CRAZY FACT: Most nonprofits get started in order to meet a human need.
They don’t get started to engage in marketing (or anything that goes with it), and by definition they don’t get started to make a monetary profit.
Indeed, both marketing and profit are often considered by nonprofit founders as necessary evils. Something you have to engage with, but you’ll do it kicking and screaming.
You can get around the profit problem by declaring yourself a nonprofit. But marketing?
There’s no avoiding it.
So most nonprofits start out doing marketing in-house, almost as an afterthought . . .
. . . until they realize that word-of-mouth doesn’t generate enough new subscribers . . .
. . . and learning marketing by the seat of your pants doesn’t either.
This article discusses the relative advantages of keeping marketing activities in-house, i.e. being your own marketing agency, versus . . .
. . . outsourcing it (in part or in whole) to a dedicated agency.
And it assumes from the start that you’ve already launched your nonprofit, and are currently doing your marketing in-house.
When/Why should you keep marketing in-house?
There are at least 4 reasons for keeping all your marketing in-house:
- You’re starting out
- Money’s tighter than time and energy
- You’re quite local
- You’ve got the necessary skills available in-house
Almost obvious, really.
You keep it in-house when you don’t have any practical choice, or because there’s no compelling need to do otherwise.
Case in point: New Horizons Ministries.
New Horizons got started off the back of this devastating statistic: In Colorado, nearly 50% of everyone released from prison returns within three years.
Nobody in their right mind exits prison with a burning desire to return quickly. Yet that self-fulfilling prophecy seems to get coded into the psychology of prisoners (and their families). And it becomes multi-generational.
So New Horizons set out to break the vicious cycle by helping incarcerated prisoners and the families left behind to cope.
Knowing that it would all require money, they started the marketing effort by going to the NextAfter annual conference.
They learned a ton.
Implemented. Developed and promoted quizzes and eBooks (all focused on incarceration), as they’d learned at NextAfter. And quickly got their subscriber base growing (especially from their Mennonite fan base).
All accomplished purely with in-house marketing.
3 ways to be your own (best) nonprofit marketing agency
Whether you like it or not, YOU are your nonprofit’s content expert.
You know your mission and values better than any outsider. You know what you do, how you do it, and why people should partner with you to fulfill this mission.
So it naturally makes sense for a nonprofit to have a hand in their marketing (whether managing it in-house, or getting some outside help, or even outsourcing it entirely).
Here are 3 ideas for you to turbocharge any nonprofit’s in-house marketing. Implement these, and you will be off and running fast:
1. Leverage AI tools
It’s no secret that new artificial-intelligence (AI) tools for marketing are exploding in number and capability.
It’s now possible to create mind-blowing outreach campaigns nobody was even dreaming about just 2 years ago. And most of these tools are NOT expensive. The biggest barrier is really mental (i.e. learning how to use them effectively), not financial.
Depending on your needs, all you might need is a paid subscription to ChatGPT.
At the time of writing, a basic ChatGPT paid subscription is just $20/month. This gives you access to a bevy of customized GPTs, many of them for no additional cost. New custom GPTs are being created every day, on the back of ChatGPT alone.
Some of them have nonprofits in mind.
A search on the keyword “nonprofit” in ChatGPT revealed dozens of custom GPTs developed specifically for nonprofits. And that’s just ChatGPT. There’s Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, DALL-E, Midjourney, Jasper – the list goes on.
One tool that we have particular experience with (and highly recommend) is CauseWriter.
Its brilliance is that it leverages multiple AI tools, not just ChatGPT.
One dashboard, every AI tool that you might need, all in one place. We trained it on a specific client’s emails and website, such that it now maintains their voice, language and branding when writing new emails. This was not achievable until recently.
AI technology is advancing at a blistering pace.
And this is not to trivialize existing tools and platforms out there, many of which are leveraging new technology for customers’ benefit too.
The main point to bear in mind here is:
Marketing power is now far more limited by your imagination than by your available skills.
If you can imagine it there’s probably a tool out there NOW that will enable you to do it. And on the outside chance there isn’t the tool you want is probably not hard to create.
Get in touch if you need help finding a tool to solve your particular problem.
And quite related to this is, Modern nonprofit marketers:
2. Leverage volunteers to the max
Haven’t got time or energy to learn how to use that fancy new AI (or other) tool?
