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In marketing terms, a firm that is unable to promote itself is unlikely to sell their products or services no matter how good they are. Thus, organizations always actively ensure that public awareness of their merchandise is present.
The most basic form of marketing for fundraising programs can just involve using fliers and broadcasting announcements while in other cases may need more intense marketing to promote the products to the targeted audience. Good marketing campaigns aid in promoting programs undertaken by the organization in addition to the fundraising activities thus creating an awareness of the organization to the public.
This paper thus attempts to demonstrate the interlocking objectives existing between fundraising and marketing promotions by nonprofit organizations.
Marketing Promotions for Fundraising
Although marketing promotions can involve much expense expended, non-profit organizations generally seek gratuitous publicity or those offered at subsidized fees. These promotions though are initiated from within the organizations core group who can be relied upon to be more aggressively involved in marketing the organization.
Promotions are also decisive in arousing the proper interest to the targeted attendees to enlist others enjoin the campaign. Thus, the fundraising campaign must be well planned with concise unambiguous ideas and goals while acknowledging that a well-marketed event is critical to worthwhile fundraising.
Nevertheless, informal personal reports involving diverse stakeholders fanned by friends and acquaintances pushes the fundraising agenda further than formal pronouncements in the mainstream media. Upgrading and maintaining close amity within the cycle can thus have greater impact on the campaign.
This entails keeping the nonprofits contributors updated on the events that have been held due to their benevolence thus evolving a closer relationship with them for possible future donations. These close-knit groups of regular donors eventually have greater impact to the fundraising efforts than seeking fresh donors.
Major Types of Donors
There are six major types of donors as illustrated below including:
- re-payer;
- casual donor;
- high impact;
- faith/ religious based;
- localized causes donors,
- personalized donors.
Stapley (2010) has consequently categorised five basic sources for fundraising including: trust and endowments; society and events; business, subsidies, citizens donating once; habitual, crucial benefactors and bequest assistance; inheritances; and corporate/governmental grants.
Capital campaigns conducted to raise funds from the public or seek grants from the government or corporations may require competing with other nonprofits similarly seeking funding for their own causes.
Nevertheless, most of the funding generally stem from habitual donors hence charitable organizations are always eager to cultivate amiable working relations with these category of donors by upholding accord with them through relationship building (Sargeant and Jay, 2004).
Hart et al. (2010) have asserted that personal relationships are the most critical aspects during fundraising as compared to dealing specifically with corporations. Engendering closer bonds with critical leaders within the donor institution will probably generate greater success.
The authors thus assert that a more personalized relationship is more beneficial to the organization as key leaders within the institutions evolve closer working relationship enabling the donor further scrutinize the cause advocated. The fundraiser will seem more authentic and genuine as open communication enable the storyline delivered. A poignant narrative is likely to elicit greater impulse or instinct to assist the program.
Marketing Nonprofit Organizations
Marketing is one of the surest ways of ensuring nonprofit organization backing in the community particularly to ostensibly fresh supporters thus vital to fundraising.
Marketing nonprofit organizations follows the same ideals practiced in typical trading firms, which encompass designing market plans, setting goals and objectives, market research, marketing mix, media draft; constructing, and trying out the designs; executing and appraising the sketch, that are identical amongst most businesses.
Goals and Objectives
The goals of the nonprofit organization commonly outlined in its tactical plans may encompass creating awareness of a project, fundraising, or offering services to the society.
The organization’s marketer should initially categorize and prioritize the key marketing objectives, for instance establishing trademark visibility to the public thus assisting the nonprofit organization accomplish its goals. Ultimately, the nonprofits marketers realize that these tactical plans resemble those used by the profit-making enterprises.
Marketing Analysis and Strategy
The marketers then evaluate the background, particularly all those aspects that could have an effect on the nonprofits capacity to attain its goals.
These can embrace rival nonprofits organizations, the performance of those the organization provides for, official statutes, and also the organization’s individual effectiveness and limitation. From this scrutiny, the fundraisers can establish the excellent probable tactics to realize the marketing aspirations.
Marketing Mix and Media Plan
In lieu of the approach preferred, the marketer should opt for the finest strategy to execute the plan. This incorporates establishing a marketing mix, or the correct types of medium to utilize to communicate the significance of the nonprofit organization – such as, online marketing to target the youth as opposed to radio.
Subsequently, the media strategy is established including the precise websites, publications, and other mediums the nonprofit organization can utilize to execute its promotion.
