Staying in touch with your supporters brings in donations, helps you find sales leads, recruits volunteers, and spreads awareness for your cause. Strong nonprofit communications are essential to earning all of these benefits.
Nonprofit communications refers to all the tactics a nonprofit implements to communicate with stakeholders and promote its cause. A full communication plan should address fundraising, events, mission, and more. The plan should lay out the media channels it will use, including social media, email, direct mail, and more.
At Getting Attention, we help nonprofits market to and communicate with supporters using the Google Ad Grants program. We empower nonprofits to leverage up to $10,000 in free monthly Google Ad credits to reach new supporters, engage current donors, and strengthen relationships. In this guide, we’ll explore how to leverage Google Ads and a variety of other marketing channels.
Nonprofit Communication Goals
Both for- and nonprofit organizations need strong external communication strategies to promote their brands and offerings to their target audiences. The difference between your nonprofit’s strategy, a business’s, and another nonprofit’s is your goals.
Your goals dictate your marketing and communication strategy. A few common goals nonprofits have include:
- Earning donations. Fundraising powers many nonprofits. As you are likely not giving supporters anything in exchange for their gifts, your marketing materials should emphasize the non-material benefits of donating, such as the opportunity to make an impact.
- Selling products and services. Nonprofits that sell products and services can follow many strategies commercial businesses use to promote their offerings. Consider what needs your audience has, how your services fill that need, and why customers should buy from your organization specifically. Your marketing materials should address these three factors.
- Recruiting volunteers. Most nonprofits operate on tight budgets, and volunteers put in the work your nonprofit needs to continue running. When crafting recruitment outreach, consider what types of jobs volunteers want to do, how the volunteer positions benefit the volunteers, and how the volunteer work makes a difference for your mission.
- Spreading awareness. The more people that know and care about your cause, the more change you’ll drive. Awareness communication materials should grab as much attention as possible, whether it’s through startling statistics, eye-catching imagery, or a highly shareable story.
- Reaching beneficiaries. If your nonprofit has the capacity to serve more beneficiaries than it already does, make spreading the word about your services one of your top priorities. Similar to paid products and services, explain what your nonprofit does, how it benefits your constituents, and why they should let your nonprofit help them.
Your goals impact every part of your communication strategy from the contents of your communication materials to the platforms you share them on on. Additionally, your goals impact the type of communication materials you’re likely to produce.
4 Types of Nonprofit Communication
1. Storytelling
Storytelling makes your communications more effective, engaging, and emotional. Studies show that 55% of consumers are more likely to remember a story rather than a list of facts, meaning storytelling can help your nonprofit get its mission across in a memorable way.
These examples show how nonprofits can share powerful stories:
- A university could share quotes from both current and former students about what the school means to them and how their time as a student impacted them.
- Animal shelters can ask people who have adopted a pet from their shelter about the difference their pet has made in their lives.
- Food banks could talk to volunteers about the work they do and what it means to them to give back.
Don’t forget to be creative and dig deep to find the most compelling stories. Prioritize quality writing, and incorporate powerful images and videos when possible.
2. Marketing
Marketing describes nonprofit communication tactics that have the goal of motivating target audiences to take action. Some of the next actions you might encourage your audience to take include:
- Making a donation
- Buying your products or services
- Registering to volunteer
- Signing up for your newsletter
- Purchasing your branded merchandise
- Becoming a monthly donor
- Claiming a ticket to an event
Ultimately, your marketing efforts should articulate your nonprofit’s value proposition. A value proposition explains how your organization solves your audience’s needs, the benefits they receive from your organization, and how your organization is unique from the competition.
For example, let’s look at the nonprofit Wonder Ink. Wonder Ink sells children’s ministry curriculum to Sunday Schools, church leaders, and parents. Their value proposition might look something like this:
- Audience needs: Wonder Ink’s audience wants to engage children in religious studies but lacks the time and resources to create appropriate course materials themselves.
- Benefits received: Buyers get child-friendly course materials they can use to teach children about their religion.
- How Wonder Ink stands out: Wonder Ink’s materials can be accessed online, making them one of the most accessible and easy-to-use church curriculum services available.
When you want your audience to take a specific action, consider the value proposition behind it. Consider what your audience needs related to the action, the benefits they will gain by taking it, and why they should choose to engage with your nonprofit instead of a similar organization.
3. Fundraising
Communicating about your fundraisers can be complex, as it requires contact with a variety of audiences across many different communication channels. Your organization will need to tailor its outreach to your audience’s preferences and unique traits.
While you can get as granular as you like with personalizing communications to recipients, here are the three basic audiences you’ll address:
- Current Donors: Receiving a donation is great, and retaining that support over time is critical. After all, it costs less to retain an existing donor than it does to gain a new one. Be sure to maintain consistent communication with current donors (ideally across more than one communication channel) to boost the chances that they’ll give again.
- Potential Donors: To expand your supporter base, grow funding, and increase your volunteering capacity, you’ll need to reach new donors who have never engaged with your cause. It can be tricky to build trust with donors who have never heard of your organization before. However, you can build social proof by centering testimonials from other donors or publicly recognizing influential donors.
- Corporations: Did you know corporations donated $21.08 billion to nonprofits in 2022? Use this giving power to your advantage by directing fundraising communication efforts toward for-profit businesses. Spread awareness of the many different philanthropic programs, such as matching gifts, with your audience.
Even after a successful fundraising campaign, communication is still relevant. Check out this guide from eCardWidget to learn how your organization can upgrade its donor thank-you emails.
4. Engagement
This type of communication relies on starting conversations with your audiences. Engagement builds a relationship with your audience beyond simply asking them for money. Cultivating connection with stakeholders that exists separate from monetary goals is key to fostering deep, trusting relationships that yield long-term donors.
There are so many ways to motivate donors to engage, from adding a “click here!” button to a marketing email to feature polls on your nonprofit’s Instagram stories. Get creative, make engaging convenient, and be sure to offer a variety of ways to engage.
Developing Your Nonprofit Communication Plan: 5 Steps
1. Determine Overarching Goals
A communication plan is a set of strategies developed for your nonprofit’s unique needs and goals. Its purpose is to reach and engage supporters. The first step to creating an effective communication plan is careful goal setting.
Define your goals according to the SMART goals framework. This method suggests that goals should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
By setting goals within these parameters, you’ll ensure that each objective is attainable within your campaign timeline. An example of a SMART goal could be to earn 20% more sales leads through organic search traffic within six months of starting an intensive SEO strategy.
2. Establish Your Brand
Many aspects of your nonprofit communication tactics will be tailored to fit each audience, but your brand messaging should remain consistent across all efforts.
To keep branding consistent in communications, include your nonprofit’s:
- Name
- Logo
- Tagline (also called a slogan by for-profit businesses)
- Visual branded elements like specific colors, fonts, and imagery
To ensure these elements remain consistent no matter who creates or posts content at your nonprofit, create a media or branding kit. Include the appropriate use cases and image files for your logo, the Hex codes for your brand colors, and the names of the fonts you use.
Here’s our example of a nonprofit branding kit:
3. Analyze Data
Your communication strategy should always be backed by data. Without it, you could be making guesses about your audience that aren’t true, leaving you without the positive results you were hoping for.
Take a look at data from your nonprofit’s past communication efforts. What was successful, and what could be better? Use what you learn to refine future plans and understand trends. For example, maybe you noticed that donations to your food pantry spike around holidays like Thanksgiving. To capitalize on this increased engagement, ramp up the frequency of your communications and aim to reach untapped audiences.
4. Define Target Audiences
Your nonprofit likely has multiple audiences, each with its own needs and communication preferences. Defining target audiences becomes a lot easier with the help of a robust donor database. You can keep track of demographics, contact information, employer data, income, and location all in one place. You can also look at past donation data to figure out who your biggest supporters are.
In addition to donors, also consider the following audiences:
- Customers. The data you collect on customers has a lot in common with your donor data. You need basic demographic information as well as spending budgets. Assess your current customer base to identify trends, such as careers, locations, and budgets.
- Volunteers. In most cases, volunteers will be local supporters. Consider what skills you need from volunteers and how you can get in touch with these skilled volunteers, whether it’s through marketing, business partnerships, or networking.
- Beneficiaries. Consider who your cause helps, the benefits you can provide them, and the barriers they have preventing them from getting help. For example, a mental health-oriented nonprofit might provide free counseling services to low-income individuals. They’ve identified that unhoused individuals are a target beneficiary demographic but may struggle to access their services due to lack of information and a fear of being judged. The nonprofit could overcome these barriers by posting flyers and emphasizing their organization’s adherence to confidentiality.
Data analytics can help you avoid guessing about your various audiences and build communication strategies that appeal to their real motivations for giving to your cause.
5. Choose Channels
There’s a wide range of communication channels to choose from, and each channel you choose to communicate on requires its own strategy, marketing materials, and posting schedule. As such, you should be deliberate about the channels you choose and pick platforms that align with your goals.