We bet you know someone who does – e.g. a volunteer, who’d be happy to do the learning for you. And on the outside chance you don’t, here’s a good, Google-sponsored place where you can find a student to do that learning.
To recycle Woodrow Wilson: I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow.
3. Leverage nonprofit corporate partnerships and other nonprofits
We won’t belabor the point, as we’ve written about nonprofit corporate partnerships extensively.
Bottom line is:
Modern nonprofits don’t depend just on their own network. Instead, they leverage the networks of complementary nonprofits and big corporations . . .
Many of whom have far larger networks than yours.
What are the risks of keeping marketing in-house?
Risk #1: You can’t see “outside your fish tank”
Case in point: New Horizons Ministries, again.
Having gotten off to a sizzling start –
After a while, they started wondering, Why aren’t our subscribers donating? The subscriber base was continuing to grow, but donation income had flat-lined stubbornly. All the while, the need was growing.
Is there something amiss we can’t see?
So they called in help. (Full disclosure: It was Beeline they called in.)
We spotted several problems quickly. The first was, Every new subscriber they gained was immediately sent a Welcome email saying (in other words), “Money, please! We need you to become a donor!“
It’s jarring to the recipient to go from getting a quiz result to being told to be a monthly donor. (A bit like proposing marriage to someone on the first date.) You need to nurture a relationship with new subscribers before you ask them to donate.
When everything’s in-house, you can’t see what you can’t see. It’s very hard to visualize how your emails, quizzes and eBooks are perceived by new outsiders when you’re a committed insider.
Fortunately, the problem was correctable by a more nurturing Welcome email sequence.
New Horizons had also never used Google Grants. (So they weren’t just failing to convert subscribers into donors, they were also missing out on lots of new subscribers, and donors therefrom.) We got them started with the Grants.
And when we discovered that their starting eBook lead magnet was failing to resonate with their audience, we created a new eBook addressing a different audience segment entirely, who were much more responsive to their donation appeals.
That, together with the Google Ad Grants, and subscribers quickly started growing by an additional 70 per month.
Risk #2: You waste money
Connected Families helps struggling parents understand and love their kids unconditionally, while teaching them to take responsibility for their actions. And their marketing has generally been quite effective over their two decades of activity.
But in 2022 . . . it wasn’t.
The bang they’d previously been getting for their advertising buck had become just a light tap, and they didn’t know why. They were spending a lot of money with Facebook, while seeing little subscriber base growth or engagement.
They didn’t know how to fix the Apple iOS 14 software update after it hammered Facebook marketing. They didn’t realize their conversion tracking was set up incorrectly to cope with it. And they’d never heard of Facebook leads ads (which we wrote about here).
Once those issues were addressed (which didn’t take long), Connected Families found their Cost Per Acquisition 67% lower, almost overnight.
That’s an example of how in-house marketing can actually waste money.
Risk #3: You don’t know the latest trends, tools and tactics
Marketing agencies – if they want to stay in business long-term – DO know.
So going outside, for informed help that stays informed about industry best practices can increase the bang for your donation-seeking buck.
Risk #4: Navigating legal and regulatory issues
In a similar vein, serious marketing agencies will stay up-to-date on (and compliant with) all relevant regulations.
If they set one foot wrong, landing their customers in hot political or legal water . . .
. . . their reputation will tarnish immediately, and they’ll be out of business.
So good marketing agencies are compliance-savvy.
By doing all your marketing in-house, you run a legal risk you might not even realize.
When/Why should you outsource to a marketing agency for nonprofits?
The simplest answer here is:
Precisely the opposite of when/why you should keep it in-house.
So that means:
- You aren’t just a startup anymore
- Energy or time is tighter than money
- Skill deficit – you no longer have the necessary skills in-house
- You’re no longer just local (or have the capacity to draw people from afar)
Case in point: The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Center on the east coast.
MEP helps manufacturers grow their business. Their director was spending an hour a week managing their Google Ad Grant, and was able to spend about $500 of Grant ad money per month. That translated into approximately 2,500 new visitors over the year.
Which wasn’t actually too bad – most novices tackling Google Ad Grants themselves don’t even achieve that.
But after we took it over, results improved considerably. Beeline’s forté is Google Ad Grants. In Feb 2024, for example, we helped them use $3900 of Google Ad Grant (or more than half MEP’s previous annual rate of spend) . . . in a month. Because we had a hard-to-learn skill that they didn’t.
