Marketing of Philanthropy
(Following my last blog post, this is another article that remains relevant of which I published back in the summer of 2012. Yet, to better reflect the latest circumstance, I have made some updates and amendments on this piece of article from the original one)
Millions of ordinary people exhibit extraordinary generosity every day. Regardless of age, income, education, religion, race, belief and social status, people want to touch the lives of others. They give everything ranges from time to money, experience to skills and network and so on. We possibly need no proof in confirming this, just look around at how and how much we gave to emergency reliefs or participating in weekend street fundraising activities.
However, I am aware that quite a lot of people still believe that nonprofits are different from commercial entities and do not require marketing at all. True? That might be true in some sense but the situation is overturning rapidly in recent time. Conventionally, a lot of local small to medium size nonprofits relied on government, The Jockey Club and the Community Chest for funds while they required very little voluntary manpower due to their tiny operation scale. As a result, it is rare they focus on marketing but mainly on their daily operation. However, as time change and competition intensifies, they too have to seek extra funds in supporting, sustaining and developing their service. So how should nonprofits market themselves to stand out from the crowd and help them to grab the largest possible share of mind and support from the public?
Like their counterparts in the private sector, nonprofits should also apply all those same business concepts of the like of differentiation, customer-centric, unique product offering, communications and the usual long list of academic terminologies to their operations. I was convinced that some larger, longer established organizations alongside international ones are typically doing fairly good on this front in putting efforts and resources in marketing and branding. Nonprofits have different sets of considerations, opportunities and obstacles in development compare to their private sector equivalents due to their unique business nature. I would say the emphasis and need for strengthening of the emotional link among existing and prospect support towards the organization and the cause that it is serving is far more an issue than any company.
Although companies are also talking about creating such a psychological link nowadays, they have some sorts of tangible products or services of which consumers enjoy and benefit from on top of emotional appeals. Yet what nonprofits, in particular charities; market is merely a belief, a value, an attitude or a forward-thinking vision which is somehow difficult to communicate or visualize. Hence, how can they do it and what they have to pay attention to?
Donors Give More If You Give Them A "Personal Discovery" Experience
Today's nonprofits need to ask some vital questions about how they are looking at the world of philanthropy. Are donor external to the nonprofit, what does it do and are they part of it? Does the organization inform, or does it engage? (The two are different.) Do supporters got the impression that their only value is money? I know a donor who gives to an orphanage in China that tells its sponsors they are expected to visit at least once a year and stay in touch with the kids they support via email, phone and Facebook. This is different from the days when donors to the international NGOs received cards in the mail with a photo of a kid, not caring if the same picture went to thousands of others.
Donors want to receive some sentimental values while they donate. They want what we call "personal discovery". Personal discovery involves a back and forth of information, shared by both the donor and the organization. They want to advocate, volunteer, test things out and be a part of the cause. They want, through all of their gifts, to find meaning. This makes communicating with donors and getting to know them, something you can't just do by deploying the latest technological tool.
Most People Take No Notice of Celebrities Promoting Charity Messages
Charities are starting to appoint celebrity ambassadors, KOL to promote their own message. However, they might overestimate the power of celebrity ambassadors. A survey in the U.K. shows that most people pay little attention to which celebrity is representing which organization. Majority of poll respondents have never been prompted to support a cause by a famous person's endorsement or have been put off by it. Almost two-thirds of people take no notice of celebrities who promote charity message or even find them off-putting, according to a new research by The UK Public Opinion Monitor (UK-POM). Of those people who acted in response in favour to a famous person – rather than a celebrity – 68 per cent made one-off donations, a further 8 per cent gave cloths or processions and 7 per cent made their gift regularly. The survey also found that few joined a campaign or attended a meeting in response to the message. "This suggests that the chief impact of celebrities is to stimulate impulsive one-off donations rather than bring about deeper commitments and actions by the member of the public."
Two Truths You Should Be Telling
1. Tell the truth about yourself: Help connect donors and supporters with the REAL PEOPLE behind the work that the organization does. Nonprofits typically think in terms of showing the real people who are helped, but not the people doing the helping. The iPhone has two cameras – one pointing outwards and one focusing on yourself. We need to get better at using the second one.
2. Tell the truth about what you need: Get better about sharing the truth behind what really matters and what really doesn't. For example, the Salvation Army can do a great job of getting people to donate all kinds of clothes, but during the summer they generally have more need for summer clothes and the opposite in wintertime. Why not tell people that up front? You might have hesitation in turning down the donation, but just be making you real needs more obvious, you might encourage people to donate more.
Be Focus
If you have chance browsing through the web such as iDonate or Charity Navigator, it is easy to get a sense that the most successful organizations in terms of fundraising are those who have a very focused mission for serving one type of social problem. In the commercial sector, being big and sometimes as a consortium have the advantages of scale. But it never works for nonprofits. Take the example of the establishment of the Community Care Fund initiated by the Hong Kong government. From my observation, the lack of fanfare and support from corporations and conglomerates at its founding time was because the Fund does not have a clear focus on what they are going to do and how they would implement their works. In the end, it was difficult for the organization and their supporter to measure their performance and the social impact that the funds were supposed to create. Bear in mind that a gift could also be an investment in the society rather than just a gift out of generosity. Thus it is necessary to measure its performance and ability to track what happens to one's gift is essential to being a successful, fulfilling philanthropist.
These concerns illustrate how and how much nonprofits have to think about emotional link building in a very niche way in order to achieve their missions in serving a specific social issue. Of course, there are a lot of other areas that nonprofits have to look into when doing their marketing and brand building. But these five should provide a starting point for organizations to review their marketing and engagement strategies before it is too late.