When people talk about “marketing” in the nonprofit sector, the word is usually interchangeable with “fundraising” or “development”. They’re talking about the marketing that goes towards generating the financial resources necessary to produce a nonprofit’s services.

There are a lot of organizations and individuals that have gotten very good at this type of marketing. One of my favorites is charity: water, a nonprofit that brings clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries. Its founder, Scott Harrison, a former NYC party promoter, has built an organization that regularly produces powerful marketing pieces, such as this video with Jennifer Connelly:

charity: water and many other nonprofits have gotten good at telling stories and crafting images that convince potential donors to open their wallets and potential volunteers to commit their time.

But that is only one half of the nonprofit marketing equation. That is how you get the money in the door.

Nonprofits also need marketing on the delivery side. The intended beneficiaries of the nonprofit’s products or programs (i.e., the clients) need to be made aware that they exist and convinced that they should invest the time and effort to take advantage of these offerings.

On the face, this may seem a bit silly: how much marketing is needed to convince a woman in a rural African village to only drink the water from a new well or to take her free HIV medication? How sophisticated does the messaging need to be to convince a person on welfare to take advantage of a free job training program?

And yet, how a product or service is presented—when, where, and how frequently a person is made aware of it—these things can make a big difference in whether they get used and how a person experiences that use, both of which can play a major role in how effective the nonprofit is in achieving its goal.

Obviously, with the way nonprofits are constantly resource-constrained, it makes sense that a lot of effort would be put into the marketing to bring in the funds that allow them to pursue their missions.  From an executive perspective (or any perspective, really), it is a no-brainer. However, it is a mistake to ignore the importance of developing strong marketing strategies and tactics on the consumption side. What is the point of a nonprofit generating resources in the first place, if not to make sure those resources are directed as effectively as possible to meeting the needs of the people the organization serves?

Part of the problem is rooted in the fact that while marketing tactics on the resource production side are being targeted at people who more or less come from similar cultural and socio-economic backgrounds as the people designing and selecting those tactics, the same is not the case on the client-serving side. Especially for the nonprofit organizations dealing with issues of poverty, the people designing and marketing interventions are unlikely to be from similar backgrounds as the people they are serving. Truly effective marketing is hard to develop under any circumstances, but when the marketing is being designed by people who have never experienced the reality of the people they are trying to reach, the task becomes exponentially more difficult.

Where are the rock stars that are going to innovate and coach and lead our sector into a new age of client-focused marketing? In recent years, social media has become a trendy component of the marketing strategies of many nonprofits. Talented bloggers, strategists, and executives like Beth Kanter, Allison Fine, and Katya Anderson have come to the forefront, showing the way toward new, more meaningful ways to connect with constituents. But for the most part, these efforts are still focused on that resource production side, not the program/mission side.

What will the client-focused marketing equivalent of social media look like and who will create it, develop it, and disseminate it? I believe the answer will emerge in little flashes and sparks from program staff who have a million-and-one other things on their plates, because those are the people who are most likely to know the clients and know what it takes to reach them. Capturing the inspiration behind those wisps will be difficult, but it must be done. If the nonprofit sector only innovates its ability to market to the people who fund its work but does not find better ways to reach the people it serves, it risks drifting further and further from fulfilling its reason for being. Let us strive to create marketing that matters for all constituents who matter, not just the ones who sign the checks.

(Photo by Matt Hamm)