Creative and Testing
The fundraiser in alliance with vendors will afterwards plan to create creative commercials and artefacts that efficiently express the communication vital to the attainment of the marketing plan.
Prior to displaying the advert to the public still, the promoter must pan out a pilot plan for assessing its usefulness. This may entail soliciting the help of a target group, and subsequently improve the plan as per their observations prior to the launch.
Implementation and Assessment
The marketer, through the printed marketing plan, will subsequently present the timeline over which the scheme will be carried out, the proposed overheads and proposed proceeds, and the financial plan. The marketer must also clarify how the plan’s accomplishment will be gauged both throughout the operation and subsequent to the scheme execution.
Andresen (2006) has thus outlined some wide-ranging marketing concepts applied by large corporate illustrating some of the most successful marketing campaigns in the past. The author aims at demystifying marketing thus enabling it applicable to good causes by the nonprofits in “a business-minded marketing approach by a nonprofit organization” (p. 137).
Marketing and Fundraising through Social Media
Nonprofit organizations just like the commercialized firms are gradually turning to the increasingly popular online marketing channels including social media like Twitter and Facebook for fundraising purposes and marketing for the promotion of future events.
These mediums entail a more reactive role with real time updates necessary to generate interest in the cause while other turn to other interactive media like blogging and YouTube to generate enough interest for the fundraiser.
Social media have enabled organizations to be more accountable to the donors who are in a position to question how their donations have been utilized unlike the traditional fund raising arrangement in which the donors relied on delayed feedbacks.
Social media also enables donors to directly get acquainted with the recipients of their funding while also getting a pool of young people who cannot be relied on to attend fundraising dinners but can otherwise be enjoined on online marketing techniques.
The mobile phone has also given rise to a fresh medium for communication as more people are connected over smart phones. During the Haiti Earthquake catastrophe, over 20 percent of the donations were via cell phones text messages with the usage cutting across the demographic lines evenly, thus rivaling online donations the modern new frontiers.
Cell phones will in future be more compelling due to the ease of use as it requires minimal transactions, cards, or even internet access to send a donation being a text away. A Cisco survey in 2008 established that the number of mobile phones is triples that of internet users whilst mobile phone technology entails use of both internet and text messaging (Barke, 2008).
As the global economic recession continue to impact negatively on consumer spending, fundraising has also being hard hit with most of the regular donors losing heavily in the equity markets in addition to lowered demands for products and services leading to less revenue. Donations have thus plummeted hence underlining the need to rethink the traditional fundraising concepts.
Some of the new ideas and forums advanced include tapping the younger generation through social media and mobile phones, active online marketing tactics, and proactive marketing techniques that promise more liable response to donors.
Grassroots Mobilisation Techniques
Although most organisations rely on conventional and modern grassroots mobilisation techniques, some organisations have been known to hire the services of professional fundraises who are retained at an agreed fee.
This practice is illegal in most jurisdictions and has been banned by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) thus most organisations retain reputable fundraisers as part of the executive staff to solicit for funding (Lorenzen, 2009). Religious organisations are some of the most effective grassroots fundraisers particularly the evangelical movements.
They are able to mobilise local, national and international supporters to either donate or seek funds on their behalf for aiding the underprivileged or for spreading evangelism. Other major non-profit organisations that are renowned for effortless fundraising include political parties and politicians at large.
Despite strict campaign finance statues, political parties are able to harness sizable funding while some associated interest groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Jewish lobby groups raise vast sums to support political candidates of their choice (Horwitz, & Grimaldi, 2011).
Fundraising Concepts
Fundraising may entail organising special events like musical concerts, fundraising dinners, sales of unique items or sports event like charity walks. These events have direct links to marketing as adequate promotion is critical to attract enough participants to the occasion. These special events also assist the group raise its visibility and thus attract more attention to its cause or pet projects.
Successful hosting of such occasions can mean repeat performances; periodically or across regions hence generating more funding for the organisation’s events.
Nonprofit charitable organizations also raise funds through “sales” whereby special gifts or donations or in-kind gifts by benevolent community members are publicly auctioned to raise funds. Organizations also indulge in product fundraising whereby members offer to sell cookies and other tidbits to the public to raise funds by mobilizing grassroots support.
