using appropriate hashtags — can help share what an organization is all about. If that’s where your social media presence stops, that’s okay, but you should consider taking advantage of some powerful fundraising tools within the platforms themselves.

Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok all have options organizations can use to raise money for their cause. In 2021, TikTok raised $7 million in donations for nonprofits. Using built-in fundraising tools makes it easy for your audience to see, donate, and share your fundraiser all from one platform using just their phone. (Which, by the way, is how lots of younger donors prefer to give.)

Using social media and inviting your audience to share a story with a specific hashtag or comment on your posts is also an excellent way to gather user-generated content that can be shared in other marketing efforts as well.

Use Email Effectively
Email can be an essential part of your mission-driven marketing toolkit. For example, your organization’s regular email newsletter could be the perfect place to not only share your success but also some of the stories you have gathered on social channels.

A more targeted way to use email is by creating different audience segments and building out a series of emails focused on what they care about most. The people who are donating through your social campaigns? Send them an update on the initiative, or a series of welcome emails to help introduce your organization. Maybe some donors are very interested in a certain aspect of your organization more than others. Create an email list segmented by interest area and develop messages that speak to those interests.

The important thing to remember for those types of email streams is to keep your messages short, engaging, and actionable.

Finally, it may go without saying but we’re going to say it anyway: Follow up with thank you messages to your donors, even those not making significant gifts. It goes a long way toward building and maintaining goodwill and is an opportunity to share another story about the impact their gift has. The caveat here is to make sure you and your development officers are on the same page to avoid any awkward double messages or worse, contradictory messages. We’ve heard tales of overzealous officers sending thank-yous via email, text, and phone messages all to one donor. That may be ok for larger gifts, but if a small donor feels bombarded it could have a negative effect overall.

Enhance Your Annual Reports
Speaking of engaging, take a look at your annual report. Is it long blocks of text on long blocks of text with a few pictures and graphs? Or, does it feel more like paging through a magazine?

The right layout and design can transform your annual report into a highly informative, useful piece of content that your board, leadership team, donors, and anyone who encounters it actually enjoys looking through. Here again is an excellent opportunity to showcase your success by including photos, stories, and messages from people you’ve impacted. If your report is distributed online, could it include video snippets or links to relevant information?

Delivering something unexpected yet on brand can make an excellent impression whether people reading it are new to your organization or longtime supporters.

Have an Impact on Any Budget
This post has focused on marketing efforts that don’t involve paid media buys, but we would be remiss to leave out digital advertising, specifically advertising through the Google Grants program. It allows nonprofit organizations to run ads through Google at a value of up to $10k per month for text-based search ads. Because there are a lot of limitations on who can run ads and what they can advertise, setting up and managing a Google Grants account can get a little tricky. If you don’t have someone to manage these ads on staff, this might be a good time to call in some outside help from an agency.

Whether you choose to add digital ads to the mix or stick to other efforts, these ideas should be adaptable for nearly any team and budget.

Of course, if you need a hand figuring out the right mix for your organization, get in touch with CID for an assist.