Let’s walk through a few examples of how various communication channels can help achieve different nonprofit goals.
Goal: Sell products and services
Nonprofits selling a product or service need channels that will connect them with customers and continually generate revenue. As such, these organizations might heavily invest in driving organic traffic to their website through search engine optimization (SEO).
Through keyword research, these nonprofits can identify what their target audience is likely looking for. Using this information, they can create high-value content that answers their audiences’ questions, showcases their services and products, and demonstrates their expertise.
For example, the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance (NLA) sells courses to nonprofit professionals looking to improve their fundraising and nonprofit management skills Their SEO strategy targets keywords related to skill development, and users who click on their blog pages will find content providing free advice. These blog posts promote the NLA’s offerings and show off their expertise. Visitors who engage with and are impressed by this content may go on to explore the rest of NLA’s site and potentially purchase a full course or attend an event.
Thanks to the SEO experts at Nexus Marketing, the NLA achieved first page rankings for 32 high-priority keywords.
Goal: Attract volunteers
To reach volunteers, you need to think about channels that will reach a local audience. After all, while some volunteers can work remotely, most nonprofit initiatives and fundraisers require volunteers to be nearby.
For digital marketing, try Google Ads. Turn on Google Ads’ geo-locating parameters and share your nonprofit’s address with Google to ensure your ads are shown only to locals. Plus, rather than spending your limited budget on search engine ads, you can create Google Ads for free with the Google Ad Grant.
The Google Ad Grant awards qualifying nonprofits with $10,000 a month in ad credits to create Google Ads promoting their website.
For volunteer recruitment, nonprofits might launch a Google Ads campaign targeting keywords like “[type of nonprofit] volunteer opportunities” or “volunteering in [city].” These keywords help narrow down who your ads will be shown to, increasing the number of high-quality leads you’ll receive.
If you need help applying for the Google Ad Grant, managing your ads, or reactivating your account, our team at Getting Attention can help! As a Google-certified agency, we’re on top of the latest developments at Google and can help our clients create ads that reach their target audience, make the most of their budget, and always comply with Google’s requirements.
Goal: Spread awareness
Getting more eyes on your cause can lead to real change as more people lend their time, effort, and voices to support you. As such, nonprofits launching awareness campaigns should turn to platforms that have large audiences, like social media.
The power of social media is that passionate supporters can help market for you. Choose channels that encourage sharing and commenting. Be aware that some platforms with low conversion rates have high share rates and decide if that trade-off is worthwhile. If you’re fundraising or selling a service, you may want to prioritize platforms like Facebook and Instagram, whereas if you simply want as big of an audience as possible to see your message, you might turn to TikTok.
Additionally, consider what types of content are likely to be shared. Research into the psychology behind social media suggests that stories that provoke excitement—whether it’s positive or negative—tend to see the most shares. For nonprofits, this means telling stories that evoke emotions like joy or outreach lead to action.
3 Helpful Nonprofit Communication Tools & Resources
Once your nonprofit has a communications plan in place, it’s time to execute. But, it can be challenging (and time-consuming) to manage an entire communications strategy on your own.
To make the process easier, here are a few popular tools and resources to check out:
- Content calendars: Plan out your content for the entire month, including the type of content, the platform it will be posted on, when the content will go live, and what message will be included. Not only will this keep everything organized, but it will also help you plan accordingly to ensure each message is created on time. To get started, you can download a free template or invest in dedicated project management software.
- Graphic design tools: Sleek graphics and crystal-clear photos are what get you noticed in the digital world. You can easily design custom graphics for your nonprofit (or adapt templates to fit your branding) with tools like Canva. If you need additional support, consider working with a graphic design agency.
- Google Ad Grants: This program is a great resource for qualifying nonprofits. The grant provides $10,000 in free Google Ads, allowing your nonprofit to target relevant keywords and drive Google users to your website. For the best results, work with a Google Ad Grants agency to help you apply for the grant, maintain compliance, research keywords, and manage campaigns.
To learn more, check out our video that covers the basics of the Google Ad Grants program:
Wrapping Up
Compelling communication is vital to running a successful nonprofit organization. By building connections with target audiences, you’ll cultivate trusting, loyal relationships with donors that help further your mission. To reach more of these audience members and make your marketing budget go further with the Google Ad Grants program, reach out to Getting Attention.
For additional helpful information on crafting a nonprofit marketing strategy, check out these additional resources:
Get More From Conference Participant Data: 3 Top Tips
/in Nonprofit Communications /by Jessica KingAs an association leader, you know how critical an annual conference can be to the success of your organization. Your conference might be the event that members look forward to all year as it provides opportunities to network, hear from influential speakers, and engage with exhibitors. Additionally, conferences can help your association build a stronger community and reach prospective members.
While they hold many benefits, organizing a conference is no small feat. They require significant investments of time, money, and effort. That said, your association will need to leverage all of its organizational skills to keep everything running smoothly. Behind every successful event are countless hours spent researching and booking venues, sourcing speakers, promoting and selling tickets, and communicating with exhibitors. So, when the conference ends, you’ll want to make the most of the relationships formed during the event.
Collecting data before and during the conference is the best way to take advantage of attendee participation. In this guide, we’ll explore strategies that will help you gather key pieces of information about attendees so you can personalize communications and improve future events:
As you navigate the event planning and data analysis processes, remember that each of these tasks can be seamlessly completed with association management software (AMS). An AMS will streamline event planning tasks as well as ticket and merchandise sales, and it even offers interactive apps that attendees can use to guide them through the conference. Best of all, you can use your AMS to easily connect and analyze data about members and attendees.
Let’s dive in by exploring the best ways to gather data from your attendees.
Offer multiple ways to engage.
To ensure your association is able to collect useful data from attendees, offer as many ways to engage as possible. This might mean choosing a hybrid conference format so that people can either attend in person or online. Or, you might market the conference through multiple communication channels so they can choose how to engage with promotions.
As Fonteva’s guide to member engagement explains, a strong sense of engagement secures your organization’s relevance, boosts member retention, and encourages community-building. To reap these benefits and ensure attendees are active participants at your conference, consider using these engagement strategies:
Using these strategies, your association can deeply engage attendees and provide more positive experiences. Additionally, you can gather data through these interactions and use it to refine future conferences.
Send out post-conference surveys.
NXUnite’s guide to membership benefits defines them as “perks, services, and access that people receive when they participate in a membership program.” Think of conferences as one of these benefits. You want members to be satisfied with them, particularly if they are paying to attend.
The best way to know whether attendees were satisfied with a conference is to ask them. For organized, honest feedback, send out a post-event survey that asks them what they liked and what could be improved. Make sure to ask for details as needed and for any suggestions they have for the future. Even if they found your conference to be valuable, they might have an interesting topic in mind for next year.
When creating your survey, make sure to include questions about the following areas:
Consider creating separate surveys for both staff and volunteers. While these surveys won’t necessarily help you reach more new members or secure additional renewals, they can assist in boosting staff retention and improving your volunteer program.
Use an AMS with data analysis capabilities.
After collecting data from before, during, and after the conference, you’ll need to use your association software’s data analytics tool to get a full picture of the conference. This data will reveal both your strengths and weaknesses, giving you a clear path toward an event that meets and exceeds the expectations of members.
The way associations use data will differ depending on their unique needs and goals. Here are a few specific examples of how conference data might be used to improve communications, future events, and organizational procedures:
Because this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using your data, getting started can be overwhelming. It can help to compare feedback and suggestions against your association’s internal goals and assign each one a priority. Additionally, take into account the urgency of each piece of feedback and the number of people who made a similar suggestion or observation.
To ensure your event attracts new prospects and engaged members, make sure to promote the conference ahead of time and offer numerous engagement opportunities. Then, use your AMS to collect and analyze data from participants. Most importantly, make sure that your association uses the data it worked hard to get to actively learn and improve for the future.
A Guide to Leveraging Stock Donations for Your Nonprofit
/in Nonprofit Fundraising, Nonprofit Tools /by Jessica KingThe world of online fundraising is constantly evolving, and nonprofits must evolve with it. In recent years, noncash gifts like stocks and cryptocurrency have been on the rise due to their popularity with wealthy donors and the major tax benefits they offer. To ensure your organization can accept and leverage these gifts, you need to have the right infrastructure in place.
When you expand your fundraising strategy to include stock donations, you’ll engage high-income donors by offering more beneficial ways for them to give. Especially when 84% of US adults with incomes over $100,000 own stock, leveraging stock donations for your nonprofit is an opportunity you don’t want to miss out on. To set you up for success, we’ll cover the following steps you can take to start leveraging stock gifts:
If your nonprofit hasn’t started accepting stock donations yet, it’s not too late to get in on the action. Let’s start with the basics.
