Marketing With Heart: Basic Tips for Cause-Driven Organizations

Marketing Tips for Nonprofit Organizations 

Child advocacy. Mental health. The arts. Volunteerism. Water health. Education. Substance use. Wildlife rehabilitation. Disability rights. 

These are just a few of the nonprofit efforts we’ve supported over the years. And while each has different goals and distinct ways to measure success (we call these key performance indicators), they have one thing in common—they deserve an effective marketing strategy. 

But, if we know anything about nonprofit marketing, it’s that a well-rounded strategy isn’t always possible. Instead, budgets and resources tend to require a certain level of, well, scrappiness. 

If you’re racking your brain — What’s the best use of my budget? What will get me the most results? Where do I start? HOW do I start? — consider a few of these tips:

1. Start With Your Budget

A marketing budget can be established in a number of ways. Most commonly, organizations allocate a certain percentage of projected gross revenue to their marketing efforts. For nonprofits, this may be 5-15%. 

2. Determine Your Goals and Audience

The most successful strategies are based on concrete goals and well-defined audiences. Start by answering these questions:

Goals:

• What are your overall organizational objectives? How can your marketing efforts support those goals?
• What action(s) are you most hoping people take? Do you want to reach more potential customers or members? Do you need additional donations? Or maybe you’d like to educate people about your organization or initiative?
• How will you measure success? The best goals are specific and measurable—5% increase in impressions each month, 50 new leads in Q2, or 10% increase in donations by EOY.

Audience:

• Who are you trying to reach? Consider demographics and job functions.
• What do they need?
• What pain points can you address? 
• Where are they looking for information? 

When identifying your goals and audience, consider where your audience is in the marketing funnel and the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs):

Awareness

• What’s Happening: People don’t yet know about your brand or organization, or are just learning about you. 
• Primary KPIs: Impressions, video views, social media engagement (likes, follows, comments, reshares).

Consideration

• What’s Happening: Potential donors and volunteers are exploring—comparing different opportunities, causes, or organizations to determine what best fits their values.
• Primary KPIs: Clicks, click-through rate (CTR), time on page, pages per session, social media engagement.

Conversion

• What’s Happening: People take action by contacting you to learn more. (A lead!)
• Primary KPIs: Form fills, button clicks, and conversion rate (calculated by dividing the number of conversions/form fills by the number of website visitors).

Loyalty

• What’s Happening: Existing donors, members, volunteers, etc. become brand advocates, continuing to support your organization. For many nonprofits, loyalists are your most promising champions.
• Primary KPIs: Repeat, donations, volunteers, referrals. 

3. Scale Your Efforts

With your audience and goals defined, you’ll be armed to build a strong, effective strategy. If you need some inspiration, here are a few ideas:

Revisit your current strategy

You don’t have to start from scratch! Think about how you could flex or adjust your existing tactics to better address your goals. Should you continue with traditional print tactics and “swag” or shift to a stronger digital presence? Or, instead of implementing three or four smaller initiatives, consider investing more heavily in one or two tactics to optimize performance. 

Consider your audience

Where do they consume information? Print, TV, social, other? Don’t be afraid to try something new—if you’ve traditionally focused on direct mail, perhaps consider social media. 

Similarly, what will most effectively pique their interest? If you’re not using messaging or visuals that resonate with your audience, your creative may not grab their attention. 

Identify what’s most cost-effective 

An all-or-nothing marketing strategy won’t serve you nearly as well as a more tailored approach. When determining tactics, it’s better to implement a few strong tactics than a lot of so-so tactics. Be sure to think about how you can best allocate your budget. This may mean:

• Building a campaign landing page or microsite rather than an entirely new website
• Developing a few short video clips rather than a fully produced video 
• Creating one social media page rather than joining all platforms at once
• Implementing a three- or six-month campaign to test effectiveness rather than committing to an annual or always-on effort

At the end of the day, you can’t build a castle on a small foundation. Starting small with a few tactics will likely be more fruitful than spreading your budget too thin with a robust strategy.

4. Understand Resource Management

A small marketing team can only wear so many hats. And while scrappiness may be the name of the game with nonprofit marketing, there’s a fine line between being ambitious and overwhelmed. 

When building your strategy, be sure you’re addressing both your monetary and time constraints. If you won’t be able to commit to maintaining a new website, don’t build it. If you can’t allocate enough budget for a campaign to run effectively, don’t implement it. If you won’t have time to respond to comments and questions on your social media content, don’t post as often. If you don’t have the design resources to develop new creative, don’t use Comic Sans (okay, use Comic Sans if you’d like, but maybe consult an art director first 🙂). 

If need be, you can rely on these (free!) outside resources, too:

• Bitly: URL shortening and QR codes
• Bloomerang: A donor management system that can integrate with your website and manage information for up to 250 donors
• Canva: A graphic design tool with thousands of templates
• Grammarly: Copyediting and proofreading recommendations supported by 100 AI prompts 
• Google Ad Grants: Offers up to $10,000 per month in free Google Ad advertising 
• Google Earth and Maps: Free data visualization 
• Google Workspace for Nonprofits: Offers the suite of Google products, including Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Drive, and Google Meet
• Hubspot: A customer relationship management (CRM) tool
• Indeed: A free resource with ideas for finding high-school and college students looking for internships
• Mailchimp: A free email client that supports 500 contacts and 1,000 email sends per month
• Meta Business Suite: Social media management for Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram
• Unsplash: Free stock images
• YouTube Nonprofit Program: Supports an enhanced YouTube strategy, including optimized content and technical support—for free
• Wix: A free website builder

5. Know How to Work with an Agency

If you’re stuck or don’t know where to start, a marketing partner can help you. From prioritizing goals and identifying the best KPIs to strategic development and implementation to reporting and analytics, an agency can be a great resource to support your marketing efforts.

Before reaching out, here are a few tips for working with an agency:

• Identify one main point of contact on your team who will be responsible for information sharing between the agency and your internal team, committee, or board.
• Understand that agency timelines are established based on workload and turnaround time may vary.
• Know that most agencies offer a reduced nonprofit rate—don’t be afraid to ask about this!
• Don’t fall for a package deal if it includes things you don’t need. Just because it’s offered doesn’t mean you need to take it.
• Be patient and trust the process. Successful marketing can take time. 

If you’re in need of a partner, let’s work together.