Ben Delaney's Nonprofit Marketing Handbook, Second Edition: A hands-on guide to marketing & communications in nonprofit organizations

Ben Delaney’s

Nonprofit Marketing Handbook

Second Edition

About this eBook Edition:

We have omitted the index in the eBook Edition. This was done due to the shifting of page numbers that occur when the file is viewed on different devices. If you need to locate a specific word, term, or name, please use the search function of your eBook reader.

Ben Delaney’s

Nonprofit Marketing Handbook

Second Edition

The hands-on guide to communications and marketing in nonprofit organizations

By Ben Delaney

© 2018 Ben Delaney, CyberEdge Information Services

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5136-3555-2

Paperbound ISBN: 978-1-5136-3554-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018906090

The publisher encourages and grants permission for the distribution and reproduc­tion of excerpts of this work, up to 500 words, at no charge for non-commercial purposes. Such copies, in whatever form, must be unmodified and in their entirety, including copyright notice and full attri­bution. Any adaptation, derivative work, or any other modification requires prior written approval by the publisher.

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CyberEdge Information Services, Oakland, CA USA

510 419-0800

www.BenDelaney.com

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@BenDelaneyNow

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Cover and interior design by Ck Kuebel Design: www.kuebel.com

Acknowledgements

Thanks to…

Debbie Bardon, who thought I could lead and grow a social enterprise.

Kathy Cole of West Wind Consulting for helping me better understand important aspects of nonprofit messaging.

John Griffin, who, as Publisher of PC WORLD, introduced me to market research and statistical analysis.

Carol Soker Hunt, of Carol Soker & Associates, taught me everything I know about media and how one buys and evaluates it.

Michael Hunt did the proofreading on the first edition. If anything is still wrong, it’s because I didn’t do what he suggested. My bad. Michael has left us and is greatly missed.

Daniel Kennedy of Daniel Kennedy Communications opened many doors for me, and offered many important tips on how to make public and press relations work for an organization.

Ck Kuebel, for her valuable assistance in editing the manuscript, frequent suggestions for content and presentation, and for the excellent graphic design she provides to keep me looking my best.

Gerd Meissner has provided a whole host of valuable tips and tricks and has been an invaluable sounding board for many of the ideas in this book.

Ray Schaaf, who was the first to trust me with a Marketing Director title.

Armando Zumaya, who taught me everything I know about fundraising and development, as well as some important lessons on diplomacy.

Philip Arca, Tobias Beckwith, Jan Cohen, and Kathy Looper all read parts of this new edition and provided valuable insights and suggestions.

Thanks also to the many reviewers who showed me once again that LinkedIn is an incredible community. They provided valuable input and insight that have made this a much better book.

And to the many others who have helped me on my journey, selflessly sharing their love and knowledge, and showing me that you don’t need a fortune to change someone’s life for the better.

Building a Successful Nonprofit MarCom Program

About this book

There are more than a million nonprofit organizations in the United States. Every one of them needs to tell its story, find clients, solicit donations, sell services, and encourage its volunteers. Yet few have a marketing department, and many face serious challenges in meeting their communications and marketing goals.

When I was hired to be the first ever marketing and communications director for a San Francisco nonprofit engaged in public school reform, I searched Amazon and my local bookstores for a guidebook. With more than 30 years of marketing experience, I was comfortable that I knew my craft – but I wanted some counsel on what marketing and communications (MarCom) was like in the nonprofit world. I was terribly disappointed. The few books available that addressed the issue were dry as dust – academic tomes that seemed to be a hundred years old. Still, I bought the most-praised. And was I ever frustrated. The author, authoritative, knowledgeable and didactic, struck a note of ivory-tower purity that had little in common with the down and dirty, hectic, pressure-filled, and deadline dependent world of marketing in which I had worked for so many years. And indeed, when I started my new job I found that marketing in a nonprofit was a lot like the work I had done for dozens of high-tech companies and startups. It was not dry and dead. It was full of life, replete with exacting requirements, personality issues, cultural sensitivities, and impossible deadlines.

After I left that job, ironically the victim of my own successes (I couldn’t convince them to raise prices on their events and services, and so, the more seats I filled the more money they lost.), I decided that I could help the next me, the nonprofit MarCom initiate, by sharing what I have learned and summarizing what that person needs to do, and how to do it successfully in the nonprofit environment.