1. Understand the basics of stock donations
Before you can begin soliciting stock gifts, it’s important to have a baseline understanding of the process and legalities. There are three main things you need to know about accepting stock donations:
Let’s take a look at an example of what this could look like in practice.
Imagine that a high-income donor who normally donates mid-level cash gifts to your nonprofit also owns multiple publicly traded stocks. When your nonprofit lets them know they can give a larger contribution and reduce their own tax obligations, they jump at the chance to donate high-value stock. Once your nonprofit receives the donation, you may choose to reinvest it to increase the donation’s value even further or liquidate it into cash.
Because of the major tax benefits for donors and the potential for your nonprofit to increase the value of donations over time, stock gifts are an incredible opportunity to help your organization fund your mission.
2. Set up a brokerage account for your nonprofit
Ready to start increasing your fundraising capacity with stock donations? The next step is to set up the necessary infrastructure internally.
To accept stock gifts, your nonprofit needs to have a place to receive them. A brokerage or investment account allows you to receive, liquidate, and reinvest stocks on behalf of your organization. Applying for a brokerage account can be relatively straightforward but often time intensive, so be prepared to provide the following as part of your application:
With a standard brokerage firm, this process can take weeks. If you work with a nonprofit investment advisor, they can simplify and speed up this process significantly. Plus, they’ll give you general guidance on nonprofit investing best practices, in case you decide to reinvest any of your stock donations.
3. Make it easy for donors to give by leveraging a stock donation page
Once you have your brokerage account set up and ready to receive stock gifts, it’s time to provide your donors with an easy way to give. The simplest way to help donors make stock donations quickly and easily is to leverage a donation page that lists stocks and other noncash gifts as options.
By creating a designated stock donation page or adding a widget to your existing donation page, donors will be able to quickly fill in information about their brokerage firm and chosen stock gift to start the stock transfer process. From there, the donor’s brokerage firm will verify and complete the transfer, and you’ll receive the stocks in a few hours.
Remember to reduce any friction with your donor by making the process as easy as possible. Make sure that any platform you use to streamline the process doesn’t require your donors to create a username and login. The simpler it is to give, the better.
Some platforms, like Infinite Giving’s stock donation tool, can even automatically liquidate and reinvest stock gifts if your nonprofit chooses. This takes the bulk of the work off your staff’s plate and gives your stock donations the potential to start appreciating in value as soon as possible.
4. Promote stock donations to your donors
Don’t forget this important step—it’s crucial to thoughtfully market your new stock gifting option to the right supporters.
When you’re ready to start marketing stock donations to your supporters, create a promotion plan that includes the following key considerations:
When donors start giving stock to your nonprofit, ask for feedback on their giving experience. Consider sending a short survey that asks why they decided to give stock, how easy the process was, and what you can do to improve their experience. Use this information to tailor future outreach based on what tactics successfully encourage donors to give stock.
You want to encourage donors who give stock once to do so again in the future, so remember to thank each donor personally and thoughtfully. eCardWidget’s guide to thanking donors suggests establishing a set of appreciation tactics that align with different giving levels. Make sure that stock donors have a place near the top to adequately express your thanks.
With these tips in mind, your nonprofit will be on the path to leveraging stock donations in no time. Once you start seeing positive results, consider branching out to accept other noncash donations as well and truly tap into the future of online giving.
How to Improve Outreach with Digital Fundraising Platforms
/in Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Fundraising, Nonprofit Marketing /by Jessica KingNonprofits must use their resources wisely to get the most value out of the tools in which they invest. Much like you’d multitask by using several internet browser tabs or taking notes while reading, nonprofit leaders can take advantage of the multipurpose value of fundraising software.
Among the various digital tools available to nonprofits, fundraising platforms offer unparalleled opportunities to engage donors and attract potential supporters. In this guide, we’ll explore four strategies for using the capabilities of digital fundraising platforms to improve nonprofit outreach:
Digital tools can power nonprofit missions in ways beyond their intended purposes. Before revamping your marketing approach, consider how your existing tools can garner support for your cause.
Accommodate your supporters
As a nonprofit leader, you’re likely already aware that donor retention is more cost-effective than acquisition. Therefore, your first step in improving outreach should be to accommodate your existing supporters through convenient donation asks.
Digital fundraising platforms offer numerous ways to conveniently reach and impel supporters to take action, such as text-to-give fundraisers. According to Snowball’s text-to-give fundraising guide, mobile giving is a “mutually beneficial” fundraising strategy since donors use the technology daily and can easily make a donation.
Successful outreach accommodates supporters by simplifying communications and donations. Other fundraising platform capabilities that accommodate supporters include:
Aside from offering communication and donation tools, your digital fundraising platform will also collect donor data, which your nonprofit should use to plan its outreach. For example, you might promote recurring gifts to a donor who has a history of donating monthly. Or, use employer data to determine if your supporters would be eligible for a matching gift program. When you use this information to guide your outreach, you’ll send the right message to the right supporter.
Expand your audience
The expansive reach of virtual communication is no mystery—with digital tools, your nonprofit can connect with local, national, and global audiences! Fundraising platforms spread nonprofit messages to larger audiences with capabilities such as:
To further expand your reach, combine your larger marketing strategies with your fundraising tools. For example, if you plan to engage in social media marketing, launch a peer-to-peer campaign through your fundraising software. You can then use this platform to streamline the social media campaign rather than making individual posts on each channel.
Optimize your website
Your nonprofit’s website serves as the central hub for information about your organization. Here, donors learn about your mission, programs, campaigns, and opportunities to get involved. Before you ask existing or potential supporters to take action, ensure they have updated and reliable resources, such as:
After using fundraising software to optimize your website, you can further improve your outreach by gaining visibility on Google. Leverage Google Ads to promote your most important pages and attract new supporters to your website.
Offer engaging ways to get involved
While fundraising platforms can boost your digital marketing efforts, the ultimate goal of nonprofit outreach should be to motivate supporters to take action. The right fundraising platform will host concurrent campaigns to give your supporter a myriad of ways to get involved.
For example, your auction platform might also host text-to-give fundraisers. That way, donors who prefer the experience of attending an event can participate in the auction, while supporters who live far away might donate via text message. Outreach that promotes a variety of ways to give will appeal to more supporters and increase engagement.
Getting started with fundraising platforms
Don’t let the powerful capabilities of digital fundraising tools go to waste—evaluate your platform to determine which features you can leverage for improved outreach. If you haven’t chosen a platform yet, use these strategies to guide your search. The right fundraising software will help you drive real results for your mission!
3 Tips for a Successful Virtual School Fundraiser
/in Nonprofit Communications /by Jessica KingAs a parent or teacher involved with school clubs or sports teams, fundraising might be something you view as a necessary but difficult part of these activities. Students often need additional funding for extracurriculars. However, traditional fundraising methods can be tiresome, requiring large investments of time and resources only to be met with subpar results.
Instead of spending another year selling items from catalogs to local friends and neighbors, consider switching to digital fundraising. During a digital fundraiser, you’ll simply engage donors by promoting the campaign online. Then, collect donations via a virtual payment portal. This way, you won’t need to collect cash or checks, and it’s possible for supporters to contribute from anywhere. And the best part is that you can take almost any fundraising idea online.
Whether you’re hosting a school-wide fundraiser or raising money for the marching band’s next competition, it’s paramount that your group has fundraising software that makes the process easy. These tools take care of all of the tiny, tedious details for you. For example, you might choose a solution that automatically creates individual fundraising pages for each student and seamlessly sends funds to your account at the end of the campaign.
In this short guide, we’ll help you get started by covering three tips for a successful digital school fundraiser:
While the main parts of the fundraiser, like promotion and donation collection, occur online, don’t forget that you can include in-person components, too. Capping the campaign off with a fun event (or centering the campaign around a final event) is a great way to build excitement and deepen engagement. You’ll likely want to hire a fundraising event planner to coordinate this element of the campaign will to ensure that everything runs smoothly, and you raise the most money possible!
Let’s dive in by exploring how to get started by choosing an idea that your students (and their families) will love.
Deciding on an idea for your fundraiser
When kicking off any fundraiser, it’s key to choose an idea that resonates with participants, supporters, and the volunteers helping you run the fundraiser.
First, make sure that the idea you choose is age-appropriate and appeals to participants’ interests—a cheerleading squad of teens might enjoy a 5K race, but a tee-ball team of six-year-olds may not. Additionally, the idea you choose shouldn’t involve extreme amounts of preparation and involvement from your volunteers.
If you aren’t sure where to start, this 99Pledges guide to school fundraising ideas offers a range of events to kickstart your team’s brainstorming. Some of the most popular ideas include:
Next, consider taking a pledge approach to your fundraiser. Pledge campaigns are more engaging for students and will help you reach a wider audience. During these fundraisers, team members collect pledge donations from supporters, typically based on a unit relevant to the campaign idea. For example, if you host a walk-a-thon, supporters would donate a certain amount of money per mile participants walk.
