July 11, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause
By Kivi Leroux Miller
When faced with budget cuts, nonprofit organizations often see marketing as expendable, but that is a mistake, writes Ms. Miller, a communications consultant and trainer.
This book is intended for charities with small budgets and staffs. Ms. Miller advises groups to tailor their efforts to specific audiences as opposed to trying to reach out to the general public. She also urges them to go beyond writing news releases and instead to produce their own content, such as blog posts or online videos, as soon as possible. If a charity is faced with a very tight budget, Ms. Miller offers helpful tips on which items are worth the expense and which are not.
In lieu of costly print materials, Ms. Miller suggests personal phone calls and e-mails, and instead of grand galas, she recommends casual events such as barbecues.
Other items worth spending money on, she says, are digital cameras and professional photography and design; bad photos, she writes, turn donors and others off. Items that can be eliminated due to a strapped marketing budget are advertising, showy graphics, print mailings, and trinkets sent to donors.
(Read a transcript of a live discussion Ms. Miller held with Chronicle readers.)
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94103-1741; (415) 433-1740 or (800) 956-7739; fax (415) 433-0499 or (800) 605-2665; http://www.josseybass.com; 228 pages; $39.95; ISBN 978-0-470-53965-1.
