11 Marketing Communications Activities for Fundraisers, Part 1

[Editor’s note: This is part 1 of a two-part series on the webinar, Ten Marketing Communications Activities You Must Do. Part 2 will be published in next week’s edition of the FS Advisor.]

The lifeblood of any fundraising campaign lies in the communications between the organization and its donors and supporters. If a nonprofit doesn’t know who its donors are and what they want from the organization, there’s little chance of soliciting funds from them.

In a recent webinar, Ten Marketing Communications Activities You Must Do, nonprofit brand strategy consultant Michele Levy provided 11 marketing communications best practices that fundraisers should utilize in their communications strategies.

1. It all starts with your audience
“The first thing that you need to think about before you do anything is you need to know who you’re marketing to,” Levy said. “You’re wasting time and energy if you don’t know who you’re talking to.”

She said you should start by asking how your constituents see you, what they need from you, how they want to communicate with you and what they see as their other options. Do that by implementing:

• Informal focus groups — “One of my favorite things to do is to do informal focus groups, asking participants questions about the organization in a roundtable discussion. Your supporters will love to be a part of it,” Levy said. “The caveat is that this is not statistically significant, so you have to take everything with a grain of salt. But you can find patterns and hear what people are saying about you.”
• Advisory board
• Online survey — “I just created an online survey in about a half hour to ask folks what themes they’d like to see for a nonprofit,” Levy said. “They’re so easy to do. If I can do it in 15 or 20 minutes while doing 15 other things, everyone can do it. It’s a very easy way to start to talk to your audience for an occasional touch.”
• Website survey — Ask questions about what should be on your website and what design changes would make it easier to navigate.
• Event/course evaluations — five-10 questions at the end of the event.

“Each one of these activities is not just fact-finding, but relationship building,” Levy said. “The other thing to think about is you should be watching folks. If you do nothing else, you need to focus on how to track how people come to your website. And pay attention to who comes to events.”