May 2, 2019 | Read Time: 2 minutes
When you create awareness of your work and generate interest in it, you can convert that interest into donations. There are two ways to do this: from the bottom up and the top down. Your organization should do both.
Bottom-up marketing looks like consumer marketing. Advertising, brochures, and internet sites enable low-cost interactions with many potential donors to help fundraisers develop qualified leads.
Top-down approaches are laser focused and expensive, such as flying a faculty member across the country for face-to-face meetings with a few potential donors. Such efforts are resource intensive but worth the investment. Before you get to that level, however, you must build awareness of your organization and develop your “brand” among donors.
How to Position Your Organization
Jack Trout, co-author of the marketing classic Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, coined the term “positioning” to refer to an effort to define your brand in consumers’ minds.
We are all familiar with the great positioning efforts. We know that BMW produces the “ultimate driving machine” and that Avis “tries harder.”
You should position your nonprofit by emphasizing the benefits your organization delivers to society because that is how you want donors, recipients, and the public to think about your organization.
To get started, write a few hundred words to articulate the benefits your nonprofit delivers. The goal is to capture the essence of the institution in a few words. Positioning must be honest and realistic; make sure you can back it up with facts.
A Real-World Example
At Caltech, we create an environment in which a few brilliant people come up with a few great ideas that lead to scientific breakthroughs. To support this claim, we rely on the fact that Caltech has more Nobel Laureates per capita than any other academic institution.
Great positioning forms the basis for the 30-second elevator pitch. It must grab a donor’s attention. For example, when I talk about the Center for Environmental and Microbial Interaction at Caltech, I ask people the following question: “Are you aware that the biomass of bacteria is 3,000 times that of humans? Humans have shaped the environment to meet their needs. Three thousand times as many bacteria do the same thing. Don’t you think it’s important to understand how bacteria adapting to global warming will affect the oceans?”
The shock value of the question always leads to a long discussion, after which I ask if they would like to talk to a researcher.
Great positioning starts from the top down: Every department of an organization should embody the ideas to give your organization a consistent pubic image.
Positioning is often one of the last things organizations do. It should be one of the first. The reason: Early positioning ensures consistent rather than conflicting messaging.
Bill Davidow, a former corporate marketing executive, serves on several nonprofit boards, and his new book, “The Autonomous Civilization: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines” will be published in 2020.
