A Marketing Plan for ComputerCORE

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make a single copy of this material for your own
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Nonprofit Marketing 101

• Presented by
  Joel Zimmerman
• July 2006

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Agenda

• Explore the fundamentals of nonprofit marketing
• See how nonprofit marketing compares to classical
  commercial marketing
• Understand the elements that contribute to
  successful marketing
• Think about what needs to be in your nonprofit
  marketing plan

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Perspective

• If you are a nonprofit organization that is
  receiving grants or donations, and using
  volunteers, you are doing marketing, for better
  or for worse
• Marketing is one of those things that everyone
  seems to know, yet very few truly know well
• Having a marketing plan is a sign of a nonprofit
  organizations maturity

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More Perspective

• This discussion is focusing on marketing to
  individual donors
• Marketing to foundations and corporations is
  related, but the principles on some of the slides
  would go off in slightly different directions

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What is marketing?

• Basic principles

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What is a Market?

• A market is any place where people exchange
  commodities that have value (products, services,
  money)

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What is Marketing?

• Marketing is a set of activities that
• Demonstrate the value of your products and
  services to your customers so they will want to
  trade with you
• Promote and encourage an exchange of valued
  commodities

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Why Nonprofit Marketing is More Complicated

• In nonprofit, you do not trade directly with your
  customers
• Your funders and supporters act as surrogate
  traders for your customers

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Hey, Thats How Fundraising Relates to Marketing!
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Two Challenges for Nonprofit Marketing

• Making product and services valuable to customers
  (clients)
• Aka motivating your customers
• Providing donors and volunteers something they
  see as valuable for which they will give you
  money (or in-kind donation) or direct service
• Aka motivating your
  donors and volunteers

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Two Dimensions of Motivating Donors and Volunteers
Patriotism
Religious Reasons
The organization is effectively fulfilling its
mission and serving its customers. I want to be
part of this success.
Guilt or Compassion
Altruism
Tax Breaks
Surrogate Motivation
Personal Motivations
Personal Relevance
Enjoyment
Personal Gain
Anger
Fear
Reasons to Trade with You (How Much?)
Reasons to Leave You
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Donors Make TwoImportant Decisions

• Am I going to support this nonprofit
• Or, within this space (e.g., veterans, animal
  welfare, cancer treatment), which ONE of the
  nonprofits will I support
• Driven by the surrogate motivator
• How much will I give them
• Driven by the personal motivators

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Donors Support Success, Not Needs

• Remember from earlier
• The organization is effectively
  fulfilling its mission and
  serving its customers. I want
  to be part of this success.
• It did NOT say
• The organization is concerned with a worthy
  cause. They deserve a donation.
• People support success!

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Side Note Commercial Component

• Some nonprofits have a commercial side
• Schools charge tuition
• Theaters sell tickets
• Museums have gift shops

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Few Nonprofits are Successful as Both Nonprofit
and For-Profit Marketers

• Despite common fundamental principles, different
  skills and practices are required
• Slides to follow will note some of the points
  where important differences are

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The Elements of Your Marketing Program
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How To Demonstrate Value to Your Customers

• What people want and need
• Attractive package
• Convincing promotion
• Product excellence
• Fair price
• These are the classical 5 Ps that define
  commercial marketing

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Nonprofit Translations

• People
• Clients, donors, volunteers, board members
• Packaging
• Branding
• Promotion
• Campaigns and appeals
• Product
• Competitive success
• Pricing
• Fundraising

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Coming Up

• Look at these 5 Ps for nonprofit marketing
• Add a sixth P
• Process The operational aspects of how your
  nonprofit does its marketing
• Follow along on the mind map

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First Step

• A Marketing Plan

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Why a Nonprofit Should Have a Marketing Plan

• To ensure a consistent influx of resources (time
  and money) in return for the organizations
  products by making all its marketing efforts
  effective and coordinated
• Especially, to enhance fundraising effectiveness
• To assist in attracting and retaining volunteers
  and board members

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Why a Nonprofit Should Have a Marketing Plan

• To force the nonprofit to take a broad look at
  its marketing situation strengths, weaknesses,
  gaps
• To encourage the nonprofit to prioritize weak
  points, consider how to shore them up, and
  encourage action-oriented goals to do so
• Every plan includes
• Research Where are we now?
• Planning Where should we go?

