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3 Steps for Young People Starting a Nonprofit

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A guest post by life coach Elena Stewart

People of any age can make a difference in the world, and one way to start enacting change is by establishing a nonprofit. By creating an organization to fulfill your mission, you can garner support for your cause, obtain resources to help others, and more.

Check out these three steps toward starting a nonprofit, no matter how young (or old) you are.

1. Get Organized

Everything from getting your idea on paper to covering your bases tax-wise is part of organizing your nonprofit.

  • Select a business structure to operate your nonprofit under.
  • Investigate any tax obligations or requirements.
  • Name your nonprofit members or board and set up a decision-making process.
  • Make your CPA proud with batch invoicing software, which can help you keep track of important financial and expense information.

2. Find Funding

Sourcing funding for your nonprofit can sound intimidating, but with a combination of formal support and social traction, you can fill your organization’s financial needs.

  • Apply for grants and other financial programs based on your mission.
  • Start crowdfunding with the support of your social network (and friends of friends).
  • Launch a product to earn the income to support your nonprofit’s activities.
  • Work with Communicate! Consulting to learn how to approach donors.

3. Plan Your Priorities

Figuring out what your nonprofit will do and who it will help is essential, but what are the exact steps you need to take to be successful? Outline your priorities before you act.

  • Focus on a single cause or a handful of closely related ones and craft a mission statement.
  • Create measurable goals, preferably ones you can work toward in steps.
  • Generate interest in your mission with social media and other outreach.

If helping others is your true mission in life, starting a nonprofit could be just the way to do it. While you’ll need the support of your loved ones and community, you can start making positive changes in the world all on your own.

Elena Stewart made the jump from a corporate job she wasn’t entirely happy with, to running her own business that gives her the financial freedom and flexible lifestyle she’s always wanted. As a life coach, she now gets the happiness of helping others get to the places that might seem out of reach.

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.

How Do You Say That in Nonprofit? The “Buying Cycle”, Heads, and Hearts

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People decide to buy products from companies.  People–maybe the same people–decide to give money to organizations.  What can nonprofits learn from the business “buying cycle” that will help us to create loyal supporters?

According to Catherine Sherlock, one thing we can learn is when to appeal to people’s hearts and when to their heads.

Catherine Sherlock

Catherine Sherlock

She says, “The idea that people buy solely on emotion is old-school selling… Under old-school selling, people felt manipulated—which is why they started turning to the Internet and to friends for answers rather than engaging with salespeople.”

Nonprofits don’t want to manipulate people into supporting us.  We do want people to know what we do, and love it, and give money to keep us doing it.  In other words, we want their hearts and their heads at the same time.  How do we appeal to both?

 

Content Marketing: Giving Nonprofit Donors What They Want

Content marketing is a buzzword right now, but if you’re like many nonprofit organizations, you may have a hazy idea what it means.  You may think of it 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 audience and help them get to know and love your agency.

Now, when people see your content, they may have just heard of you for the first time, or they may know you quite well.  If you ran into a longtime donor or volunteer on the street, wouldn’t you greet them very differently from someone you just met?  You also need different messages–different information and different emotional tone–when you’re “meeting” people through your writing or social media.

Catherine Sherlock tells us that when businesses build relationships with customers, they go through a set of stages, a “buying cycle.”  Nonprofits go through a similar set of stages with our supporters.

buying cy

Catherine Sherlock explains the buying cycle (marketingprofs.com)

    • Awareness: They don’t know who you are.  You have to give them a reason to pay attention and find out.  Short, emotional content works best.  “Funny, weird, and inspirational are what tends to get shared on social media.”
    • Interest: They’re beginning to recognize a need for your services.  They want to know who you are.  This is a great time to tell stories that show your organization’s personality and your values in action.  Remember, though, your purpose is not to brag: it’s to deepen their interest and begin to build trust.
    • Evaluation: They’re seriously considering your program or service—and comparing you with your competition.   “At this stage, provide people with good, solid materials that enable people to substantiate their early feelings of security and trust.”
    • Purchase:  For nonprofits, this is the moment when the donor clicks the “donate” button or mails the check.  “People’s fears about making a wrong decision often re-emerge at the point of taking action and handing over money. So, reinforce the feelings that you used to gain their attention in the Awareness stage, and ensure the actual purchase process is painless.”   (That means you make it easy for the donor to give, and thank them and remind them what a difference they are making both during and after the donation.)
  • Loyalty:  In the nonprofit world, we sometimes talk of donor “retention,” and the “stewardship” it takes to keep our donors’ support over the long haul.  Businesses talk about loyalty, instead.  I prefer that, because it makes it clear that their continued attention and support is a further gift our donors give to us.  We can and should work to deserve their loyalty, and that means appealing both to emotion and to reason.  We can “maintain that sense of safety and trust that [we] established in earlier stages” and “provide information that proves” we are worthy of their trust.

The Right Audience at the Right Time

Now that you understand the cycle,  you can see that appeals to reason and emotion go hand in hand.   You will want to stress one more than the other at different stages, but mostly you will find the best way to combine them.  This raises the question: how can nonprofits catch their supporters at the right time in the relationship to send them the message that will fit them?

First off, you have to know your audience.

Then, if your nonprofit is big enough (or has a big enough communications budget), you may be able to do a lot of research and to capture the results in a constituent relationship management (CRM) database, so that you can send different messages to supporters at each stage of the cycle.

If you’re smaller, or if time or money are tight, you can still segment your list.  At a minimum, target different messages to new prospects, first-time givers, and established supporters.

Finally, think about what that audience wants to hear.  At this stage of the relationship, do they want you to grab their attention, or to help them trust you, or to reassure them that their trust is justified?  Are they ready for you to convince them or to touch their hearts, and how?

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