Planning your event
To plan a successful charity event, your school must follow best practices for smart virtual fundraising.
First, look for a fundraising platform that keeps incoming donations organized and offers a streamlined donation process. Your software should make donating as easy as possible, and it should allow your participants to track their fundraising progress on their pages.
Next, strategize your approach based on past campaign data. Analyze your data to understand who contributed to your school in the past, who participated in events, and how supporters found out about your fundraiser. Then, ask strategic questions to propel your campaign forward:
Be sure you’re taking advantage of the data your chosen software can collect. Let’s say you’re a coach for the school basketball team. Data from past fundraising campaigns shows that while you mainly promoted your team-wide donation page, supporters tended to donate to individual pages instead. For your upcoming campaign, you plan to urge parents and team members to heavily promote individual pages online.
Marketing your digital school fundraiser
Now that your event has a concrete plan of action, design a marketing timeline to attract support before, during, and after the campaign. Make sure to keep any insights or discoveries you made while analyzing your donor data in mind to create more personalized messages.
Effective marketing sets your school up for success in interacting with your supporters as well as your larger community. It’s an excellent opportunity to tell people about your school’s efforts and mission, and it establishes rapport in your community. And when you advertise digitally, you can reach far beyond the school and the local community to win the support of donors across different regions.
When promoting your fundraiser, consider the following steps:
Have your volunteers help spread the word.
Empower those who are already passionate about your cause to spread the word about your fundraiser. Your volunteer base, likely made up of students’ family members, already has multiple networks they can pull support from, both social and professional. Encourage them to promote the fundraiser not only through word of mouth, but also by reaching connections via social media and other digital communication channels.
If your school is looking for great ambassadors to aid in fundraiser promotion, consider the following groups:
Your school’s ambassadors and volunteers can easily direct their networks straight to the relevant fundraising page, which will help your event tremendously. To empower them to do so, consider incentivizing them with a special gift, like a gift card or a free t-shirt. Appreciation goes a long way for both volunteers and donors.
Use the right platforms to communicate your message.
Once you find volunteers to market your fundraiser, give them the right messaging tactics. Supply them with the right materials and tips for best practices. For example, you might create a social media calendar for parents to help them remember when to post about the fundraiser. It might also be helpful to create templates for the posts to make it as easy as possible.
Most importantly, make sure your message is clear. You should include a single call-to-action that leads donors directly to the correct web pages for your fundraiser. If you are incorporating an interactive event, the details of when and where it will be held should be included as well.
Then, consider which channels are most effective for your marketing strategy. Use multiple outlets to spread the word to a wide audience of potential contributors. This can include both digital and print mediums. Just be sure to use the platforms that are most relevant to the segments you’re trying to target.
Popular (and cost-effective) marketing channels can include:
Just remember, the most effective digital marketing strategy involves multiple platforms that allow you to establish several touchpoints with supporters near and far. When your promotions appear on more than one of the communication platforms supporters use, they’re more likely to keep the campaign at the top of their minds and donate.
After your campaign, you’ll have one very important job left: thanking your donors. This can be as simple as sending out an email after they donate. To personalize the message, eCardWidget’s guide to donor thank-you emails suggests using an attention-grabbing subject line, greeting them by name, and referencing specific details like the amount they donated.
Build your teamwork skills by choosing a creative fundraising idea. Then, follow digital fundraising best practices (like leveraging the right platform) to plan your event and choose strategies for the campaign. Finally, empower the members of your school community to help market your efforts. Once your campaign wraps up, you’ll have the funds your team needs and strong connections with your new network of supporters.
Website Design: 7 Tips to Increase Site Visit Length
/in Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Marketing /by Jessica KingWith online fundraising and marketing becoming increasingly important for nonprofits, your website is more essential than ever for capturing leads, displaying engaging and relevant mission information, and facilitating donations and volunteer sign-ups. To effectively engage audience members and retain their attention, you need to design your website to increase site visit length.
According to Contentsquare’s 2023 Digital Experience Benchmark report, the average time on page spent per session is 5.9 minutes for desktop users and 2.7 minutes for mobile users. If your organization’s website falls under these thresholds, it could be time to refresh your user experience to boost engagement on your site.
In this guide, we’ll walk through seven web design tips to help lengthen and improve your site visits:
The most effective nonprofit websites make it easy for visitors to engage with content and opportunities that interest them. When visitors enjoy using your website and learning more about your organization, they’ll naturally spend more time on it.
1. Present your content strategically
Your website is your most important digital marketing tool for helping potential supporters learn about your mission, recent accomplishments, and other information regarding your organization or sector.
As soon as a visitor lands on your website, they’ll expect to see organized, updated content. To exceed visitor expectations, follow these navigation and content guidelines:
With fresh, easy-to-find content, visitors will be able to quickly get a sense of your organization’s work and determine whether they’d like to get more involved.
2. Improve your site’s accessibility and readability
You’ve probably come across an outdated website from time to time where the text is too small, the color contrast is not high enough, or the background image is too busy, compromising the readability of the page.
Your website should be readable and accessible for everyone, no matter their device or ability. Here are some general tips to follow:
These steps not only ensure that your content is more readable but make it easier for screen reader devices to read the text out loud for those with visual impairments, improving your website’s accessibility. The better the words flow, the easier it is for those listening to understand and engage with the content.
In addition to your website’s written content, make sure your forms are equally accessible and easy to read. Kanopi’s accessible forms guide recommends including descriptive form labels and instructions so visitors know exactly what is expected of them.
3. Use engaging visuals
Large chunks of text can be intimidating and hard to parse through. Including compelling visual content throughout your site is a great way to break up text and make your site more engaging.
Consider incorporating the following types of visual content into your web design strategy:
High-quality images will have a larger file size, which can slow down your site speed. Therefore, be sure to compress them so that they don’t slow down your page load speed.
According to Double the Donation’s nonprofit web design guide, “By minimizing page load time, your organization will significantly increase the chances that the donors who click on your website will actually land there and stay long enough to look around.”
4. Incorporate interactive elements
One key method of increasing site visit length as well as conversions for your nonprofit website is to incorporate interactive or clickable elements.
Interactive elements capture users’ attention and encourage them to stay on your site. These fun components increase their enjoyment of your site.
Consider creating engaging site features like:
Users will remember your site and nonprofit mission better with these enjoyable experiences as a core memory.
5. Optimize your most important landing pages
For most websites, your homepage will be the most popular landing page and receive the most site visits. However, nonprofit organizations are unique in that there are a couple of other core landing pages that will be frequently visited and sought after by current and prospective supporters.
For instance, your organization might prioritize pages like your:
Optimizing your most important landing pages is especially essential If your organization has a Google ads strategy. Using your Google ads to direct attention to your most vital landing pages can help boost conversions, turning more site visitors into donors and volunteers.
6. Include internal links
An easy way to keep people on your site is to simply incorporate more internal links. This means linking to appropriate landing pages to leverage key conversion opportunities as well as linking to blog posts or other written content throughout the site.
Ensure that each article and page on your site has plenty of internal links. This is the best way to get people to visit those pages and can help reduce your bounce rate, which is the rate of how often people enter your site and then leave without exploring further.
Incorporating internal links can also improve your site’s SEO (or search engine optimization), but only if you’re linking to valuable content. Adding internal links just for the sake of it won’t do much, so be sure to link to valuable educational content that’s clearly related to the page’s topic. This can not only encourage visitors to continue engaging with you but also bring up the overall value of your website.
7. Demonstrate credibility
Building trust among your audience members through your website is essential to gaining their support. Showing credibility is a simple way to establish trust with supporters.
For instance, adding photos of real people who have been impacted by your organization can make your site appear more trustworthy.
Here are some other quick ways to show credibility:
To ensure your website is secure and trustworthy, you can turn to a nonprofit web consultant for support. These professionals can ensure that your website is up to security standards and recommend changes to help enhance your credibility.
Your website is the online face of your nonprofit’s mission. Updating it to improve user engagement is crucial to boosting your online fundraising and developing supporter relationships. These tips will help you retain visitors’ attention longer and give them opportunities to get more involved with your organization.
AUTHOR: ANNE STEFANYK
As Founder and CEO of Kanopi Studios, Anne helps create clarity around project needs, and turns client conversations into actionable outcomes. She enjoys helping clients identify their problems, and then empowering the Kanopi team to execute great solutions.
Anne is an advocate for open source and co-organizes the Bay Area Drupal Camp. When she’s not contributing to the community or running her thoughtful web agency, she enjoys yoga, meditation, treehouses, dharma, cycling, paddle boarding, kayaking, and hanging with her nephew.
https://twitter.com/Anne_Kanopi
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/annestefanyk/
Google Ad Grant Impact: Capturing Results and Measuring ROI
/in Google Ad Grants, Nonprofit Communications /by Jessica KingAs a nonprofit professional, you understand the importance of making the most of every dollar you spend on your mission. Nonprofits operate with limited budgets, so professionals in the sector constantly look for ways to maximize impact without overspending.