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Why a Nonprofit Should Have a Marketing Plan

• To provide an analytical foundation for answers
  to complex marketing issues
• We need to get more donors
• How can we increase our average donations?
• What makes people contribute to us rather than to
  other organizations?
• Why is it so hard to get people on our board?
• Do we need a new logo?
• How can we get foundation money?

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The Organizations Awareness of its Customers and
Benefactors

• People

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General Question

• Do you know and understand the people to whom you
  bring products and services? Do you know and
  understand the people and institutions on whom
  you rely for resources?

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Customers / Clients

• Who they are
• What they want and need
• How you find them and serve them
• What attracts them to you instead of to others?

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Contrast - Customers

• Commercial also considers
• Customer ability to pay for services
• How to retain as a customer
• For nonprofits
• Ability to pay is mostly unimportant
• Goal is often to provide a temporary service and
  then cut them loose (e.g., hunger, drugs, child
  pregnancy prevention, unemployed, terminally ill)
• Most NPs try to convert customers to donors

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Donors

• Know who your donors are
• Do you know why they donate?
• Survey the full universe of potential donors
• All types of people
• Foundations
• Corporations
• Government

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Contrast Customers and Donors

• Companies have customers but they dont have
  donors
• Nonprofits have donors AND the donors are NOT
  customers they are surrogates for your
  customers
• Unlike a company, a nonprofit can have terrific
  customer satisfaction and involvement, yet fail
  to have sufficient revenue (from
  donors)

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Volunteers(Including Board Members)

• Know who they are
• Understand why they volunteer
• What resources can they
  bring to you and in what
  amounts?

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The Organizations Branding

• Packaging

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General Question

• What is the general perception of your
  organization? How did it get that way and do you
  need to change it?

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Active VersusPassive Branding

• Every organization has a brand
• Passive branding
• The global perception that occurs by accident,
  based upon what people happen to come across
• Active branding
• The organization decides what perceptions it
  wishes to create, and accordingly engineers the
  impressions it sends out for this purpose

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Brand Must Start with Mission

• Can you communicate your mission quickly,
  clearly, and easily?
• Will people understand your mission, like it, and
  remember it?
• What triggers do you
  have for your mission?
• Your name
• Your logo
• Your byline
• Freeing the World of Hunger

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Contrast Your Mission

• FOR THE MOST PART
• Commercial customers are buying products
• Nonprofit donors are buying (giving money to
  support) your mission
• A company mission is for internal management
  its brand communicates an identity for its
  products
• A nonprofit mission is the backbone of its
  marketing its brand is the communication of its
  mission to the public

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Contrast Your Mission

• March of Dimes Mission Statement
• Our mission is to improve the health of babies by
  preventing birth defects, premature birth, and
  infant mortality. 
• Microsoft Mission Statement
• At Microsoft, we work to help people and
  businesses throughout the world realize their
  full potential. This is our mission. Everything
  we do reflects this mission and the values that
  make it possible.
• People donate to March of Dimes because of its
  mission no one buys Microsoft products because
  of its mission

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The Organizations Brand

• Your BRAND is the typical global perception
  people have about your organization
• It includes
• Cognitive knowledge about you
• Familiarity with your name,
  logo, byline
• Emotional, value-laden
  associations to you
• Shared stereotypical beliefs about your
  organization, how you work, what you do, what you
  stand for

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Organizational Distinctiveness

• What makes you special
• What makes you different from other organizations
  that people could trade with in the marketplace
• You need people to think of you first, and
  consider you the best

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Contrast Distinctiveness(Competitive Edge)

• Businesses compete primarily on basis of product
  characteristics (low cost, high quality, customer
  service, brand loyalty, status)
• NPs typically do not compete
• NPs distinguish themselves on efficiency, low
  cost of fundraising, ethics
• Compete on surrogate motivation (mission) to get
  and keep donors
• Compete on personal motivators to increase donor
  involvement and investment

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Do You Walk the Talk?

• Make sure all your programs are consistent with
  your mission
• Make sure the behaviors of your staff, board, and
  volunteers are consistent with your brand
• Is the public media news about
  you consistent with the brand
  you are trying to engineer?

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Campaigns and Appeals

• Promotion

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General Question

• How do you get noticed? How and what do you
  communicate to the public about your organization
  in order to motivate people to be customers,
  donors, and volunteers?

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Getting in the Comfort Zone

• For both commercial and nonprofit, this is a key
  principle
• People feel much better giving (spending) money
  with organizations they are familiar with
• General goal in promotion Get people familiar
  with your organization

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Positive Press

• Information you release about the organization,
  its programs and appeals
• Public Service Announcements
• Public appearances and presentations
• Radio and TV interviews
• News releases
• Brochures
• Newsletters
• Whitepapers
• Advertising

Red Cross defends handling of Sept. 11
donations November 6, 2001 Posted 939 PM EST
(0239 GMT)
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Calls to Action

• Instructing the public on how to be part of your
  organizations good deeds
• Donations
• Volunteering
• Petitions
• Socially conscious actions
• Self-help information to read
• Visit our Web site

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Multimedia Integration

• Use many media
• Mail
• Web
• Phone
• DRTV
• Face-to-face
• Advertorials
• Keep the messages the same

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Broad Public Exposure

• Visibility at, or creation of, public events
• Bestowing awards and giving
  recognition, to create
  high value
• Celebrity spokesperson(s)
• Corporate partnerships

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Contrast - Promotion

• Businesses promote to potential customers
• Product-centric messages (low cost, unique, high
  quality, customer service, brand loyalty, status)
• Nonprofits promote to donors
• Mission-centric messages get them in and hold
  them
• Personal motivators get them most fully involved
  (patriotism, religion, guilt, compassion,
  altruism, personal relevance, enjoyment, anger,
  fear, personal gain) and increase their
  contributions

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Competitive Success(Mission Fulfillment)

• Product

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General Question

• What makes products and services from your
  organization of higher value than those coming
  from your competitors?

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What IS the Value of Our Products and Services?

• A way to measure our success
• Meaningful, objective, customer-
  donor-based
• Program evaluations
• Process measures Do we do what we say we will?
• Service delivery measures (vials of medicine
  shipped)
• Resource allocation ( of funds used to purchase
  medicine)
• Result measures Do we make a difference?
• Social impact analysis (diminished disease
  incidence)

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Who IS Our Competition?

• In a general sense, every nonprofit is every
  other nonprofits competition
• Specifically, other nonprofit and commercial
  organizations exist in your special marketplace
• Are you prominent?
• Are your products and services equal to or beyond
  the others in quality?

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Convincing Communications

• First-person compelling success stories
• Compelling pictures
• Benefit statements
• Brag sheets
• Celebrity testimonials
• Process and performance data

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Fundraising Effectiveness

• Pricing

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General Question

• Are you getting enough donations of time and
  money to match the value of your services? If
  not, how can you do this?

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Allocation of Organization Resources to
Fundraising

• It takes money to make money
• What is an appropriate amount to invest in
  fundraising, and what is the best way to do so?
• Use of internal resources and outsourcing

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Managing Fundraising

• How it is organized and managed
• How you create messages, materials, media
• Fundraising campaigns
• Donor programs
• Acquisition Getting new donors
• Retention Keeping donors over a time period
• Cultivation Motivating donors to increase
  donations in frequency and amount

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Fundraising Economics

• What fundraising channels make money, what
  channels are losing money?
• Return on investment
• Cost to earn a dollar
• Long-term value
• Non-monetary returns
• Good will
• Visibility and recognition
• Education related to mission fulfillment

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Operations

• Process

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General Question

• Is the general organization helping or hindering
  the delivery of products and services with the
  available resources?

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The Way We are Organized

• Does our organization work well?
• Can we reduce operational cost and overhead,
  increase efficiency, increase effectiveness?
• Development and fundraising organization
• Marketing organization
• Volunteer management
• Board management
• Public relations
• General management

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External Resources

• Other organizations or services we can draw from
• NGO partnerships
• Government programs
• Corporate support
• Potential for outsourcing, for example
• Copy writing
• Caging
• IT / DP

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How We Work

• Effective strategic and operational plans
• Focused energies throughout the organization
• Minimal waste of resources
• Clear operational goals
• Smart allocation of
  resources
• Support strength rather
  than shore up weakness

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Volunteer Program Effectiveness

• Making optimal use
  of resources
• Managing the board
• Managing volunteer workers
• Recruitment Bring them in
• Retention Keep them working
• Cultivation Increase their contributions of
  time and money

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Conclusions

• What valuable information did you get in THIS
  market in trade for the investment of your time?

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Marketing for Nonprofits

• A broad topic that goes beyond just promotions or
  fundraising
• Similar to, but ultimately more complicated than,
  commercial marketing
• Know your Ps
• Needs to be managed by creating a marketing plan
  and measuring marketing results
• Ultimately, marketing is how you produce
  sufficient value to motivate customer
  involvement, donor contributions, and volunteer
  labor

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Questions and Comments