Sometimes it pays to not learn to do everything yourself.
What are the risks of outsourcing to a nonprofit marketing firm?
Risk #1: Doing homework on your candidate agencies
Cash For Refugees is a new nonprofit.
They raise money to support war-torn families in the Ukraine, particularly women, children and teenage girls. They were happily awarded a Google Ad Grant not long after start-up. But not being experts with the Grants, they decided to hire someone on Fiverr to manage it for them.
A few weeks along, they noticed . . . not much progress.
In fact, ZERO progress.
Digging a bit deeper . . . they discovered that the Grant money was being used . . . for the consultant’s own purposes! The person they’d hired on Fiverr was using their ad account fraudulently – not for Cash For Refugees!
This was a double whammy.
Not only had they not gained any new subscribers and lost the benefit of the Grant . . . but Google’s system had now flagged their ad account for running ads to a domain that wasn’t approved. Their Google account had to be cleaned up, and the algorithm trained afresh. All of which took months.
When you outsource your marketing, you have to do lengthy research to vet your prospective hires.
Risk #2: Your agency has your best interests at heart . . . or do they?
Back in the 1970’s, Japan’s Dai Ichi Kangyo Bank was running an ad in Businessweek and other business magazines. The hook in the ad was:
“We have your best interests at heart!”
Such is the modern image of the banking industry that such a hook would only incur scorn and derision today. Almost everyone would say, No bank EVER has its customers’ interests at heart.
But that’s not really unusual. Human beings are inherently self-interested.
In fact, if you’re brutally honest, you are far more interested in you than anyone else is.
No matter how ethical, conscientious or well-meaning your marketing agency is, they will never have your nonprofit’s purpose at heart as much as you do.
Accept that. And don’t expect anything different. If you get someone who really is as passionate about your purpose as you are . . . consider yourself fortunate, and reward them appropriately.
Beeline has already published some articles addressing this issue:
- How to work with expert consultants outside your nonprofit
- The best digital marketing agencies for nonprofits
- About stewarding your nonprofit well
- How to keep your marketing agency accountable
And related to this is the problem of:
Risk #3: Conflict of interest, and legal issues
Anytime you outsource any work, this is a continual risk.
Example: You hire an independent marketing agency, then subsequently start accepting large donations from a particular government department. Your agency doesn’t know this, and one day they start working for the same government department.
Now your interests are potentially in conflict.
The key word there is potentially.
A potential conflict of interest is not a showstopper, but it does need to be discussed, and if necessary, arrangements made to circumvent or monitor that potential.
Risk #4: Monitor your agency, because performance can dip
An old Beeline client decided to look into their ad account one day, quite innocently . . .
And discovered that their agency had not touched the account for two months.
Nothing had been done, even though the agency was being paid every month. When it was pointed out to the agency . . . presto! Suddenly some work was done.
Agencies can get lazy. They can lose interest, or start taking you for granted.
There’s a saying in Silicon Valley: Don’t trust, verify.
Risk #5: Your agency’s tech stack is inadequate for your purposes
This will most likely only arise when you partially outsource the marketing.
You have a bevy of software you’re using, and so will they. Are the tool-sets easily compatible? (This is akin to taking small electrical appliances from one country to another. The line voltages change, or the electrical receptacles.)
This can, of course, be solved by you or them switching software, or by using modern automation tools (e.g. Zapier) to bridge the gaps between the existing tools. But that incurs a cost in time and money. Your staff (especially if they are volunteers) may not like the change, and refuse to adapt. Their staff will have to adapt as well, which they will do if you’re paying them, but the agency may insist on passing the cost along to you.
So bear this in mind when selecting an agency.
Risk #6: Your priorities change . . . and theirs don’t.
People change.
Environments change. Mistakes happen. Businesses merge. (Or get bought out.) Employees (and volunteers) quit or retire. Windows of opportunity open and close. So do needs and threats. Performance drops off. Businesses raise their prices.
New clients get hired.
Which means your priorities, and your agency’s priorities are constantly shifting.
When you started with them, you were exciting and important to them. Now, suddenly, you’re not the “latest flavor of the month”.
We all tend to resist change. Hence why we re-appoint last year’s auditor, accountant and marketing agency to this year again.
But be alert to the fact of those ever-shifting priorities.
