Have you ever found yourself in the position of having to justify advertising to your boss?
Have people ever looked at you sideways because you wanted to advertise in 4 newspapers, on the buses, on a billboard, on the subway, in a street banner, and on the radio and tv too?
Have people asked you, “What’s wrong with you? Why do you want to waste so much money that could be going to your cause?”
Common Misconception: Charities should not waste money on expensive advertising. It is money that could otherwise go to the needy.
When we discourage paid advertising, we are saying, “Our charity is not important enough to advertise.” Guess what, if you don’t advertise in the paper, on the radio, on TV, on the street, your competition will. And your competition is Coke, Nike, and Estee Lauder.
People spend their money on things that grab their attention. Coke says, “You’re thirsty.” Nike says, “You’re athletic.” Estee Lauder says, “You need makeup to look pretty.” And your nonprofit needs to say, “You want to help make the world a better place. Here’s where you do it.”
Advertising builds consumer demand. The more that charities are allowed to advertise, the better they can compete with consumer products for the consumer’s dollar, and the more money they can raise for the needy.
Does it make you angry that management is making it hard for you to raise money, hard for you to do your job? Are you frustrated that it’s your job to raise all of the money, yet you’re supposed to just make people hear about you by magic?
Say it quietly at first: “Advertising our nonprofit is not wasting money.”
Say it to your coworkers: “Advertising our nonprofit is not wasting money. This is how we get more donations and continue to do our work.”
Say it to everyone, shout it, “HEY! Advertising our nonprofit is not wasting money!”
Here’s an idea. Show your nonprofit boss how much success another nonprofit in your field is having, because they are advertising. Tell your boss you need to advertise your nonprofit, just to be heard.
Thank you to Dan Pallotta and his book Uncharitable, for helping me see that nonprofits need to have big advertising budgets to become more successful.
Follow Wild Woman Fundraising on Twitter!
I want to know what you want. Please tell me. Takes 5 mins. Tops.
I totally agree that advertising for non profits is not a waste of money. Have I taken you up wrong though, sounds like you are suggesting we can compete with Coke and Nike?
Hi Conor!
I think that if we dream big, we can compete with Coke and Nike. But that for most nonprofits, that would be a laughable idea.
But why shouldn’t we be successful, and profitable enough to get big enough to really solve our social issues?
I think if a nonprofit fundraiser had board approval, Executive Director buyin, and 60% donor kudos, a small nonprofit could start to build their marketing budget to compete with these big brands.
Mazarine
I adore your stuff Mazarine and hear where you’re coming from (and God only knows I have blogged and newslettered to death about the REAL ROI of the “free” mindset of nonprofit organizations) … however, I’m just not real clear about the real benefits of advertising for a nonprofit organization. Keep in mind, too, that my own clients and readers make up the 83% or so of US nonprofits with operating budgets of less than $1 million. I’m not sold on a bulletin board as a good expenditure. How does a bulletin board develop relationships with donors? Wouldn’t that $2,500 to rent the space be better spent divided between direct mail and establishing a regular email newsletter and accepting credit card payments for crying out loud (instead of the typical “free” donation tools used by most small NPOs) How does a newspaper ad build a relationship with a donor (and who the hell reads newspapers anymore?). Now I’m heading over to amazon to buy Dan’s book.
Hi Pamela,
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! I do appreciate your expertise here.
As Kim Klein says, 75% of all nonprofit donations come from individuals. If you don’t know a nonprofit is there, you can’t give to them. You need to keep reaching out to individuals for your unrestricted funds. And an individual will see a Nike billboard, and think, Ooh, I want shoes, versus a Habitat for Humanity billboard and think, Ooh, I want to help others!
In short,
1. Cultivating donor relationships and having a billboard are two means to an end, and are not mutually exclusive.
2. The more people who know that your nonprofit exists, the more likely they are to donate, if you have put your message out in an effective way.
3. Nothing takes the place of relationship cultivation with donors. But you can certainly add a billboard or a newspaper ad that will make more people want to learn more about you and become donors.
4. I do believe that people still read newspapers, watch TV, listen to the radio, etc. Just not as many as before. But it’s still worth it to put your name out there. I’ve gone to events where I saw an ad in the paper, or looked into a nonprofit because I heard about them on the radio.
I personally don’t own a TV, and the TV networks are losing eyeballs, but they still have millions of viewers. These viewers could be seeing images of your nonprofit, instead of images of shampoo or yet another consumer gadget that you don’t really need.
Nothing will build capacity like an influx of cash. And to make money, you have to spend money. On advertising, as well as on fundraiser salaries and other things. There’s nothing wrong with having self interest and being a fundraiser. We aren’t here to wear a hair shirt while we ask for money.
Thank you again for reading, and I think you will really love Dan’s book. Would love to talk with you about it over email!
Mazarine
Thanks for writing this and for introducing it on the Linked in site. Few of us will ever build advertising budgets of six or seven figures, yet we need to be in front of a growing audience every day. To me that means that we need to tie our messages together and have many people talking about the same thing, at the same time. It’s really difficult for non profits, or businesses, to do this since we compete with each other. Yet, I don’t see any other way to build the visibility and understanding for ideas like this. How are you coaching the NPOs you work with to work collectively in generating visibility?
Mazarine, thanks for these thoughts. Interestingly just a few minutes ago I read a post on NPQuarterly refuting Dan Pallotta’s argument. However, I think it missed a major part of the issue – and you have captured it. Most small and medium nonprofits face a real dilemma of how much to spend and where to spend sparse advertising dollars. And lets’s face it most of us are in that boat!
Dear John,
You’re right, we often don’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising, and we do have to be careful with what we do spend. But it’s a mistake to think that we shouldn’t advertise. It’s important to get the word out about what we do, the stories of hope, the everyday heroes that our nonprofits are peopled with. I think we have to start to undo the “if it bleeds, it leads” culture at some of these media outlets, and the best way to do that is to keep pushing our stories out, and become the media ourselves.
What do you think?
Mazarine
You are spot on. Dan Pallotta’s greatest contribution is getting us all to rethink and reframe the basic concept of “charity” and “wasting” public money. Funny since everyone knows you have to spend money to make money. If you have a small organization a bulletin board may be overkill (or it may be just perfect at a key time or event). The point here is not to take these examples literally, but rather to get the concept – if we don’t push our good causes out to the public, we will be relegated back to the bottom of any philanthropy list. When people choose to support an organization and its cause, they have usually heard of the organization before – either through advertising and or direct mail. One of the reasons people like Nike and Coke is because they know what they are getting – a quality product with management that stands behind their name. That is where every non profit needs to be in the eyes of their supporters.