Breaking Down the Silos: Organize Around Audiences, Not Departments

So … the development team would target people who were either acquired from other charities, i.e., traditional direct response, people who actively find the charity because of a similar belief, and then folding in all the contacts that the media and mass marketing efforts catch. The media team may have the objective of finding opportunities to gain placement in every story done about aliens’ rights and successful pitches of its own.

Gone are the days of “ad equivalency and impressions.” Those will be included as factors in the measure of success, but if built and measured right, a media effort can and should be tied to more. If the media director sits with the development director and they plot a series of capture moments like landing pages, text opportunities and dedicated toll-free numbers, then the media department can spend and invest to that measure of success. It becomes part of the Web that helps to raise funds and identify names.

The increased awareness and buzz in the marketplace will naturally happen because of a self-reinforcing loop: The more supporters and names you generate, the more people will talk! Then add corporate partners and/or licensing, and it’s just another level of targeting.

In the case of our aliens, we may focus on common package goods items shared by both; pursue a partnership with Kodak or Toyota or some other product that has equal purchaser distribution between human and alien kind. If your negotiations allow for utilization of outbound e-mail to corporate partners’ purchasers (and it should!) or mention on their websites then you are poised for another conversation with the development person to ask, “How do we catch these new people?”

Then it becomes incumbent on the development team to take the mass and media leads and turn them into long-term and active donors.