Lack of Transparency and Accountability
Nonetheless, despite their veritable success in fundraising for their causes, nonprofit organizations have been accused of laxity in properly marketing themselves thus missing lots of potential capital funding due to poor promotional campaigns. Maple (2003) has decried the poor investment in market studies by the organizations as compared to the more astute big business who allocate larger budgets to the marketing divisions.
The organizations thus display poor relationship building tactics as minimal promotions are undertaken to endear better bonds with their benefactors. Sargeant and Jay (2004) have thus estimated that nonprofit organizations regularly lose 50-60 percent donors after just one or two donations while been generally poor in cultivating fresh relationships, which does not auger well for their operations sustainability.
Unaccountability issues have generally plagued the large nonprofit organizations, hence affecting funding activities for the more liable organizations. Frumkin and Kim (2000) have however argued that although spotlight was on the larger organisations, even smaller entities had the same financial inconsistencies evident in the others.
The authors therefore called for greater transparency and the establishment of an oversight body to scrutinise their finances and project implantations. The fundraising audit is consequently a logical endeavor to assemble as much data as feasible regarding fundraising tasks and background, notably how these may be projected to transform and expand over the extent of the execution.
Online Marketing vs. Direct Mail Marketing
Online marketing just like direct mail marketing are ultimately measured according to the ROI gained from each line.
However, both segments complimentary each since the donor or respondent may elect to reply via a different mode from the initial one used by the fundraiser thus making both crucial and significant in their own unique ways. This outlines the need to embrace the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) concept which utilises both marketing aspects rather than relying on a singular mode (Bhagat and Rogers, 2007).
A study by marketing research firms Convio aligned with StrategicOne sought to establish the efficacy of each marketing line as concerns donor funding while also investigating those that applied dual modes.
This study aimed to dispel the notion that online marketing or constituent relationship management (eCRM) had overtaken the traditional direct marketing hence the need for non-profit organisations to discard them.
The study results indicated that although offline marketing was more enduring thus having a higher long-term donor value than online marketing, an integrated dual-Channel mode donors were even better rising by 39 percent over a 12 months period (Bhagat and Rogers, 2007).
The goals of most nonprofit organization are generally outlined in its tactical plan and may encompass, creating consciousness of a cause, fundraising, or offering services to the society.
The marketer should categorize and prioritize those marketing objectives establishing a brand noticeable to the public thus assisting the nonprofit organization accomplish its goals. Warwick (2006) has proposed a six-phase process: survey and scrutiny; planning tactics; positioning; forecasting and financial plan; executing the strategy; appraisal; and finally the realignment phase
Philanthropy is ultimately a poignant individual undertaking; hence, donors generally vote with their hearts but still seek assurances within their minds on the feasibility of their decision. Thus, a fundraiser must make emotive marketing plans that are however based on sound reasoning to appeal to both the heart and mind of the donor.
Fundraising for nonprofit organizations requires intense promotions or marketing to persuade potential donors on the efficacy of their causes hence handsomely contribute.
This study has therefore aptly demonstrated that an effective fundraising campaign necessitates a well-designed marketing plan for the fundraising strategy. There is therefore need for the two segments to coordinate their activities for the effective realization of the organization goals and objectives.
References
Andresen, K. (2006). Nonprofit Book Shelf: Robin Hood Marketing. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Barke, C. M. (2008). Cisco E-commerce Study Reveals Mobile Phone to Be New ‘Fourth Channel’ for Revenue. Cisco Systems Inc. Web.
Bhagat, Vinay and Rogers, Mike (2007). Integrating Online Marketing with Direct Mail Fundraising. Convio and StrategicOne.
Frumkin, Peter and Kim, Mark T. (2000). Strategic Positioning and the Financing of Nonprofit Organizations: Is Efficiency Rewarded in the Contributions Marketplace? Cambridge: Harvard University.
Horwitz, Sari & James V. Grimaldi (2011). NRA-led gun lobby wields powerful influence over ATF, U.S. politics. Web.
Lorenzen, M. (2009). Academic Library Development Officers in Fund Raising: How They Perceive Their Work. New York: McGraw.
Maple, P. (2003). Marketing Strategy for Effective Fundraising. London: DSC.
Sargeant, Adrian and Jay, Elaine (2004). Fundraising Management. New York: Routledge.
Stapley, J. (2010). Funding a Health Link. London: THET: Partners for Global Health.
Warwick, M. (2006). How to Create a Fundraising and Marketing Strategy. International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation, (1-29). Bangkok.
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