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With competition for funding
growing among non-profit organizations,
it’s imperative that you know whom you are serving and the
benefits that you provide to them
By Alan Siege
In order for a non-profit organization to be effective, it needs to
know its niche: who constitutes its target market and how it is
served. This is true whether it’s a new group or
one bursting at the seams with too many clients.
Why? With the number of non-profit organizations climbing
yearly, there is less and less funding to go around. It becomes
imperative that you know whom you are serving and the benefits that you
provide to them. If you cannot define your core
constituencies, you will be squandering your limited resources and, I
believe, your ability to fulfill your mission will be adversely
affected.
This article uses concepts and terms that are very common to the
for-profit community. I believe their use has great relevance to
non-profits. After all, non-profits really are businesses and, as such,
they need to operate and perform in ways that make them most effective
and competitive.
Non-profits typically work from a Mission Statement that makes sweeping
claims. But when it comes to actually serving, entertaining or
educating people, or seeking volunteers and donor prospects, it is
considered good business practice to know specifically which people you
have in mind. If you can answer that question, then you have
the basis for how to position your organization.
I’m referring to having a concise marketing plan, part of the
larger business or strategic plan. Not everyone has a formal
working business plan, yet all organizations are operating within
business and marketing assumptions about who their group serves and for
what reasons. Even if your services are offered for free or
at very low cost, you still need to know who will use them and how to
reach those people. Donors, too, need to be targeted and will only be
responsive when you reach them on their terms.
“All nonprofits answer to many stakeholder groups: the
beneficiaries of the services, board members, volunteers, foundations,
corporate sponsors, individual donors, government, media and the
community in which the operate. . . It is critical to build a brand [or
identity] that is clear in its mandate, relevance and
differentiation. Each nonprofit must have a strong, ownable
proposition that is made relevant to each one of the stakeholder
groups. The message must be consistent, yet tailored.” [Wise
Moves: How to Successfully Refocus and Leverage Your
Organization’s Brand, by Jacklyn P. Boice, Page 15,
“Advancing Philanthropy,” November/December 2005]
What are the steps you should go through to achieve your objective, to
reach your market's fullest potential? You need to ask the following
questions:
What is your business now or, if you want to expand, what is the
business you want to be in? The answer to this question is
not as obvious as it seems. Consider:
- How do you really know if
there is a market for your service and
- If you're currently in
business, how did you define your strongest customers?
- How did you decide how to
package and price your service?
There are specific steps to take in building a formal marketing
plan. Start by putting your organization in its place in the
broad or macro sphere, which means asking:
- Which factors in the overall
economy and industry will affect the marketing of your service in the
next year? Every business is affected by the economy in some way,
particularly businesses that are cyclical in nature.
- Who or what kinds of people
could conceivably be considered prospects for this service?
Here, your ideal clients are described in detail.
- What is the potential market
for your service in numbers? Provide specific numbers for
each target group.
- What is the trend analysis or
what is the history of who has used the service or product in the past?
Review actual use.
- Who are your competitors for
this service and how do you stand competitively? A clear description of
who the competition is and what they’re doing in terms of
sales and what they’ll likely do in the near future.
- What are the problems and
opportunities, both internally and externally, that may inhibit the
marketing of the service? This is a description of
what’s gotten in the way of success in the past and what
opportunities have been missed. What is now possible?
- What do you want to achieve
with this service in terms of short and long-term goals?
Stated in both qualitative and quantitative terms, this is where plans
are described, justified and targets made.
- >Given all these issues, what
must we do next to reach the goals we’ve
set? What are the specific things we are going to
do to achieve these goals, which is a description of our marketing mix?
Now, on the micro level, your organization should develop a core
marketing message that you can use almost daily in your interactions
with prospects of all kinds.
This is often referred to as branding, which from a non-profit
perspective is an authentic expression of your organization –
its unique vision, goals, voice and personality. Simply put,
it’s what you stand for in the mind of your audience, whoever
that is.
In real life, it’s the art of creating and delivering a
consistent message, image and experience that brings your
organization’s unique difference to life in the minds of your
current customers, stakeholders such as volunteers and
donors, and those who you wish to become such.
Most of us are very familiar with one piece of the branding process
– the slogans – of several highly successful
non-profits.
- “Be
prepared.” (The Boy Scouts)
- “We Bring the Caring
Home. (The Visiting Nurse Service)
- “The Best Cancer
Care. Anywhere.” (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center)
Branding is the creation of a corporate image that helps distinguish it
from all others. When successful, branding:
- Helps the intended audience
know the product has them in mind
- Speaks to a certain level of
quality that can be expected
- Differentiates the product (or
service) from others in the marketplace
- Builds value and trust
- Reduces vulnerability to
competition and marketing crises
- Makes it easier to introduce
new services
- Increases marketing
effectiveness and cost efficiencies
- Facilitates creating
partnerships and collaborations
“At the Audubon Society, branding has had numerous benefits
across the three areas of the society’s activities
– education, public policy, and science. . . One of the key
messages we developed during our branding process was
‘Protecting our Great National Heritage.’ It was
meant to help people understand the core of our public policy
mission. About a month after we started using that phrase,
the White House began to pick it up in official press communications.
[What’s In a Name? Branding Comes to the Nonprofit World, by
David Vinjamuri, Page 3, “Journal For NonProfit
Management,” 2004]
For branding to be effective, it has to include, even feature, the
concept of WIFM or “What’s In It For Me?”
for the people you are trying to reach. This is even more
important now with competing interests creating
“noise” that interferes with your
message. Successful non-profits carefully position themselves
within multiple markets to manage public perception of their purpose
and quality. In some ways, your Mission Statement is the
starting point in that it should describe what the organization does,
who it serves and what makes it special or unique.
In the next installment, I’ll go through the five important
aspects of getting to the WIFM and provide useful follow-up questions.
Alan Siege, MBA, CFRE, has 20 years’ experience in
the
nonprofit sector with direct hands-on familiarity in producing
successful grants for human service, cultural and faith-based
organizations. In addition, he provides business consulting
services to small businesses. He can be reached at
718-768-1672, alan.siege@SBMC.biz,
or visit his web site, www.SBMC.biz
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