If you’ve encountered the Google Ad Grant program, you probably recognize that the program’s valuable. Free advertising money is a clear win for any organization. But what are the exact benefits? How can you calculate what the Google Ad Grant is actually worth to your nonprofit?
We’re here to help you answer those questions and more! That way, you can understand the tangible results the grant provides nonprofits. Then, you can communicate that to your organization’s leadership and get everyone on board. Here’s what we’ll cover:
Getting Attention is an official Google Partner, and we work tirelessly with nonprofits to maximize the impact of the Google Ad Grant on their missions. With the right strategy, we’ve seen time and again how the Google Ad Grant can amplify a nonprofit’s presence and turn internet traffic into tangible support.
To learn more about why so many organizations rely on Google Ad Grants, continue reading this article or chat with our experts.
Basic Benefits of the Google Ad Grant
Long story short, if your nonprofit has a website filled with valuable content about your mission, the Google Ad Grant can potentially transform your digital presence. Putting some thought behind your Google Ad Grant strategy means you can:
There’s really no limit to what you can achieve with the Google Ad Grant. With an astounding $10,000 to spend each month, you can make powerful strides in strengthening your online presence.
Google Ads Statistics
“Engagement,” “awareness,” and “buzz” are all arbitrary. What are the real numbers tied to the impact that the Google Ad Grant has on nonprofits?
While results will vary based on organizations, some pretty impressive statistics communicate the impact the grant has on the industry as a whole:
There’s no shortage of impressive statistics out there! Those are just a few of our favorites that speak to the value of the Google Ad Grant.
Factors that Impact the Google Ad Grant’s ROI
As an in-kind donation, the Google Ad Grant itself doesn’t take money out of your marketing budget. Google technically pays for the ads you create through the program.
At a glance, the Google Ad Grant is technically free, so it might seem like there’s no investment necessary. However, acquiring and retaining the grant takes time, expertise, and therefore money.
So, in terms of your investment, the real question you should ask is how much time or money you spend on grant management, rather than how much Google spends to display your ads.
Grant management costs are typically the only investment costs that you’ll have to worry about. Know that professional management can cost anywhere from $500 to over $1,000 per month.
Getting Attention pairs expertise with affordability and professionalism, keeping your grant management costs low. We charge $600 per month with no hidden add-on fees. We’ll handle every aspect of your Google Grant management, helping you to maximize your ROI at every turn.
Calculating ROI for Your Nonprofit’s Google Ad Grant Account
The struggle with calculating marketing ROI is that it’s hard to attach a dollar amount to your results. It’s one of the most elusive metrics for an organization.
What we’ve come to learn is that ROI varies from organization to organization. It depends on your specific goals for the program and what metrics you’re tracking.
Through Google Analytics, you’ll track conversions (or meaningful actions) for your ads. As a reminder, most organizations track:
These actions communicate how much each ad is worth to your organization.
For conversions that produce revenue (like donations), it’s easy to calculate ROI. You simply compare the money you generate from Google Ads with the amount you spend on Google Ad Grant management.
However, non-monetary goals (like volunteer sign-ups) are harder to put a price on. For these, you’ll need to chat with your team about how much each of these conversions is worth to you. You don’t necessarily have to attach a dollar amount, but you can set achievable goals for how many conversions you’d like your ads to produce.
Paid Advertising vs. The Google Ad Grant
When using paid advertising, you pay for each ad yourself. You strive to keep costs down to maximize your ROI. To do this, you might omit competitive (and therefore expensive) keywords and instead focus on less popular queries.
With the Google Ad Grant, you can bid on the most expensive keywords without affecting your ROI.
Whether your Google Ads cost $10 or $10,000, your investment is only what you pay for grant management. Your out-of-pocket costs won’t change. So, if you pay a grant manager $600 per month, you’ll pay the same no matter how much of your grant you spend.
You’ll calculate your ROI based on the real money you spend ($600 in this case) and the results your ads generated (e.g. clicks, conversions, and revenue).
The Bottom Line: The only investment you’ll need to consider is how much you spend on grant management each month. For monetary conversions, you can compare how much you earn with how much you’re spending on grant management. For non-monetary conversions, how much the Google Ad Grant is “worth” fully depends on whether your ads are producing results for your team.
When To Expect Results for Your Google Ads
Applying and getting approved for the Google Ad Grant can take some time. If don’t already have a Google for Nonprofits account, it can take time to get started.
Once you’re up and running, it takes a bit more time to see results from your campaigns. There’s no set guarantee, but generally, you can expect to see some traction a few weeks after launching a campaign.
Within your first month, you’ll start to see some measurable results. Take a look at your Ad Groups, and you’ll start to see clicks for your campaigns.
If you don’t have any conversions yet, don’t worry! The first few weeks can be slow. This time isn’t wasted time, though. Google needs time to gather information about your campaign. It takes a few weeks for Google to learn who to show your campaigns to in order to produce results. In other words, Google wants to serve your ads to the right audiences.
While it varies on a case-by-case basis, Google Ad Grant campaigns generally take 2-3 months to mature and then up to a year to develop into a strong campaign. In rare cases, Google Ads can deliver results overnight. But again, most campaigns won’t generate a positive ROI until a few months in.
Factors That Might Slow Down Results
A few factors might impact how quickly you see results, such as:
Help from a professional will help you see better results over time. Even from the get-go, professional consulting services that are Google Partners can help you overcome these challenges, helping you achieve results far faster than by struggling through learning the nuances of the program alone.
How To Achieve Results Quickly With the Google Ad Grant
The secret to effective Google Ad Grant management is research, research, research! The program has a lot of requirements, and you’re expected to navigate some important Google Ad Grants limitations. Because of this, you’ll need to study how to meet these requirements and explore how similar organizations create winning ad campaigns. In many cases, perfecting your ads takes a lot of trial and error, too.
Instead of devoting a staff member’s time to learning about the program, working with a professional who is a Google Partner is your best bet. A Google-certified Google Grants manager will already have the necessary background knowledge regarding how the Google Ad Grants interface and the program as a whole works, so you’ll minimize your costs and maximize your ROI this way.
Here at Getting Attention, we’re a proud Google Partner and strive to help nonprofits make the most of the Google Ad Grant budget. As a full-service Ad Grant consulting firm, we offer these services:
Best of all, we aim to keep our costs low at $600 per month. With no hidden add-on fees, your nonprofit can maximize your Google Ad Grant results and generate meaningful conversions for your cause.
Additional Resources
The Google Ad Grant is a powerful resource for any nonprofit that wants to increase its online presence. With the right strategy for your organization, it can have an incredible impact on what you’re able to accomplish.
Marketing ROI can be tricky to calculate in some cases, so it’s important to have some idea of what goals your nonprofit is striving to achieve. Then, you can use that to estimate whether the Google Ad Grant is producing sufficient results.
Whether you’re boosting donations or volunteer sign-ups, you can maximize your ROI by investing in a professional nonprofit marketing consultant. Experts have the background experience necessary to overcome common challenges, write compelling ads, and adjust your campaigns based on results. If you’re ready to get started, reach out to our expert Google Grants management team.
In the meantime, remember that the secret to maximizing your Google Ad Grant ROI is research! Explore these resources to learn everything you need to know about the program:
5 Steps to Starting a Membership Program for Your Nonprofit
/in Nonprofit Communications /by Jessica KingSupport is crucial for the continued success of your nonprofit organization. To effectively engage and connect with your supporters, it is essential to meet them where they are. For nonprofits, one way to do this is by creating a membership program.
An effective membership program can offer a boost in engagement and support by better connecting your supporters with your work. Through your program, donors can pay membership fees in exchange for benefits such as free branded merchandise, exclusive events, and a network of like-minded supporters brought together through your work.
This approach gives your nonprofit the opportunity to develop a more sustainable revenue stream and retain your supporters by bringing them into the fold. Ready to get started? Here are five steps to start a membership program for your nonprofit.
1. Define Your Purpose
Before you can craft a membership program that works for your organization, it’s important that you have a clear purpose going in. Take the time to evaluate how both your nonprofit and its supporters can benefit from the program.
Define a driving goal that aligns with your mission. Some thought-starters might include:
As you begin to build your membership program, ensure that your organization is aligned with its supporters so that you can give them the best member experience possible.
Assess whether your organization’s resources and priorities align with the interests and needs of your supporters. This valuable information will provide essential insights as you start your membership program.
2. Create Your Membership Model
A membership model will look different for every organization, but here are some steps you can take to get started:
Understand your organization and mission.
Before you can build your model, you’ll need a clear understanding of the value your organization offers and the benefit you’ll bring to prospective members. That means establishing your nonprofit’s mission and goals.
Decide on your offerings to stakeholders.
