Is marketing missing in your fundraising and communications? Nancy Schwartz from Getting Attention tells us why it's important that your organisation includes marketing practices into the mix.
Marketing is how your organisation builds and strengthens your relationships with the people whose help you need to move your mission forward, as donors, partners, volunteers or in other roles. Without establishing those relationships and then nurturing them on an ongoing basis, your organisation will be spinning its wheels.
Fundraising is just one type of relationship: building your ties with current and prospective donors. So no, fundraising isn’t more important than marketing, nor does it replace marketing.
Communications is just one component of marketing—getting your content out the door. So no, marketing and communications aren’t interchangeable terms.
Marketing is a cyclical 7-step process:
If you’re doing fundraising but not marketing, or communications but not marketing, or fundraising and communications but not marketing, you’re losing out on the potential to develop more and stronger relationships. Plus you’re likely to be alienating some of the very folks who are most important to engage, because you’re just not doing the work you need to do to frame what you want in the context of what they want—disconnect.
That’s why not-for-profit marketing matters!
This blog post was originally posted on the Getting Attention blog. Nancy E. Schwartz helps nonprofit organizations succeed via effective marketing. Building on over 15 years of experience, she guides organizations to raise money, promote programs, change policies, build volunteer corps and build awareness as Publisher of the Getting Attention, and President of Nancy Schwartz & Company (NS&C). Clients include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Michelle Obama’s Lets Move! Campaign, World Education Services, Corporation for Supportive Housing, New York Academy of Sciences and the National Association of Mothers' Centers (NAMC).
