Last Updated on September 6, 2024
For us at Elite Generations, our work with building marketing strategies for nonprofits has evolved dramatically in our years of existence. The donor bases are savvier and more sophisticated, and the sheer number of organizations and causes continues to multiply. This requires a much more modern approach to marketing in order to stand out.
In simpler times, nonprofit organizations didn’t even really need to consider marketing strategy as a factor in their day-to-day operations.
In Victorian England, say, an effective marketing strategy for a charity such as Mission For the Blind might consist of entreating the local clergy to take up a collection on their behalf in church on alternating Sunday mornings.
In the mid-20th century, organizations such as March of Dimes simply dispatched volunteers to knock on doors and pitch directly to potential donors in suburban neighborhoods. Even in the not-too-distant past of the late 20th/early 21st century, nonprofits could get away with skating on their previously established reputations and only occasionally needing to make a pitch to the public via legacy media.
A good example of this would be the Christian Children’s Fund and Save the Children Federation Inc., which notoriously ran television ads throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s featuring celebrity spokespeople visiting drought-stricken nations and pleading with viewers to donate “the price of one cup of coffee per day”.
All of these were marketing strategies of a sort, albeit very rudimentary ones, but in their eras, they were effective enough. These days, however, things are quite a bit different in the nonprofit sphere. Because of increased competition in the field, evolving donor behavior, and the need to adopt digital campaigns in order to remain relevant, charitable organizations now have to think long and hard about what sort of marketing strategy they implement – and the more multi-faceted and sophisticated, the better.
Increased Competition
Nowadays, there are more charitable and nonprofit organizations than there have ever been before. This development could be viewed in a few ways. On the one hand, it means that there are more organizations out there marshaling resources and trying to make a positive difference in the world, which is good.
On the other hand, more nonprofits equate to greater competition for government funding, individual donations, corporate sponsorship, as well as volunteers and public attention, which is a problem in a very practical sense. Indeed, from the perspective of most charities, it has become increasingly difficult to stand out in a crowded field. Properly addressing this issue requires a shrewd marketing strategy.
Evolving Donor Behavior
Whereas in past decades, people who contributed to charities tended to take for granted that their donations would end up being applied to the advertised cause du jour (whether it be sick children, the unhoused, animal welfare, an environmental cause, etc.), with the giant leaps made in investigative journalism and communications during the 21st century, it has now become public knowledge that a great deal of the money given to some nonprofits goes to generous employee salaries, administrative expenses, and organizational overhead.
In a nutshell, potential nonprofit donors have become much more savvy in recent years, and penetrating the proverbial wall of donor skepticism is no small feat. Nonprofits who want to reach these people generally have to produce proof of how they use the donations they collect, usually in the form of impact measurement statements, and then effectively publicize them. Properly doing so requires a clever marketing strategy.
Digital Message Amplification
Finally, the digital age has changed the way that all large organizations deliver their messages to the public, and nonprofits are no exception. Gone are the days where a charity could simply make a large annual ad buy on print, radio, and television, and then consider their public exposure secure and their advertising work done for the year.
In today’s climate, social media is king, and creating and executing truly effective cross-platform social media campaigns requires constant content creation, updating, and monitoring. Properly doing this requires a carefully thought-out and modern-minded marketing strategy devised by trained professionals.
The entire reason why Elite Generations and other companies like ours exist is to provide these kinds of advanced marketing solutions to nonprofit organizations seeking to distinguish themselves from the pack. With our core mission of transforming how charities and nonprofits interact with their communities, we employ a team-centered, collaborative approach to our messaging and fundraising campaigns, all designed to raise the profile and reinforce the credibility of our client organizations.
Our goal is to stay on top of the latest trends in marketing and our ability to communicate the larger message of our Nonprofit partners. Our purpose is to take on that burden so that our partners can concentrate their efforts on the important work they do in making the world a better place.