With your organization’s vision in mind, it’s time to get clear on what you offer to members, sponsors, employees, and other stakeholders who all rely on your work.
Ensure your organization’s mission is aligned with stakeholders.
Survey stakeholders like members, staff, and sponsors to ensure that your nonprofit’s vision and goals are aligned with theirs. Use what you learn from these findings to either adjust your organization’s vision accordingly, or to target a new group of stakeholders who are better aligned.
Select the best membership structure.
With a better understanding of your members and other stakeholders, you can now choose the most appropriate structure. This might mean paid memberships and memberships with different levels, including:
Or, you might have memberships for different groups, such as:
But remember, if you’re setting up a paid membership structure, it’s crucial to consider the return on investment. After all, attracting new members can cost you, and you want to ensure that you have the funds to provide them with all the member benefits they may have joined for.
Keep the marketing ball rolling
Once you’ve created your membership model, you’ll want to make sure you keep all of your current members engaged and keep building a case for new members to join. Keep on top of your marketing communications by reaching members where they’re most likely to hear you, such as through your organization’s newsletter, website, or social media channels.
3. Choose Membership Management Software
Efficiently managing your organization’s member data is crucial for creating a membership program that serves all stakeholders effectively. That’s why it’s imperative to choose membership management software that is compatible with your organization’s needs.
When searching for the right membership management software, here are some essential features to look for:
By choosing the right membership management software, you can strengthen your relationships with members, enhancing their engagement and fostering a thriving community.
4. Promote Your Nonprofit’s Membership Program
Now that you have built your membership program, it’s time to focus on promoting it and getting prospective members on board. Promoting your organization’s membership program is essential for converting supporters into active members.
Make use of the valuable insights from your donor profiles to tailor your communications and target current supporters who are more likely to become members. With this data, learn where your supporters are most active and spread the word across multiple marketing channels. Those might include:
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to communicating with prospective members, using targeted and strategic promotion will allow you to meet them where they are and make converting donors into members a seamless process.
5. Determine How to Engage and Retain Members
Having successfully launched your organization’s membership program and acquired members, the key to your program’s long-term success is in retaining those members.
One effective strategy is to craft a comprehensive member communication plan that facilitates ongoing engagement. Your plan should include regular interactions with members so that your organization can gain insights into their interests and needs.
By understanding their motivations, you can tailor activities, events, and opportunities to align with their preferences, increasing the likelihood of their continued involvement.
Equally important is continuously appreciating your members and making them feel valued. Show your gratitude by recognizing their contributions and efforts through personalized gestures, such as sending thank-you notes and organizing member appreciation events.
By nurturing a sense of belonging and appreciation, you cultivate a supportive community that encourages long-term member commitment.
To ensure long-term success, it’s crucial to optimize the member experience and journey. By aligning your nonprofit’s membership program with your supporters’ interests and needs, you can foster a thriving community that is committed for the long run.
Remember, the key is to continually assess and adapt your approach to provide the best member experience possible. Following these steps, you can start a membership program that will make a lasting impact.
6 Steps to Hire an Excellent Nonprofit Marketing Consultant
/in Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Fundraising /by Jessica KingNonprofit marketing raises mission awareness, ensures you develop strong relationships with supporters, promotes your organization’s services, and so much more! For example, did you know that 25% of donors ages 18 to 29 want social media communications from nonprofit organizations? However, it’s not enough to draft a couple of emails and post a few generic social media posts. That’s why organizational leaders often turn to nonprofit marketing consultants for professional help.
There are many different types of marketing consultants out there, each with their own specialty and qualifications that make them valuable to partner with. A great nonprofit marketing consultant will work closely with your fundraising team to ensure that the steps in your marketing plan further your goals.
This guide will walk through:
At Getting Attention, we understand that marketing is a complex topic, and implementing your strategy can quickly become a full-time job. We’re dedicated to helping nonprofits forge long-lasting partnerships with the right nonprofit marketing consultant for them. Let’s get started.
Nonprofit Marketing Consultant: 4 FAQs
Hiring a consultant can be a big investment for your nonprofit, so ensure you have completed your research and know the answers to essential questions, such as:
What is a nonprofit marketing consultant?
A consultant is a professional who provides targeted advice to organizational leaders. They typically specialize in a few areas of expertise, so their clients can strengthen their organizations’ weaknesses.
This means a nonprofit marketing consultant is someone who gives advice on how nonprofits can take their outreach and donor engagement strategy to the next level.
Nonprofit marketing consultants can help with a variety of tasks, but ultimately they should work closely with your nonprofit to support your strategy no matter the stage you’re in. From general support to a complete overhaul of your marketing strategy, a consultant can help at any point during the process.
When should you hire a nonprofit marketing consultant?
Researching and partnering with a consultant can take time and require a significant investment of your nonprofit’s resources. Before diving into this process, take the time to consider if hiring a nonprofit marketing consultant is the right course of action for your organization at this time.
Nonprofit organizations hire marketing consultants for all sorts of reasons, including general support for their promotional efforts. However, there are also a few situations where it makes sense to seek out a marketing consultant’s unique expertise, such as:
It’s important to note that you don’t have to wait for an event or large campaign to seek out a nonprofit marketing consultant. If you simply want to revitalize your communication efforts or you notice a key performance indicator falling behind, a marketing consultant can step in at any point and provide assistance.
How can marketing consultants help your nonprofit efforts?
What exactly do marketing consultants do? First and foremost, they should have a deep understanding of your organization and audience, along with the specific goals you’re trying to accomplish. Then, they’ll develop a marketing plan that compiles all of that knowledge and lays out strategies that will propel your nonprofit toward those goals.
Along with strategic planning, here are the specific actions nonprofit marketing consultants might help you with when executing their plan:
Because there are so many consultant specializations that fall under the umbrella of marketing, determine which services your nonprofit will need so you can narrow down your search for the perfect consultant. Also, look for agencies that specialize in specific sectors, such as churches or educational institutions. These agencies will have a deeper understanding of your unique mission and can provide more targeted strategies for your organization.
What are common nonprofit marketing consultant services?
The great thing about the expansive online space is that your nonprofit has a variety of marketing channels at its disposal. Each platform has its unique quirks, which is why there are nonprofit marketing consultants who specialize in one or several of these platforms.
As you develop your marketing strategy, consider how you can use the following platforms and if a professional can help bring your strategy to the next level:
This isn’t an exhaustive list—there are tons of different specialties that a consultant can help your nonprofit improve.
Steps To Finding The Best Nonprofit Marketing Consultant
To find the consultant who best aligns with your nonprofit’s goals and can take your marketing strategy to the next level, follow these six steps:
1. Review your nonprofit marketing needs with an audit.
Before you start thinking about partnering with a marketing professional, you have to get a sense of how your current marketing strategy is performing and determine your needs.
We recommend starting with a marketing audit. This might include:
From there, you can create an action plan. Divide your needs into “immediate” and “long-term.” Then, you can easily pinpoint your highest-priority needs and select a consultant who is equipped to help you meet them.
2. Meet with your board members and other key stakeholders.
Before making any major decisions and hiring a marketing consultant for your nonprofit, you need to ensure that the rest of your nonprofit leadership team is on board and understands the exact help you’re seeking.
When meeting with your nonprofit board and other key stakeholders, discuss:
Remember, these guidelines are there to do just that: guide you. It’s important to remain flexible, as not everything can be predicted before the partnership even begins.
3. Compile a list of prospects that meet your needs.
Once you understand your current marketing needs and what you want from the partnership, compile a list of possible consultants.
Here are some of the common ways to find potential nonprofit marketing consultant partners:
As you look through your list of consultants, consider their experience and client history. Ideally, you should select a marketing professional that often works with nonprofits with a similar size, mission, and needs to yours.
4. Create an RFP (Request for Proposal)
RFPs are used to request information from potential partners and communicate your nonprofit’s needs, mission, and relevant goals that the prospective consultant might need. Requesting a proposal is the most direct and straightforward way to determine if a consultant is right for you.
While your RFP will be unique to your organization, we recommend including these essential components:
Generally, your RFP should give consultants the necessary information to propose a strategy to address them. The more focused your RFP is, the more effective the proposal will be!
5. Reach out to top candidates
It can be difficult to narrow down your search, especially if you receive several qualified proposals. Reach out to your team and nonprofit leadership, and ask them to rank their favorite choices. Compare these lists to spot trends or favorite candidates.
Once you’ve narrowed down your top picks and finalized your RFP, reach out to your prospects. Make sure the consultants you connect with receive your RFP and know how to get back in touch if they’re interested in working with you.
6. Ask for references and follow up
When you hire a nonprofit marketing consultant, you’re adding another player to your nonprofit team. It’s important to vet them just like you would a potential new hire.
Review the consultants’ proposals like you would job applications. Don’t be afraid to ask for references or case studies from past clients. It’s crucial to have an accurate understanding of each consultant’s past experiences to see if the relationship will work for both parties.
