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Nonprofit Marketing | Engaging Donors Panel

The Foundation for Photo/Art in Hospitals

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing a few nonprofit marketing techniques on the Engaging Donors Panel Discussion at IMPACT Funding Symposium hosted by The C2 Initiative. I’ll be sharing my advice for nonprofit marketing techniques with 50 organizations that range from social services, environmental, education, health & wellness and economic empowerment.

Other Panelists on the Nonprofit Marketing Panel

Laura Rossman, Moderator
Bethany Booher: 618 Creative
Dana Workes, Dana Workes Creatives, LLC

When speaking at the PRSA St. Louis Career Development Day, I took some time to prepare and decided to write down and share some of my thoughts and share them as a blog post. I received a lot of feedback for that post, and will continue to do the same for upcoming events, including the IMPACT Funding Symposium.

Nonprofit Marketing Techniques

What are the best marketing tools for nonprofits in order to share their mission?

Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Buffer, SproutSocial and all the other social media management platforms help make managing social media easier… but, by far the best marketing tool nonprofits can use is their smartphones. Take photos, take videos, use Facebook live video, use Snapchat, use Instagram and Instagram Stories to show how donations really do make an impact. The transparency of the behind the scenes content will serve as constant reminders and visual proof of donations making a difference. This will encourage people to donate for the first time and continue to donate again and again.

How important is the website in encouraging donors and what things do I need on my site?

It’s not important. Your website doesn’t need to convince people to donate. People don’t search for ways online to donate money. You have to reach out to them and motivate them. Spend your time creating content and distributing it through social media and other influencers.

That being said, your website needs to do one job that is very important – and it must do it perfectly. Process donations and capture user information. Your website should be branded to match your social profiles, everything should match in terms of color, photos, call to actions, etc. Make sure that when a donation call to action is clicked on social media, it is obvious they have found the proper website. The donation process needs to be quick and work flawlessly. Be sure to ask for email addresses, phone numbers and mailing addresses. Any information that will help you with future marketing efforts. Avoid demographic information, it is already available to social media and Google analytics. Don’t make the donation processes longer than it needs to be. In fact, you should always be trying to make it shorter and faster.

How can we effectively use social media to create outreach for our organizations?

Use your smartphones to capture the behind the scenes moments. Share how donations truly do make a difference. Be as transparent as possible. People want to be sure their donations are being used to support the mission and not being misused to benefit others.

What’s the best ways to create a brand for our nonprofit?

Always focus on the mission. To be perfectly blunt, people don’t care about you. They care about the mission. Create a branding style book that will help you with creating matching social profiles, website, mailers, etc. That way your audience can quickly identify your pages. Outside of that, just stay focused on the mission and let the rest of your brand grow organically.

How can I make the most of the annual giving day campaigns…nobody knows about us?

Don’t focus on those days. Annual giving days are overrun with posts from nonprofits both big and small. Everyone is releasing content and competition on social media is crazy high. Social media algorithms are forced to pick and choose what content to show and what to push to the side. Annual giving days are the perfect time to repurpose and reuse content. On those days pick your top performing content from the last year, and reuse it. Post every hour and try to push through the noise – but keep in mind there’s still 364 other days to get donations.

What can nonprofits do to create content that make people want to give to our organization?

Content that shows transparency and connect donations with real success of the mission. Focus on engaging content. You’re competing for attention against all kinds of other brands and updates from friends and family. Keep an eye on social media trends and what the platforms are pushing. The more content of a certain type your seeing in your newsfeed (live video, etc.) the more likely it is to be performing well in Facebook’s algorithm. Use that to your advantage. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, just be observant and keep an eye on what works for others.


Featured Photo is from one of my favorite nonprofits, The Foundation for Photo/Art in Hospitals.

Mission

The unique mission of the Foundation is to place large, framed photographs of nature and beautiful places from around the world in hospitals to give comfort and hope to patients and their families, visitors, and caregivers. Studies show that nature art has a beneficial effect on relieving a patient’s stress and anxiety. The photographs are intended to provide color and an atmosphere of compassion where healing is encouraged.