Promote Yourself as an Asset to the Community

By NICOLE LEWIS

Charities should take a cue from the marketing methods of many

commercial companies and promote themselves as leaders in their communities, say the authors of High Impact Fund Raising: How Donors, Boards, and Nonprofit Organizations Can Transform Communities (John Wiley & Sons).

“Nonprofits market in a completely backwards way,” says Kay Sprinkel Grace, a fund-raising consultant in San Francisco who wrote the book with Alan L. Wendroff, also a consultant there. “They market their organization first, instead of the needs they are meeting and the values they embrace.”

The authors, who both teach college fund-raising courses, cite the example of a group of parents who wanted to start a private high school in Orange County, Calif. Ms. Grace helped the group raise nearly $34-million, largely by promoting the school as a community asset instead of selling donors on the school’s needs.

Such marketing strategies have become crucial for charities that want to differentiate themselves from similar groups to attract donors, much the same way companies vie for customers, says Ms. Grace.

The school in Orange County, Ms. Grace recalls, sold itself as the area’s first nondenominational private high school. It promised that it would recruit an ethnically diverse student body and uphold high standards of academic excellence.

In the book, Ms. Grace and Mr. Wendroff offer the New York City Opera as another example of how best to attract support. The New York City Opera differentiated itself from the flashier, better-endowed Metropolitan Opera by choosing a marketing campaign that stressed simplicity over glamour. It delivered the message by mailing brochures that read “No Elephants” on the cover, while inside text continued to highlight the group’s emphasis on the human voice — rather than elaborate costumes and scenery — to produce a great performance.

“That is the most simple statement of values you will ever see,” says Ms. Grace. “‘No elephants’ — that says it all.”

Ms. Grace and Mr. Wendroff brush aside charities’ fears that marketing tools such as the New York City Opera’s brochure will be perceived as too bold or expensive.

“Marketing is key,” Mr. Wendroff says. “You have to let the community know what you are about.”

Both authors believe that charities can learn a lot by examining commercial marketing strategies.

In their book, they point to the Fireman’s Fund, an insurance company, whose advertisements have mixed abstract art with offbeat text about being fearless. The ads intend to provoke emotional reactions, rather than deepen understanding of what the company specifically does, and in so doing command attention, say the authors.

Ms. Grace can testify to the power of promoting values to donors. She was so moved by the potential of the Orange County high school, she says, that she decided to donate the book’s royalties to the institution, which opened in September.

“These people were truly transformed,” she says of the school’s advocates, including herself. “It didn’t matter if they gave $1,000 or we had an anonymous donor who gave $15-million. The motivation was the same.”

Excerpt from High Impact Fund Raising

“Most organizations do not spend sufficient time figuring out just what it is they want to convey in their materials and outreach, which is why they fall back to talking about themselves, instead of about their impact or the issues.

To be effective with marketing, organizations need to do the following:

1) Develop a theme based on values, impacts, and issues. If marketing and image development are high priorities for your organization, recruit talented and willing advisors to your board or to a special marketing committee. Engage them around the task and be prepared to listen to their advice and act on it.

2) Develop a sequence of materials and images for print, Web sites, and public-service announcements and other media use that will extend over a period of years with annual fine tuning of the presentation, but not the basic theme. If your organization is very low-budget, with minimum resources, shop for opportunities to receive pro bono help with these efforts. There are advertising and marketing firms in every community that have a commitment to provide pro bono services to one or more nonprofits.

3) Devote a portion of your budget to creating and regularly revising these materials. Some budget support is essential, even if you receive generous pro bono help. By putting marketing into your budget, you sensitize the board and staff to its importance and ensure that it will be a financial priority.

4) Evaluate your impact, but don’t rush to judgment. Experiment with different approaches to the same message. If your goal is to build transformational giving, then convey the ways in which your organization is transforming your community and how those involved have been or will be transformed by their involvement. Your first efforts may not seem to generate the desired results, but resist the temptation to change the message. Wait until it sinks in.

With these basic guideposts, even the smallest organization can undertake a values-based marketing program that will focus on issues and impact.

— Excerpted from High Impact Fund Raising: How Donors, Boards, and Nonprofit Organizations Can Transform Communities by Kay Sprinkel Grace and Alan L. Wendroff (John Wiley & Sons).