Once you’ve selected your favorite candidate, it’s time to follow up and begin the partnership.
4 Nonprofit Marketing Best Practices
After kicking off your partnership with a nonprofit marketing consultant, you can start familiarizing them with your organization, its mission, and your short- and long-term goals. As your relationship with the consultant progresses, it’s essential to make sure they are following nonprofit marketing best practices.
Here are a few of the most important best practices your nonprofit consultant should adhere to:
Check in with your marketing consultant periodically to ensure that the work they are doing for your nonprofit aligns with these best practices as well as any more specific stipulations your organization has for them.
Top Nonprofit Marketing Consultants
We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite marketing consultants for nonprofits divided by specialty. You’re bound to find the best partner for your unique needs:
Getting Attention — Best for Google Grant Management
At Getting Attention, we’re proud to be a Google-certified Google Ad Grant agency and the Google Ad Grant is our core marketing specialty. If you’re unfamiliar with the program, Google offers eligible organizations to amplify their most important landing webpages for the keywords their supporters are searching online. Using Google Ads and leveraging the Google Grant program is one of the most valuable ways to jumpstart your marketing efforts and promote your digital content!
As a Google Grant agency, our goal is to assist nonprofits in managing their account no matter if they’re just applying or want to revitalize an existing campaign. Our marketing team will work closely with your nonprofit to ensure that the strategies you use and the plans you carry out are aligned with your audience’s needs and your overall mission.
Standout Consultant Services
Kwala — Best for Nonprofit Graphic Design
Kwala is a graphic design agency that specializes in mission-driven marketing. They understand the unique needs of nonprofits and know how to make your cause stand out through powerful marketing materials. Not to mention, they offer unlimited requests and revisions, meaning they’ll keep designing until your materials are perfect.
From improving your social media presence to transforming your direct marketing appeals, Kwala offers everything you need to build brand awareness and connect with supporters.
Standout Consultant Services
DNL OmniMedia — Best for Strategy Development
DNL OmniMedia is a full-service nonprofit marketing consulting firm and is dedicated to helping fundraisers carry out an effective campaign and reach supporters. Their extensive suite of services can help large and enterprise-level nonprofits achieve a variety of goals, no matter how complex or time-consuming.
Standout Nonprofit Marketing Consulting Services:
Kanopi — Best for Nonprofit Website Support
Kanopi Studios is a digital website agency and a top partner for nonprofits looking to take their online marketing efforts to the next level. They currently support over 150 active sites and work closely with nonprofits to ensure that their content is effectively promoting their mission and supporting their overall marketing strategy.
Standout Nonprofit Marketing Consulting Services:
Meyer Partners — Best for Direct Mail Marketing
Meyer Partners is a marketing agency for nonprofits dedicated to helping fundraisers craft effective direct mail appeals. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that direct mail is dead—it’s still a valuable channel when it comes to marketing your mission and connecting with supporters. Meyer Partners can help you harness that power!
Standout Nonprofit Marketing Consulting Services:
The Fundraising Coach — Best Nonprofit Marketing Consultant for Training
Marc A. Pitman, AKA The Fundraising Coach, trains nonprofit professionals to improve their fundraising abilities. If your nonprofit is interested in improving your staff and leadership’s skills when it comes to asking for donations, sharing your nonprofit’s story, and overall fundraising abilities, The Fundraising Coach can provide training that will have lasting value beyond just one or two campaigns.
Standout Nonprofit Marketing Consulting Services:
Big Duck — Best Nonprofit Marketing Consultant for Brand Promotion
What is your nonprofit’s brand voice? If you need help defining it, Big Duck’s consulting services might be right for your nonprofit. Big Duck helps nonprofits launch campaigns that represent their mission by first working to refine with brand voice.
Standout Nonprofit Marketing Consulting Services:
Donorly — Best Nonprofit Consultant for Fundraising
Fundraising encompasses a variety of skills and responsibilities. Donorly understands that and aims to help nonprofits improve their fundraising through a variety of methods, from capital campaigns to streamlining internal workflows.
Standout Nonprofit Marketing Consulting Services:
Additional Resources
Your nonprofit’s marketing strategy is a critical component of your overall success, so turning to a professional consultant might be your best bet. Make sure you do your research and reach out to agencies that align with your mission and audience. That way, you’ll find a reliable coach who can help you transform your promotional efforts.
If you want to continue learning more about nonprofit marketing and how to optimize your strategy, check out these additional resources:
Improve Your Nonprofit Communications Strategy in 5 Steps
/in Nonprofit Communications /by Jessica KingStaying in touch with your supporters brings in donations, helps you find sales leads, recruits volunteers, and spreads awareness for your cause. Strong nonprofit communications are essential to earning all of these benefits.
Nonprofit communications refers to all the tactics a nonprofit implements to communicate with stakeholders and promote its cause. A full communication plan should address fundraising, events, mission, and more. The plan should lay out the media channels it will use, including social media, email, direct mail, and more.
At Getting Attention, we help nonprofits market to and communicate with supporters using the Google Ad Grants program. We empower nonprofits to leverage up to $10,000 in free monthly Google Ad credits to reach new supporters, engage current donors, and strengthen relationships. In this guide, we’ll explore how to leverage Google Ads and a variety of other marketing channels.
Nonprofit Communication Goals
Both for- and nonprofit organizations need strong external communication strategies to promote their brands and offerings to their target audiences. The difference between your nonprofit’s strategy, a business’s, and another nonprofit’s is your goals.
Your goals dictate your marketing and communication strategy. A few common goals nonprofits have include:
Your goals impact every part of your communication strategy from the contents of your communication materials to the platforms you share them on on. Additionally, your goals impact the type of communication materials you’re likely to produce.
4 Types of Nonprofit Communication
1. Storytelling
Storytelling makes your communications more effective, engaging, and emotional. Studies show that 55% of consumers are more likely to remember a story rather than a list of facts, meaning storytelling can help your nonprofit get its mission across in a memorable way.
These examples show how nonprofits can share powerful stories:
Don’t forget to be creative and dig deep to find the most compelling stories. Prioritize quality writing, and incorporate powerful images and videos when possible.
2. Marketing
Marketing describes nonprofit communication tactics that have the goal of motivating target audiences to take action. Some of the next actions you might encourage your audience to take include:
Ultimately, your marketing efforts should articulate your nonprofit’s value proposition. A value proposition explains how your organization solves your audience’s needs, the benefits they receive from your organization, and how your organization is unique from the competition.
For example, let’s look at the nonprofit Wonder Ink. Wonder Ink sells children’s ministry curriculum to Sunday Schools, church leaders, and parents. Their value proposition might look something like this:
When you want your audience to take a specific action, consider the value proposition behind it. Consider what your audience needs related to the action, the benefits they will gain by taking it, and why they should choose to engage with your nonprofit instead of a similar organization.
3. Fundraising
Communicating about your fundraisers can be complex, as it requires contact with a variety of audiences across many different communication channels. Your organization will need to tailor its outreach to your audience’s preferences and unique traits.
While you can get as granular as you like with personalizing communications to recipients, here are the three basic audiences you’ll address:
Even after a successful fundraising campaign, communication is still relevant. Check out this guide from eCardWidget to learn how your organization can upgrade its donor thank-you emails.
4. Engagement
This type of communication relies on starting conversations with your audiences. Engagement builds a relationship with your audience beyond simply asking them for money. Cultivating connection with stakeholders that exists separate from monetary goals is key to fostering deep, trusting relationships that yield long-term donors.
There are so many ways to motivate donors to engage, from adding a “click here!” button to a marketing email to feature polls on your nonprofit’s Instagram stories. Get creative, make engaging convenient, and be sure to offer a variety of ways to engage.
Developing Your Nonprofit Communication Plan: 5 Steps
1. Determine Overarching Goals
A communication plan is a set of strategies developed for your nonprofit’s unique needs and goals. Its purpose is to reach and engage supporters. The first step to creating an effective communication plan is careful goal setting.
Define your goals according to the SMART goals framework. This method suggests that goals should be:
By setting goals within these parameters, you’ll ensure that each objective is attainable within your campaign timeline. An example of a SMART goal could be to earn 20% more sales leads through organic search traffic within six months of starting an intensive SEO strategy.
2. Establish Your Brand
Many aspects of your nonprofit communication tactics will be tailored to fit each audience, but your brand messaging should remain consistent across all efforts.
To keep branding consistent in communications, include your nonprofit’s:
To ensure these elements remain consistent no matter who creates or posts content at your nonprofit, create a media or branding kit. Include the appropriate use cases and image files for your logo, the Hex codes for your brand colors, and the names of the fonts you use.
Here’s our example of a nonprofit branding kit:
3. Analyze Data
Your communication strategy should always be backed by data. Without it, you could be making guesses about your audience that aren’t true, leaving you without the positive results you were hoping for.