They might be compatible today, but not tomorrow.
When/Why might a partial outsourcing make sense?
Two main reasons for a partial outsourcing:
1. You have most . . . but not all . . . of the skills you need in-house
So you simply hire an agency for the bits that make sense to outsource. Easy.
2. You have all the skills you need in-house . . . but not all of the perspectives you need
Or, you need an outsider to unlock the content and knowledge that’s locked away in your memory.
Case in point: Getaway Growth.
Getaway was started by seasoned travelers who knew full well that international travel can change a young person’s perspective (and destiny) like nothing else.
They also knew that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds don’t get offered many such opportunities, assuming they even think to try.
Getaway’s founders had all the skills they needed to create a promotional eBook. But they hired Beeline nevertheless. We started by recording a Zoom meeting with them. In it, we asked them questions and got them telling story after story of their experiences. Presto! We had what was needed to create their eBook.
All they needed was an outside perspective.
And this perspective can have multiple applications.
For example, one thing Beeline does for some clients is conduct a marketing audit – we provide an impartial review of what existing marketing staff are doing, and suggest ways to improve.
Another case in point: Beeline once spotted that conversions in a particular ad campaign were being misrepresented.
In this particular case, the same user was clicking on multiple buttons on the same page. The campaign tracked each click as a separate conversion, when in fact it was really only one.
It’s not clear if this was done deliberately or not, but the bottom line is, the conversion metrics were being falsely inflated.
11 marketing questions you may not have thought of (but may need to)
This list is not exhaustive. They are just the types of questions that are worth asking oneself whenever hiring an outside marketing agency.
And while we’ve proposed the occasional good answer, the most likely answer to the questions below is: It depends. And in most cases, answers are far less valuable than the questions. Wise mantra: A good question is ALWAYS well answered by an even better question.
1. Should we switch agencies? Or bring marketing back in-house?
As indicated above, it depends.
Human performance can dip, ethics and priorities can change to your detriment, businesses change hands, skills come and go, etc.
So you will find yourself asking this one fairly regularly.
2. When to engage your board with marketing issues?
Short answer: Whenever there is a problem.
An even better answer: Before there’s a problem. While that might sound silly or trite, it’s not. Engaging with your board on marketing issues is best done when things are going well. Because that state of affairs won’t last forever.
You don’t want to have to surprise your directors with a problem, because that makes the emotions involved higher.
3. When to get a marketing expert on your board?
This is huge.
It’s never bad to have someone on your nonprofit’s board of directors who has some marketing chops.
But it becomes a good idea as your growth takes on a predictable trajectory.
And it’s a VERY good idea when you have begun to outsource your marketing. Then you will have a sympathetic ally in your pocket who knows the right questions to ask of your outsourced agency.
4. How tightly should we control our marketing agency?
How much is too much? Or not enough?
This will be an ongoing judgment call. It will depend on the personalities involved, the egos, the workload, the mental capacities for information.
There are rarely any right or wrong answers, only wise and foolish, better and worse.
5. Do we need to segment our marketing?
Only if you know you’re serving more than one market.
A key to knowing you might need to segment is if you find yourself categorizing the people you serve when communicating internally.
For example, Gloucester Emergency Food Cupboard in Ottawa, Canada, caters to a significant number of Arabic-speaking immigrants who only eat Halal food. That’s a unique segment. Now GEFC is a purely local nonprofit – they keep all their marketing in-house, because that’s all they need. But when they do email their stakeholders, they periodically call out the features of their service that are Halal-friendly.
6. How should we collect feedback and continuously improve?
By asking the right questions (i.e. measuring) and analyzing the data you collect.
(Key word there: right)
21st-Century technology has made it incredibly easy to conduct surveys of stakeholders, and gather data. But it’s made it that easy for both good data and bad. By bad data, we mean:
- Responses to badly-phrased questions
- Responses to good questions in surveys that are badly rolled out
- Responses to good questions in good surveys, with bad analytics
This is something in which Beeline can help you with.
And then, of course, you can conduct a stellar survey, process the data well, get good answers . . . and implement NONE of the lessons learned.
So the most important element of a Continuous Improvement process is: Decide and agree that you really want to improve.
Incredible as it may seem, a great many nonprofits do not really want to improve. Because improvement means change, and Fear of Change is an ailment afflicting most of the human race.
