Many nonprofits are amazing at building a compelling message and having an impact on their community. However, many nonprofit organizations are not familiar with how marketing works, so their ability to reach their community is often undermined and their potential is not fully realized. 

Nonprofit marketing is more than just making a sale or securing a donation. Marketing focuses more on satisfying the needs of the consumer and prospective donors, and as a result, a strong nonprofit marketing strategy can help you achieve your organizational goals. 

That said, here is a foolproof guide on how to make a successful nonprofit marketing plan.

1. Start by Setting a Goal for Your Organization

As we talk about nonprofit marketing, setting a goal is probably the most crucial step you should not ignore. 

1. What do you want to accomplish? 
2. Whom do you want to reach? 
3. When do you want to accomplish those goals? 

These are all vital to understand how you will develop a marketing strategy for your nonprofit. 

More importantly, you have to focus on one primary goal, instead of having…

As the nonprofit sector continues to grow and expand, the number of nonprofit organizations increase, funding becomes more competitive and resources become scarce. However, nonprofit leaders can combine operational and programmatic strategies through collaboration to combine resources and funding in order to increase social efforts. Witesman and Heiss (2016) define collaboration: ‘‘when different nonprofit organizations work together to address problems through joint effort, resources, and decision-making and share ownership of the final product or service’’ (Witesman, Heiss, 2016, p. 1502). 

Possible threats, such as funding cuts, lack of stakeholder/donor involvement and ineffective leadership, have the ability to weaken nonprofits and can result in creation of duplicating organizations or efforts in order to serve social issues (Suárez, 2010). However, collaboration has the ability to strengthen the sector by combining weak nonprofits with strong nonprofits to assist in overall greater community impact. By collaborating, nonprofits can improve operational efficiency, bridge community gaps and program disparities, accumulate funding and increase fundraising efforts. 

Collaboration was extremely effective in bridging gaps within the juvenile justice and foster care systems found in a study by the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Data was compiled from various studies which included children and their families within the…

Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) is defined as the ? “integration of human resources management (HRM) with the strategic mission of the organization. It adapts human resources policies and practices to meet the challenges that agencies face today, as well as those they will face in the future” (Pynes, 2013, xvii).  Human Resources are necessary, as employees are the greatest asset for an organization. SHRM is vital to an organization because it is utilized to attract, retain and develop the associates who are considered the ‘best fit’. Businesses have recognized that SHRM is a beneficial practice because hiring employees is a costly endeavor. How a workforce is treated will affect the overall productivity. Staff development, a component of SHRM, is important because “Organizations use training and development to improve the skills of employees and develop their capacity to cope with the constantly changing demands of the work environment” (Pynes, 2013, 276). 

The choice to plan and implement professional development strategies can prevent turnover, especially when it comes to quality employees who expect to be invested in. While staff development is important for businesses in the for-profit sector, there should be a continued driving force to invest in strategic human resources in the social sector as well. Nonprofits follow vastly different missions from one another and the assumption is that employees who choose to work for these…

As public-facing and serving organizations, nonprofits are held to higher ethical standards than their business counterparts are. (“Ethics,” 2017).  Given that nonprofits must operate in a wide variety of complex environments, they must work diligently to continuously create innovate strategies to meet the needs and expectations of their diverse stakeholder populations (Benjamin, 2012).

To avoid stakeholder resistance, or action caused by dissatisfaction by organizations’ responsiveness to stakeholders, nonprofits must actively pursue opportunities to gain the trust of their donor base (Meiksins, 2014). Organizational transparency, the disclosure of operational, financial, and decision-making information, remains a significant factor in the formation of the public’s trust in an organization’s mission and intent. Accountability, like transparency, is nothing new to the nonprofit sector, nor are the hard-hitting questions and demands put forth by donors. The accountability of organizations, defined as the obligation to deliver defined impactful results, is often up for debate as the sector grows, new donor expectations emerge, and funder conditions diversify (Ebrahim, 2003). 

Preventative measures such as performance evaluations, self-regulation policies, effective donor communication approaches, ethical leadership, and social auditing serve as accountability enforcers in various capacities within an organization. Nonprofits have experienced…

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of gaining visibility on search engines, like Google.  As Google now controls the majority of internet traffic, SEO has become a booming business, driving customers and brand visibility to virtually every sector of commerce.

However, at its essence SEO is about profit motive.  No surprise there, as SEO is slated to become a 80 Billion dollar industry by 2020.  Therefore, the question is whether it can be a viable strategy for nonprofits.  Can SEO be a worthwhile investment for charities and other nonprofit organizations? 

The Short Answer – Yes!

Yes, SEO is certainly a viable strategy for nonprofits.  Two general strategies would be most effective for leveraging SEO:

• “Money” keywords + online donations
• Content strategy + retargeting/social media nurturing

Let us dive into the specifics below.

“Money” Keywords and Online Donations

This section will bear the most resemblance to standard (profit-based) SEO. Finding popular search keywords that have a clear buyer (or in this case, donor) intent, and optimizing for those keywords.  Just a quick bit of keyword research shows that there are many keywords worth targeting:

• donate car to charity – 2,400 Searches per…