Take a look at data from your nonprofit’s past communication efforts. What was successful, and what could be better? Use what you learn to refine future plans and understand trends. For example, maybe you noticed that donations to your food pantry spike around holidays like Thanksgiving. To capitalize on this increased engagement, ramp up the frequency of your communications and aim to reach untapped audiences.
4. Define Target Audiences
Your nonprofit likely has multiple audiences, each with its own needs and communication preferences. Defining target audiences becomes a lot easier with the help of a robust donor database. You can keep track of demographics, contact information, employer data, income, and location all in one place. You can also look at past donation data to figure out who your biggest supporters are.
In addition to donors, also consider the following audiences:
Data analytics can help you avoid guessing about your various audiences and build communication strategies that appeal to their real motivations for giving to your cause.
5. Choose Channels
There’s a wide range of communication channels to choose from, and each channel you choose to communicate on requires its own strategy, marketing materials, and posting schedule. As such, you should be deliberate about the channels you choose and pick platforms that align with your goals.
Let’s walk through a few examples of how various communication channels can help achieve different nonprofit goals.
Goal: Sell products and services
Nonprofits selling a product or service need channels that will connect them with customers and continually generate revenue. As such, these organizations might heavily invest in driving organic traffic to their website through search engine optimization (SEO).
Through keyword research, these nonprofits can identify what their target audience is likely looking for. Using this information, they can create high-value content that answers their audiences’ questions, showcases their services and products, and demonstrates their expertise.
For example, the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance (NLA) sells courses to nonprofit professionals looking to improve their fundraising and nonprofit management skills Their SEO strategy targets keywords related to skill development, and users who click on their blog pages will find content providing free advice. These blog posts promote the NLA’s offerings and show off their expertise. Visitors who engage with and are impressed by this content may go on to explore the rest of NLA’s site and potentially purchase a full course or attend an event.
Thanks to the SEO experts at Nexus Marketing, the NLA achieved first page rankings for 32 high-priority keywords.
Goal: Attract volunteers
To reach volunteers, you need to think about channels that will reach a local audience. After all, while some volunteers can work remotely, most nonprofit initiatives and fundraisers require volunteers to be nearby.
For digital marketing, try Google Ads. Turn on Google Ads’ geo-locating parameters and share your nonprofit’s address with Google to ensure your ads are shown only to locals. Plus, rather than spending your limited budget on search engine ads, you can create Google Ads for free with the Google Ad Grant.
The Google Ad Grant awards qualifying nonprofits with $10,000 a month in ad credits to create Google Ads promoting their website.
For volunteer recruitment, nonprofits might launch a Google Ads campaign targeting keywords like “[type of nonprofit] volunteer opportunities” or “volunteering in [city].” These keywords help narrow down who your ads will be shown to, increasing the number of high-quality leads you’ll receive.
If you need help applying for the Google Ad Grant, managing your ads, or reactivating your account, our team at Getting Attention can help! As a Google-certified agency, we’re on top of the latest developments at Google and can help our clients create ads that reach their target audience, make the most of their budget, and always comply with Google’s requirements.
Goal: Spread awareness
Getting more eyes on your cause can lead to real change as more people lend their time, effort, and voices to support you. As such, nonprofits launching awareness campaigns should turn to platforms that have large audiences, like social media.
The power of social media is that passionate supporters can help market for you. Choose channels that encourage sharing and commenting. Be aware that some platforms with low conversion rates have high share rates and decide if that trade-off is worthwhile. If you’re fundraising or selling a service, you may want to prioritize platforms like Facebook and Instagram, whereas if you simply want as big of an audience as possible to see your message, you might turn to TikTok.
Additionally, consider what types of content are likely to be shared. Research into the psychology behind social media suggests that stories that provoke excitement—whether it’s positive or negative—tend to see the most shares. For nonprofits, this means telling stories that evoke emotions like joy or outreach lead to action.
3 Helpful Nonprofit Communication Tools & Resources
Once your nonprofit has a communications plan in place, it’s time to execute. But, it can be challenging (and time-consuming) to manage an entire communications strategy on your own.
To make the process easier, here are a few popular tools and resources to check out:
To learn more, check out our video that covers the basics of the Google Ad Grants program:
Wrapping Up
Compelling communication is vital to running a successful nonprofit organization. By building connections with target audiences, you’ll cultivate trusting, loyal relationships with donors that help further your mission. To reach more of these audience members and make your marketing budget go further with the Google Ad Grants program, reach out to Getting Attention.
For additional helpful information on crafting a nonprofit marketing strategy, check out these additional resources:
6 Foolproof Ways to Get More Funding for Your Nonprofit
/in Nonprofit Communications, Nonprofit Fundraising /by Jessica KingIn a perfect world, all the money a nonprofit raises would go toward its cause. However, nonprofits incur expenses like any organization, so some, like marketing costs, will inevitably go toward overhead. To maximize your budget and allocate as much money as you can toward your mission, take the time to develop the perfect fundraising techniques.
In this guide, we’ll cover tips, tricks, and ideas that can help you achieve your fundraising goals:
Are you looking for ways to raise money for your mission-driven organization? There are many viable options available for you to choose from. Read on to see what’s out there.
How to Get Funding for Your Nonprofit Organization: 6 Sources
When choosing your nonprofit’s funding sources, consider the size, mission, and other defining characteristics of your nonprofit. Create a ratio with your goals in mind—for example, you might obtain 50% from grants, 20% from a membership program, and the remaining 30% from an annual event. Remember to prioritize revenue diversification to avoid relying too heavily on one income source.
Below, we’ve organized these sources into six main categories:
1) Individual donations
According to the Giving USA Annual Report, the largest portion of charitable donations came from individual donors in 2022. Individuals contributed a total of $319.04 billion, making up 64% of total giving in America.
Here are four types of individual donations your nonprofit could pursue as part of your funding model:
Remember to focus on obtaining a mixture of these different fundraising avenues to diversify your revenue, offer multiple ways for supporters to give to your cause, and improve your financial stability.
2) Corporate philanthropy
Corporate philanthropy refers to the ways that corporations give back to nonprofits and other mission-driven organizations.
Here are some of the most common ways corporations contribute to nonprofits:
Remember that your nonprofit can also request and accept in-kind gifts from corporations. Similar to pro bono services, these gifts are items that an organization donates to your organization for free—think new computers or canned goods for your food pantry.
3) Events
Events are a great way to both spread the word about your nonprofit and raise money for your cause. They give you the opportunity to engage face-to-face with current supporters, as well as reach new audiences by way of an exciting activity.
Some fun event ideas could include:
Remember to thoroughly market your event through social media, Google Ads, direct mail, and event flyers to ensure people are aware of it.
4) Online fundraising
It’s no secret we live in a digital world, and nonprofit fundraising is no exception. Taking advantage of online fundraising can help you extend your nonprofit’s reach beyond your local area, and it makes the giving experience much more convenient.
Consider one of these three online fundraising tactics:
On the whole, online fundraising tactics are a great way to reach a lot of people without spending a lot of cash.
5) Offline outreach
While online funding strategies are increasingly popular, don’t forget to use traditional outreach methods for a more personal touch.
Here are three offline fundraising ideas your nonprofit should consider:
Offline methods are a great way to build more personal relationships with your donors. And, they help you establish multiple touchpoints with donors so you have more opportunities to make an impression on them.
6) Grants
A grant consists of funds given to a nonprofit organization based on its industry, mission, size, and other eligibility considerations.
Grants come in all shapes and sizes, but there are three main categories:
To find nonprofit grants, look for the following two grant sources: government grants and private grants.
Government grants come from federal, state, and local governments. The federal government spends over $500 billion annually on grants to state and local governments, making them the third largest portion of the U.S. government’s budget.
These grants are rewarded to a variety of industries, including:
Private foundation/business grants come from private entities such as companies, foundations, and even individuals. A prime private grant example is the Google Ad Grants program. The Google Ad Grant is an advertising grant that gives eligible nonprofits $10,000 a month in ad credits to boost their organization to the top of Google’s search results.
To receive the Google Ad Grant, your nonprofit must submit an application and remain active on its account. For help applying, reach out to Getting Attention.
4 Quick Tips for Funding Your Nonprofit Organization
We’ve covered a lot of ground when it comes to nonprofit marketing—but don’t walk away without some quick helpful hints. As a final piece of guidance, here are four tips for creating your organization’s funding model:
Last, don’t be afraid to get started. After all of your careful planning, you’ll have a good idea of the best course of action to take—and remember that you can always adjust as you go.
Additional Resources
You know how important securing funding for your nonprofit is. These funds fuel your organization’s efforts to move you closer to achieving your mission. To make the most of your available resources while spreading awareness of your organization, consider reaching out to our consultants at Getting Attention for more information about the Google Ad Grants program.
For more useful information on everything nonprofit funding, read more from our library of nonprofit marketing resources: