Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

How Do You Say That in Nonprofit?

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Let’s say you work at a nonprofit organization.  You want to improve the agency’s communications: writing, speaking, publicity, social media…the works.  You go looking online for expert advice.

The experts seem to be talking a foreign language! Handheld translator

So much of what you find is written for business. You want to do what Katya Andresen suggests in Robin Hood Marketing and “steal” some corporate savvy for your cause–when it applies or when you can adapt it for your own purposes.  To use expertise, though, you have to understand it.

Here are 13 business terms translated into nonprofit.

  1. Brand.  Reputation, public awareness, visibility.  Your brand is not your logo: it’s the overall impression people have of your organization before and after they’ve met you.
  2. Customer.  In business, the same person pays for a service and benefits from it.  For nonprofits, it’s different.  Funders and donors pay for a service, while clients benefit from it.  When you read “customer,” ask yourself which group the writer means.
  3. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) = Executive Director (ED).
  4. C suite = senior staff.
  5. Return on Investment (ROI) is like what you call “measurable outcomes,” only with some assessment of how much it cost to produce that outcome.
  6. B2B (Business to Business) = communications with your partner organizations, both those you work with now and those you want to collaborate with soon.
  7. B2C (Business to Consumer) =communications with people who use your services.
  8. Entrepreneurial.  Nonprofits call this “innovative.”  In business, it also implies some self-promotion and some degree of risk-taking.  Make sure you’re comfortable with blowing your own horn and trying things that might fail if you’re going to call your agency “entrepreneurial.”
  9. Marketing.  Really, this is just communications with a purpose.  Businesses’ ultimate purpose is to make money.  Your ultimate purpose may be to improve public health, enhance democracy, end hunger or homelessness, or enhance people’s lives through the arts.  Either way, as long as you tailor your communications (outreach, publicity, call it what you will) to a purpose, you’re doing marketing, and you can look for ways to do it better.
  10. Content Marketing.  You may think of this as just “publication.”  Unless you’re publishing anonymously, though, what you write, or post, or video will shape the perception of your organization.  Content marketing means putting content out strategically in ways that benefit the consumer and build your brand.  One of my favorite examples is the Massachusetts Economic Independence Index put out by EmPath.
  11. Thought leader.  A person or organization that provides valuable insights to others in a particular field, or on a particular topic, so that they become the “go-to” source of ideas in that area.  Becoming a thought leader can reap great benefits for you, but it takes time, patience, and communications skills.
  12. Networking.  Yes, this includes all those meetings where you meet people, talk about what they do and what you do, and try to figure out how you can help each other.  You’re familiar with that.  You may even know how to use LinkedIn for networking online.  But I would say that the nonprofit equivalents of networking are coalition building and community organizing.  When you read about networking, instead of a Chamber of Commerce meeting, picture a community forum.  Instead of passing out business cards, picture knocking on doors and asking neighbors to pursue their interests together.

Nonprofits, What’s Your #13?

I have finished my list at twelve because in the nonprofit world, you are an expert.  What’s the thirteenth term YOU’d like to see translated into nonprofit?  Please share the business term that doesn’t quite fit what you do, and if you have a good way to translate it, please share that too!

P.S.  On Twitter, when I see good advice that’s aimed at businesses, sometimes I translate it so it’s more useful to us.  Find it using the hashtag #ispeaknonprofit.

Does Your Nonprofit Need Better Sales or Better Marketing?

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customers

Donors are your nonprofit customers

If your nonprofit organization has business people on the Board, some of them may be in marketing. Some may be in sales. And all of them will know the difference.

You should too.

 

Marketing vs. Sales: The Difference

According to Laura Lake, the author of Consumer Behavior for Dummies, business people can see a clear line between marketing and sales.

If we broke it down to the basics, marketing is everything that you do to reach and persuade prospects and the sales process is everything that you do to close the sale and get a signed agreement or contract. Both are necessities to the success of a business.

Let’s translate this into nonprofit language. Nonprofits market their services to donors. Donors are the ones who pay you to do what you do, even if someone else (a consumer or client) receives the service.

Marketing is communicating with your donors. Sales is appealing to them to give money.

Are You Marketing to Donors, or Just Selling?

Marketing and sales are both necessities for businesses. “Without marketing,” Lake writes, “you would not have prospects or leads to follow up with, but yet without a good sales technique and strategy, your closing rate may depress you.”

Communications and fundraising are both essential for nonprofits.

Without donor communications:

  • Your first-time givers will forget why they gave…or even that they gave.
  • Your repeat donors will wonder what you did with their money and whether it made a difference at all.
  • Your retention rate will fall. You will have to spend seven times as much money to acquire a new donor as it would have taken to keep the donor who supported you before.
  • You will raise less money.

But without a good fundraising appeal (your sales pitch!):

  • Donors will give to other organizations and not to you.
  • Donors to your annual appeal may never consider giving a major donation, or giving monthly, or giving in their wills.
  • You will raise less money.

Marketing Leads to Sales. Communications Leads to Gifts.

Too many nonprofit organizations focus on the sales aspect of their relationship with donors–to the exclusion of the marketing aspect. We buff our fundraising appeals to a high shine…when what really makes those “asks” successful is the relationship we build in between. The way you build relationships is through donor communications.

Communicate! Consulting can help you do both. If you want consistent, loyal support from the people who keep your nonprofit in business, write me: [email protected]. Because marketing and sales are too important to leave to stores., and you can do them well.

Nonprofits DO Marketing and PR! 6 Ways to Do Them Well

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marketing, ads, PR

Your nonprofit’s good work won’t speak for itself.

Maybe you take a quiet satisfaction in a job well done.  Good for you!  But if you’re the only one who knows what a great job your organization did, you’re cheating yourself.

  • Who will volunteer for your organization if they don’t know what it does?
  • Who will donate if they don’t know what a difference it makes?
  • Who will help you change the world if they don’t know how?
  • Who will speak up for you if they’ve never heard from you?

Beyond “Outreach”

Most of us know that we have to market ourselves.  We just don’t like the label.  “Marketing” sounds too commercial.  Its cousin, “public relations,” sounds too slick.  So we talk about “outreach” instead, or “visibility.”

And that’s getting in our way.

“Outreach” is just too broad.  It lets us keep on thinking as if there’s some general public out there waiting to hear from us.  That’s a waste of a nonprofit’s time and resources.

We need our communications to reach specific groups of people, with clearly defined messages that they want to hear.  Better yet, we want those constituencies to seek us out, to be glad to hear from us, to let us know what’s on their minds, and to ask, “How can I help?”

Marketing and Public Relations for a Good Cause

Marketing and public relations don’t mean what we think they mean.  I want to quote a great article by Heidi Cohen:

Marketing is everything a brand, business or organization does to sell its goods, services and values.

Public Relations…builds honest, open and transparent bridges of communication between a brand, business or organization and its constituent communities. Deborah Weinstein )

You “sell” your services to two sets of “customers”: the clients who benefit from them and the donors, funders, and volunteers who contribute to them.  You “sell” them when you talk or write about them, when you answer the phone, sign your email, post to Twitter and Facebook.  But you also sell them in every interaction “because if your customer service sucks, nothing else that you say matters.”  (B.L. Ochman)

You build bridges and win the trust of your constituent communities “by community-building and tapping the power of positive third party, word-of-mouth, endorsement/ testimony/ tribute to create affiliation, loyalty and advocacy for your goods, services and/ or ideas,” as Deborah Weinstein says.

Ways to Do Better

You’re in the marketing and public relations business.  Isn’t it worth doing them well?

Here are six ways you can improve your nonprofit’s marketing and PR.

  1. It’s Not About You. Get to know and love your audience and give them what they need.
  2. Have a Strategy.  Understand what you hope each audience will give you in return and how you will move them toward doing so.
  3. Everybody In.  Market to yourselves first.  Make sure staff, Board, and volunteers get it about your organization and represent it well.
  4. Change the Way People Behave.  Social marketing works better than a new program sometimes.
  5. Attract (instead of reaching out).  Content marketing builds your reputation and makes people come to you.
  6. Take Care of Your Friends.  Build loyalty among your donors, volunteers, and supporters.

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