IN FOCUS:

Marketing for Non-Profits

by AJ Drexler | January 20, 2011

If you are like many in non-profit leadership, your instinctive reaction to the title of this article might have been a firm "no thank you". But the role of marketing in non-profit organizations has undergone a serious makeover in the last thirty years. Running parallel to the growth of the service sector of the economy, non-profits have learned from the models of "service marketing." In fact, service marketing for hospitals, educational institutions and arts organizations, has provided a bridge from traditional product-oriented marketing to the intangible world of nonprofit marketing.

Regardless of what sort of judgment you may make about organizations like hospitals beginning the trend toward spending money in advertising, the reality is that slowly but surely over these last couple of decades hospitals, like colleges, universities and arts organizations have transformed themselves in market-driven organizations.

Historically, most non-profit organizations have divided their communications activities into three broad categories:

Fundraising — The planning, organizing and implementing of various methods of giving including events, planned giving activities, and more recently online solicitation.
News media relations — The solicitation of a) free coverage for organizational activities & events, b) support for issues advocacy in the non profit's area of expertise/service and c) opportunities to protect and/or promote organizational reputation
Promotion — Paid placement of specific message to generate a specific response, such as attendance at a specific fundraising event.

Staff were assigned to each category—which often became a silo of responsibility—and reporting to an Executive Director or similarly titled head of the organization. Each of these three areas actually translates into a specific tactical discipline that in today's market-driven organizations now falls under the category of Marketing:

Typical Non-Profit Activity		Tactical Marketing Discipline
FUNDRAISING		DEVELOPMENT
NEWS MEDIA RELATIONS		PUBLIC AFFAIRS/PR
PROMOTION		ADVERTISING

The key point here is the word "tactical." These are "activities," "tactics," or whatever other word you might like to use for things you "do". The appropriate place for these tactics is under the umbrella of "marketing" which provides the information as to why you do them.

In his book Nonprofit Marketing: Best Practices¹, John Burnett offers an explanation of marketing that translates well to non-profits:

First of all, he says, we must accept that the purpose of all business, non-profit or otherwise, is to find and keep customers (clients, donors, etc.).

Think about that for a moment. That might be a hard nut for the non-profit world to swallow. But the hard reality is that finding and keeping these customers (client, donors, whatever you might call them) permits the organization to continue to function. To continue to make or do what whatever the organization is committed to making or doing—regardless of what that is: Are you producing widgets? Are you providing services to the indigent? Are you educating college students? Are you exposing a new generation to the arts? Depending upon what the product or service is, you need buyers, users of your service or perhaps donors to your organization. All of these are, in the broadest terms, "customers."

So then, what is the role of marketing in business? To Burnett, "the specific role of marketing is to provide assistance in identifying, satisfying and retaining customers."

Again, think about that—at the heart of it, that's what each of the tactical areas in the traditional non-profit are all about: fundraising, news media relations, promotion. But implementing tactics is not enough. As Burnett explains it: "In reality, marketing is a way of thinking about business, rather than a bundle of techniques. It's much more than just selling stuff and collecting money. It's the connection between people and products, customers and companies."

So how do we create that connection between people? If you're in a traditional non-profit you are probably going to hate this answer: This connection is only achieved by creating a competitive advantage. Yikes. But wait a minute. What we're saying is simply this: Does what you have to offer come closest to meeting potential customers particular want/need? Every organization needs to identify and promote this competitive advantage to the people who actually want to buy (give to or use) the product or service.

In an ideal world, you are able to provide this advantage consistently, so that eventually this customer will no longer consider other alternatives. Creating this blind commitment—without consideration of alternatives—to a particular brand, store, person or idea is the dream of all business—non-profit or otherwise.

This is unlikely to occur, however, without the support of an effective marketing program. That is why, Burnett says, "The last 30 years reveal the consistent expansion of the application of marketing to nonprofit and non-business institutions such as charities, education or healthcare who value this connection."

The bottom line is this: non-profits, by there very nature, are not profit driven—but to be successful, they still must be market driven.

Author's Note:

I recently made this presentation to the Board of Directors of a non-profit organization that I am newly involved with. I began the presentation by acknowledging that I was in the worst possible combination of circumstances: just elected to the Board so little time to get to know anyone, and now, making a presentation on what may likely be—for many of the members—a most dreaded subject: marketing in a non-profit organization.

Fortunately everyone laughed (a little) but not without politely acknowledging that the appropriateness of "marketing" for their organization was indeed a subject that made them very, very uncomfortable.

I am happy to report that I went home that evening all in one piece. In fact, I'm fairly certain that we converted a number of new believers. So…if you are trying to educate your Board or organization or client about the importance of marketing in the non-profit world, feel free to borrow liberally from this work…

Interested in talking more? E-mail AJ Drexler or call her at 412-341-4656.

¹ Burnett, John. Nonprofit Marketing Best Practices. Hoboken: Wiley, 2007.

