11 Marketing Communications Activities for Fundraisers, Part 1

[Editor’s note: This is part 1 of a two-part series on the webinar, Ten Marketing Communications Activities You Must Do. Part 2 will be published in next week’s edition of the FS Advisor.]

The lifeblood of any fundraising campaign lies in the communications between the organization and its donors and supporters. If a nonprofit doesn’t know who its donors are and what they want from the organization, there’s little chance of soliciting funds from them.

In a recent webinar, Ten Marketing Communications Activities You Must Do, nonprofit brand strategy consultant Michele Levy provided 11 marketing communications best practices that fundraisers should utilize in their communications strategies.

1. It all starts with your audience
“The first thing that you need to think about before you do anything is you need to know who you’re marketing to,” Levy said. “You’re wasting time and energy if you don’t know who you’re talking to.”

She said you should start by asking how your constituents see you, what they need from you, how they want to communicate with you and what they see as their other options. Do that by implementing:

• Informal focus groups — “One of my favorite things to do is to do informal focus groups, asking participants questions about the organization in a roundtable discussion. Your supporters will love to be a part of it,” Levy said. “The caveat is that this is not statistically significant, so you have to take everything with a grain of salt. But you can find patterns and hear what people are saying about you.”
• Advisory board
• Online survey — “I just created an online survey in about a half hour to ask folks what themes they’d like to see for a nonprofit,” Levy said. “They’re so easy to do. If I can do it in 15 or 20 minutes while doing 15 other things, everyone can do it. It’s a very easy way to start to talk to your audience for an occasional touch.”
• Website survey — Ask questions about what should be on your website and what design changes would make it easier to navigate.
• Event/course evaluations — five-10 questions at the end of the event.

“Each one of these activities is not just fact-finding, but relationship building,” Levy said. “The other thing to think about is you should be watching folks. If you do nothing else, you need to focus on how to track how people come to your website. And pay attention to who comes to events.”

Watch their behavior, keeping an eye out for Web analytics, response rates (especially to your e-newsletter if you have one) and event attendance, Levy suggested.

2. Keep an eye on the competition
It may seem counterintuitive, but your organization is in competition with other nonprofits for donors’ time, money and attention. So you need to understand where your donors can spend their time and money. What other outlets do they have for their individual passions?

Levy said you should set aside time to visit competing organizations’ websites, sign up for their newsletters, visit their presentations and booths at conferences, learn from their successes and mistakes, and keep watching them.

3. Make a plan
Levy shared a quote from a colleague and friend of hers: “People can make communications planning sound complicated, daunting and something only a marcom person with years of experience can do. But that’s wrong. Anyone can do this.”

“The key is to pick a few things and do them really, really well, measure what works, and then adapt,” Levy said.

For example, ask yourself these questions:

• Audience — Who do you want to reach?
• Message — What do you want to say to them? Be sure to make it about them!
• Tool — What communication tool(s) will most effectively reach them?
• Timing — When will this happen?
• Assignment — Who is going to make sure this communication step happens?
• Metrics — How will you know it worked?

4. Plan to network
“Talk with your board about networking,” Levy said. “Who needs to know about us? Word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful ways to build awareness. Your leadership and board need to get the word out.”

Levy offered these tips for planning how to network:

Make a list of the individuals and organizations most important to your success. (It does not need to be a long list.)

• Agree on “who owns whom” … which staff and board members will take responsibility for building a networking relationship with each of these individuals and organizations. Be realistic about how many contacts each of you can handle.
• Review your organization’s yearly calendar to identify good potential points of contact (performances, show openings, board of visitors day, yearly conferences, etc.).
• Inventory the tools you have to share with these contacts. What do you have to offer them? What will be most effective in keeping them up to date on your organization (monthly newsletter, quarterly report, annual report)? Make sure it’s delivered in a personal manner.
• Agree on how often you will reach out to these contacts.
• Evaluate the list on a yearly basis — drop and add as appropriate.

5. Plan to update your website
“You need to make sure that your website accurately reflects who you are as an organization. None of you are stale or stagnate, and your website shouldn’t be either,” Levy said. “Everybody needs to be thinking about how your website can be updated.”

If you do nothing else, she added, have a plan to keep your website updated. Convene all “owners” — all those on staff and/or board who will contribute content and multimedia — on how to do this. An editorial calendar is a great tool to coordinate this to map out when updates should be made and what the content will be coinciding with those updates. Review your organizational calendar and match Web updates to relevant events/activities. Identify the downtimes for your organization and brainstorm other updates for those times of the year. And don’t forget to plan to update your photos and videos.

Check back next week for the final six tips.