3 Ways to Achieve Multicultural Marketing at Your Nonprofit

There are many reasons to consider multicultural marketing at your nonprofit. One of the significant benefits is that it’s simply the right thing to do. However, it can also help you increase brand awareness and help your nonprofit better fulfill its mission. People want to associate with brands and organizations that align with their societal values more than ever. In other words, your supporters want to partner with an organization with more than one point of view.

In addition, multicultural marketing can be an excellent way for your nonprofit to attract more significant numbers of diverse donors and volunteers. Ultimately, diversity is an excellent value because it brings different ideas, experiences, and ways of thinking into an organization. Organizations that thrive make multicultural points of view a driving principle. As a result, they become much more agile and forward-thinking organizations.

Why Your Nonprofit Needs to Do Multicultural Marketing

Multicultural marketing can help your nonprofit increase brand awareness and attract more diverse donors and volunteers. And as you make a concerted effort and shift toward multicultural diversity, you’ll see that it’s a great way to build trust with your donor audience, which your nonprofit needs to succeed.

If you realize you need to step up your game concerning multicultural marketing, you should consider if you have any barriers that stand in the way of achieving it at your nonprofit. For instance, is your team diverse? Are there any demographics you don't include in your current marketing strategy? Why?

If you don't know the answers to those questions, ask donors or speak to supporters of your organization. Sometimes, organizations could get myopic and not see what seems clear to outsiders. Further, multicultural marketing isn't about adding diverse images to your marketing. It would be best if you made a strong and concerted effort to understand the experiences and histories of the communities you will include. That takes time, effort, and commitment to continuous learning and inclusion of different voices in addition to yours.

The Benefits of Multicultural Marketing

If you decide to represent everyone, then multicultural marketing is the path you need to follow. Moreover, as you might have guessed, the benefits are many. For starters, it allows you and your nonprofit team to understand the experiences and ideas of others. Let's face it; if you're someone born into one background, it's tough to understand the experiences and points of view of people with other backgrounds. But, by becoming a thoroughly multicultural nonprofit, you're accepting the responsibility of going beyond your experiences to understand those of different communities and peoples.

As it relates to your nonprofit, multicultural marketing eventually increases brand awareness — if done right and with respect and sensitivity. That said, marketers believe there’s a direct correlation between the number of diverse donors and volunteers they have and their fundraising success. Nonprofits can also use multicultural marketing to attract more varied donors and volunteers. By implementing successful multicultural marketing, your nonprofit will be able to reach out to varying people in different ways than it would be able to otherwise.

Tips for Creating a Successful Multicultural Marketing Strategy

As mentioned, to get started with multicultural marketing, you must commit to the effort. Again, it's an organization-wide effort to bring diversity into everything you do, translating into your marketing. Here are some tips to excel at your diversity marketing strategy:

•         Look for opportunities to include a variety of cultures in your organization's messaging.
•         Cultivate meaningful relationships with diverse audiences.
•         Collaborate with other organizations on joint events, collaborations and campaigns.

Here are three ways to achieve multicultural marketing.

1. Make Sure Your Marketing Team Includes Diverse Members

The reason for it is simple. The marketing team that's doing the work of communicating with the intended diverse audience needs to be from that community. If they aren’t, ideas and approaches used will likely miss the mark at some point. It's also inauthentic. You might ask yourself, how do I do that if I don't have the funds to add more team members? One strategy is to recruit volunteer champions who serve as your social media ambassadors.

2. Have Multicultural Marketing Assets With Input From Diverse Communities

Multicultural assets can help you attract new donors and volunteers. For starters, you should have a website that includes people from all backgrounds. However, it’s helpful to get input from people from varying communities. It's vital to continuously engage with your community and the communities you want to reach, asking them for information, guidance and input. Remember, marketing today is omnidirectional — it's no longer dictated by the ideas and interests of the organization.

3. Build Relationships Online and Offline

Remember, sharing and engaging with others go a long way to get people involved with your nonprofit. Building relationships online and offline will help you get more people involved in your nonprofit's cause and increase awareness about what you do as an organization. Whether that’s social media campaigns or other digital marketing initiatives, like creating video content, attending in-person events or writing blog posts, focus on building meaningful relationships.

With the social shifts and demographic changes happening in the U.S., multicultural marketing is one of the most critical issues in the nonprofit sector. As a nonprofit, you are not just trying to reach a specific market segment. Instead, you want to create a sense of belonging with your entire audience.