Once you’ve determined that you really want to improve, the tools and skills for it are comparatively straightforward.
7. What’s a good nonprofit marketing strategy?
It’s easier to ask: What are some elements of a bad strategy?
Examples of bad elements include:
- Just throw money at any problem
- All donors are created equal
- All stakeholders are created equal
- Try to do everything yourself, all the time
- There, I’ve clicked Send, I’ve communicated, I can go back to sleep now
- Ignore the data
- (And just as importantly) Assume the data tells the whole story
A good nonprofit marketing strategy is likely to include elements like:
- Start small, grow slowly but steadily
- Master one skill before trying to add another
- Master one channel before trying to add another (our article on multichannel marketing)
- Listen intently to what is being said
- Listen intently to what is NOT being said
- The 80/20 Principle (Most things don’t matter, but a few do, hugely)
8. When should we hire a nonprofit marketing consultant?
This is broadly equivalent to “When does a partial outsourcing make sense?” The difference is that the consultant is usually a lone individual willing to work for you for a specific time frame, or on a specific project.
An outside consultant can fill a small skill gap, or provide a missing perspective, as described above for Getaway Growth.
OR, an outside consultant can connect you with people who can accelerate your progress, and whom you will struggle to connect with otherwise.
FACT: The world is built on the back of human-to-human connections, and these connections are not created quickly or easily.
There are people out there who can “move the needle for you”. Paying a consultant to create an introduction can often open doors that you will struggle to open yourself. Many such consultants are ex-politicians who, in the course of their political careers, built relationships with high-powered movers and shakers. They don’t always come cheap, but if you know they can introduce you to a specific mover/shaker for you, the cost may be worth it.
9. Is it worthwhile attending a nonprofit marketing conference?
Almost certainly.
Especially when you’re starting out, as New Horizons found out. You can hit the ground running. And if you’re a repeat attendee, you begin creating your own connections with some of those “movers and shakers” just mentioned. The key isn’t just going to a conference to fill your head with ideas, but as shared in the above point – to meet people – to build those human-to-human connections!
Conferences are not typically cheap. And they usually require travel and time away from home and office.
And they aren’t created equal either. Some will move the needle for you, some will seem after the fact like a waste of time and money. Every event will have a collective bias in some direction, which may/may not line up with your nonprofit’s raison d’etre.
NextAfter is one that Beeline has personally benefited from. But there are others. (Here’s a great article detailing some of the best.) You will have to experiment, and do your own homework in advance.
10. Is it worthwhile joining a nonprofit marketing association?
Possibly.
This is not far different from the conference question above. The difference is, An association typically has membership materials and benefits that exist around the calendar, not just when their conference (assuming they hold one) is on.
A good rule of thumb to apply is: When you hear of nonprofits solving problems (that you haven’t solved) through membership in a particular association . . . it’s probably worth joining. Again, are there people there who you want to connect with and learn from or help? If so, then you should join it if that’s the best way to connect with them!
Another rule of thumb is: Associations that promote themselves the loudest are not always the best ones to join. Word of mouth should be most trusted here.
11. Are there any good nonprofit marketing courses, or nonprofit marketing training?
Yes, but have a care.
The same rules of thumb just provided for nonprofit marketing associations apply here.
Courses and training are everywhere. It is big business, and there are entire software platforms (e.g. Thinkific, Coursera, Udemy, Teachable) dedicated just to making it easy for someone to sell you a course.
Do not rush to invest in one until you are sure they will up-skill your nonprofit significantly. Good ones often have communities alongside them for after-the-course support. We personally like the NextAfter Institute and Dana Snyder’s courses on Facebook ads!
Summary/Conclusion
You can’t avoid marketing.
If you want to be in business, nonprofit or otherwise . . . you have to market yourself. In fact, it’s something you’re doing every day, all the time, whether you intend to or not, whether you like it or not.
The question is . . .
Are you going to just let it happen willy-nilly?
Or are you going to be deliberate about it?
If the latter, then you have to engage with some of the questions raised in this article. You have to start doing it (most likely) in-house, and then perhaps outsource some or all of it, as your nonprofit grows. And you have to continually ask yourself if your marketing is effective (and cost-effective) enough, or if something needs to change.
We hope this article has provided some useful insight and perspective on the issue.
If it has . . . but it’s raised as many questions as it has answers . . . give us a call.
We will give you as much helpful information as we can.