Addressed to the MarCom manager in small to medium sized nonprofits, this book assumes that the reader has little formal knowledge of marketing. In plain language, it provides a hands-on reference that can be referred to frequently, providing checklists and actionable tips to make marketing easier and more effective.

In this Second Edition, I have updated information that was out of date, and added a brief discussion and a table of resources for marketing automation. In addition, there is a new chapter on a critical aspect on nonprofit MarCom – Crisis Communications Management (page 133). Finally, this edition is fully indexed to make it easier to use.

I start by comparing cultures and continue through the basic concepts, tools, and processes that ensure success in nonprofit MarCom. I offer tips on choosing marketing tools and how to use them effectively. I conclude with a glossary, and index, and additional resources for the nonprofit marketing team.

I hope this helpful to you. Let me know at [email protected].

1

Introduction:

System Marketing™ Your Key to Success

Why integrating communications into every activity gives you way more bang for the buck.

System Marketing™ means that your marketing is a system, in the same way that your financial procedures form a system. In either case, the specific task is aware of, and is informed by, the total organization. Everything affects everything – it’s all connected.

System Marketing directs that you align your goals, procedures, and communications to all pull in the same direction, with verbal, nonverbal, electronic, and print messages, and staff attitudes, all reinforcing the same message. It ensures that everyone in the organizations is speaking with one voice.

Most importantly, System Marketing requires a deep understanding of the marketplace and the customer, and the ability to address the customer’s expressed, implied and inferred needs and desires. This requires research. That research may be as simple as a comment sheet on your front counter, or as complex as a multivariate, blind, controlled test. The cost typically varies with the number of words used to describe the research.

For example, putting a comment sheet on your front counter requires nothing more than a piece of paper, a pen, and some Scotch tape. It will result in some of your customers providing valuable insights into your operation at minimal expense. The multivariate, blind, controlled test will probably take several people several months, will require a series of letters after the authors’ names, will result in a colorful bound report with footnotes, and will cost appropriately. In either case, when research is done thoughtfully and with well-defined goals, it is almost always worth the money.

Let me give you an example of how research helps. A while back I was asked to provide a campaign to increase interest in and visits to a nice retirement home in Marin County, California. As I talked with the staff, I realized that they had only the vaguest of ideas about why people chose to live there, or not. So we started asking some questions.

First we conducted a written survey of the current residents, asking them what they liked about living there, along with a few other questions. We also asked where they had lived before. From this we gained a lot of insight. As expected, people liked the beautiful grounds and that it was easy to get into town for shopping. The food was good, as were interactions with the staff. What surprised us was the most important factor in the move-in decision: People who lived there really liked that they could bring their own furniture!

We then sent out a postal mailing to a large population. I don’t remember the exact number, but we mailed to more than 10,000 people over age 55, within a 40 mile radius of the facility. Why 40 miles? Because that’s average maximum distance from which residents had come. Some had come from farther, but more than 80% had previously lived within 40 miles.

The mailing included a brochure illustrated with professional photos, taken on the grounds, of people who actually lived there, sporting the headline, Come Home to the [Facility]. We emphasized the hot-button items we knew about from the survey: just like home, extra secure and safe, bring your favorite furniture, close to your friends and family, and a familiar landscape.

This became the most successful direct mail effort I have ever done. We received a 24% response rate, and a 10% conversion rate, thereby beating expectations by a mile, and filling the waiting list. I am convinced that the research set the tone that enabled this successful effort. But equally important was the participation and buy-in of the staff, the truthfulness of the messaging, and the ability of the intake staff to model exactly what people expected. That’s System Marketing at work!

System Marketing in your organization

Your organization can establish System Marketing as SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). Do the research needed to truly know your customers, the marketplace, and the outside factors that impact that marketplace. Share staff knowledge about current customer-facing processes and communications. Listen to complaints, and don’t dismiss them as trivial. Be sure everybody is involved and heard. Review your mission, vision, objectives and impact statement to be sure they are current and actually reflect what you do and want to do, and how it happens.

Then you can unify communications and attitudes. Attitudes are important because a large part of your customer and prospect communications is old fashioned conversation, as well as emails and other personal interaction. It is essential that everyone understands and buys in to the official message, and is able to reflect it in every action and utterance including answering the phone, responding to an email,