IN FOCUS:

The Key to 20/20 Visioning

by AJ Drexler | January 25, 2011

If you ever get invited to participate on a "Visioning Team", don't hesitate—say "yes" immediately before they ask someone else. Then, sit back for a moment, and think about the awesome responsibility that "visioning" implies.

Visioning involves your active participation in confidently defining what an organization's long-term success looks like, many years in advance, with often far-reaching consequences for the organization and its people.

Visioning is exciting. And I never turn down the chance to participate—mostly because it involves my two favorite, seemingly contradictory, activities: imagining and data analysis.

When you hear the term "visioning," as opposed to say, "strategic planning", many people think: "imagining". Sitting around in a room with a group of equally-vested and informed partners and, without limitations, imagining what this organization could be—should be—in the future. There's no way around it, this part is fun! And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

But for those of us who truly relish this opportunity, the imagining is not limited to the time spent with the group. It's like being in the middle of reading a really, really great book where the characters stay with you as you go about your day—you wonder about them, you worry about them, you think about what will happen next. This is the reason that I, don't listen to music while driving in my car—every little car trip is the opportunity for uninterrupted time to "imagine" what is next for this organization. Believe it or not, even showering in the morning appears to be a good place for active imagining—perhaps because the subconscious activity of sleep works it way to the surface in these early morning moments of quiet distraction.

For some of the people on the visioning team this may be all there is to it. And don't get me wrong—imagining is truly awesome—its just not all there is to the process. Although critical, my personal belief is that relying on imagining without the next step in visioning, data analysis, can be downright dangerous for an organization.

Once a first round of imagining is complete, it is only through locating, analyzing and interpreting the right data that an organization can responsibly decide which of the many "imagined" directions they should responsibly pursue. And "the right data" is critical. Often, during the actual visioning there is not the time to do the custom or primary research required to truly validate the direction—that comes later—so finding the relevant, existing, valid data is critical. It prevents the work of the visioning team from being undone later.

Recently, an organization asked me participate on a visioning team where, in the first round of work, this dynamic team imagined this organization providing, among other things, "value-based access to winter snow-sports for moderate income families". Sounded like a great idea. It was my job to hunt down the data.

Luck was on my side on this one—right off the bat I was provided access, through one of the other team members, to a really great piece of primary proprietary research that had recently been completed in the market we were interested in. This data measured all outdoor activities in the area, so it even put the winter snow sports into context with other possibilities. Perfect. Right away we pulled the participation rates—high participation in snow sports, particularly downhill and cross country skiing, and even some snowshoeing. Yes! Next we looked at income data from this study—hmmmm—according to this data fewer than 10% of people in this market who participated in snow sports had income's under $75,000. Perhaps a good indication that there is room for growth among the moderate income group—but also perhaps an indication that there may be very little current interest among this group and it would be a hard sell. Then we pulled that data about children. Almost 80% of the households that participated in snow sports had no children. Well, if the visioning team was thinking of appealing to "moderate income families" this data could have represented the end of that story. We could have reported this data back and the group would have taken an entirely different direction.

But, of course, being the data hounds that we are, we didn't stop there. First we went back and looked deeply at the demographics of the proprietary study. It turned out that the organization that sponsored the study had wanted to measure both the market and their members. So they constructed the study to be 60% members and 40% random sample. And their members were not representative of the market we needed to examine. So we requested additional cross-tab data on this study to try to ferret out the details that we were looking for, and went looking elsewhere.

Using various trade association data and Scarborough market research—we were quickly able to get a national and local, historical perspective about snow sports participation. And a completely different story quickly emerged including the following highlights:

In the past ten years, the fastest growing component of the snow sports industry—by a huge margin—is among snowboarders. But there is virtually no participation in snowboarding among people—women or men—over age 5O.
Snowboarders, as a group, have incomes half that of skiers.
The largest population of children under six is in the snowboarders households.
Finally, snowboarders are, in fact, under-represented in this market. There is clearly room for growth among snowboarding families.

Voila`! Without too much additional effort we were able to identify that the "moderate income family" market that the organization was looking for does, in fact, exist—and with room for growth. And, we were able to more tightly define their target to "moderate income snowboarding families"—a distinction that makes an enormous difference in the whole visioning process.

This sort of clarity is what I love so much about the visioning process, the integration between imaging all of the possibilities while simultaneously defining where, ultimately, success is most likely occur. Visioning without this sort of dual focus can be either short on imagination (too much reliance on data) or short on reality (too little focus on data).

And it takes the right composition among the people in the visioning group to be able to achieve this balance. So, as I said at the outset, the next time you are invited to participate on a visioning team—don't hesitate! Just remember the magnitude of the responsibility. And be sure that you understand what place you have on the team. Finally ask the appropriate questions to make sure the rest of the team has the balance necessary to do visioning that will truly provide the type of leadership that the organization needs to ensure its future success.

Interested in talking more? E-mail AJ Drexler or call her at 412-341-4656.