NONPROFIT MARKETING EDIT

Every time I meet a new nonprofit staff, one of the first things I hear is some version of the same sentence: "We're the sector's best kept secret."

The programs are strong.

The staff know their community.

The people who find them stay for years.

If that sounds like your organization, you are not doing anything wrong. Most small teams spend their marketing hours answering requests. A poster for the gala. A post about Tuesday's workshop. A newsletter pulled together the week it's due. When marketing runs like a service desk, there's no time left to plan how people will find you.

The usual fix is to do more. More posts, a new platform, a boost on Facebook. That's how teams end up with what I call random acts of marketing: lots of effort, none of it connected.

So before we talk about getting seen, I ask two questions. Seen by whom? And so they'll do what?

The answers are usually already sitting in your strategic plan. Most nonprofits I work with have some version of the same four marketing goals. Below, I've matched each one with the action I'd recommend first, plus one step you can take today. Find the goals that are in your strategy and start there. Skip the ones that aren't.

But first, the piece every goal depends on.

Before any goal: agree on what you say

Ask five people on your team what your organization does, and you'll often get five different answers. The executive director talks about the strategic plan. Program staff talk about the participants they saw this morning. Fund development talks about the spring campaign. The board member at the gala tells the story from when they joined eight years ago.

Nobody is wrong. Nobody was ever given the words.

Marketing is memorization. People need to hear the same message many times, from many places, before it sticks. If your posts, emails, guides and website each describe you a little differently, every new person meets a slightly different organization, and none of the versions get remembered. That holds whichever goal you're working on.

Key messages fix that. The framework I use with clients has four layers:

1. Systems messages. The bigger picture, before you talk about yourself. The challenge (what's happening with your cause nationally, provincially and locally), the cause (why it's happening) and the cure (what will fix it, and where your work fits).
2. Main messages. Who you are, what you do, where, how and why.
3. Proof points. Your numbers, your recognition and the stories that back up what you say.
4. Your elevator pitch. A one-line version and a thirty-second version that anyone on staff or the board can say without notes.

Key messages are mostly an internal tool. They aren't meant to be pasted word for word into every post. They're the source your team writes from, so whoever drafts the newsletter, the grant report or the Instagram caption is telling the same story in their own words.

Start today: Ask three people on your team to describe what your organization does in one sentence. Compare the answers. The gaps between them show you where to start.

Goal 1: More people know about your cause and your work

In a strategic plan, this one often reads as "increase awareness" or "raise our profile."

What I recommend: plan your social media around three content pillars.

When I look at a nonprofit's social media, I usually find two kinds of posts. Programs and events. Sign up for this. Come to that. Donate here. Those posts matter, but a feed made only of asks gives people no reason to follow you between campaigns. Nobody forwards a registration link to a friend because it made their week better.

The structure I use with clients gives each type of content its own job.

Awareness and education: 50% of your content. This is where you teach. Break down the issue you work on, answer the questions your community keeps asking, and share practical information people can use whether or not they ever enrol in a program. Infographics, carousels and short videos work well here. This is the content that gets saved and shared, and it's how new people find you.

Action and engagement: 30% of your content. This is where you ask. Register, donate, volunteer, attend. Clear calls to action, real impact, progress updates on a campaign. Because you aren't asking every day, these posts get noticed when they show up.

Inspire and nurture: 20% of your content. This is stewardship. Behind-the-scenes moments, participant and alumni stories shared with consent, your team, your values, the partners you work alongside. This is the content that makes a supporter tell a friend, "This is the organization I was telling you about."

Together, the three work like a funnel. Awareness brings people in. Action turns interest into volunteers, donations and participants. Stewardship keeps them close enough to give again and bring someone with them.

Start today: Scroll back through your last 20 posts and sort them into the three pillars. If the asks win by a lot, you're in good company, and now you know where to start.

Goal 2: The people who need you can find you

In a strategic plan, this often shows up as "increase program participation" or "reach more families," "more seniors," "more newcomers."

What I recommend: keep doing your SEO, and research what people are asking.

SEO is still relevant. When someone in your city needs what you offer, they search for it. If you don't show up, you don't exist for them, no matter how good your programs are.

Being findable starts with a website that says plainly what you do, who you serve and where, in the words people actually type. The step most teams skip is research. Before you write, find out what your audiences are asking.

One tool I recommend is Answer the Public. Type in the issue you work on or the service you offer, and it shows you the questions people search for around it, laid out in a wheel: who, what, why, how, where, can.

Those are the questions your audiences are asking about the thing you do. Each one is a piece of content waiting to be written.

• Answer them in blog posts on your website, so search engines can send people to you.
• Answer them on social media, in your awareness and education pillar.
• Answer them in your emails.

One search can fill months of your editorial calendar, with content you already know people want, because they're asking for it.

Start today: Go to Answer the Public and search for the main issue you work on. Screenshot the wheel, pick five questions, and add them to your editorial calendar.

Goal 3: More donors, and donors who stay

In a strategic plan, this one sits under fund development: "grow individual giving," "increase monthly donors," "improve donor retention." It's also where communications and fundraising most need to work together.

What I recommend: send more emails.

Social media is rented space. The platform decides who sees your post, and that can change overnight. Your email list and your website are owned. No algorithm decides whether your email gets shown, which makes email the place where donor relationships are built and kept.

Most nonprofits I work with send one newsletter a month, and it carries everything. The program update, the event, the volunteer call, the donor thank-you, the board announcement, the new staff welcome. Ten stories competing for one scroll. Readers skim the top and close it.

Keep the newsletter. Then add a second kind of email: one useful thing, sent on its own. A short guide. A tip from your program staff. The answer to a question your front desk hears every week. Something a reader would forward because it helped them.

That email does two jobs. It gives your donors a reason to keep opening between appeals, so the ask doesn't arrive out of nowhere. And every forward puts your name in front of someone who has never heard of you.

Start today: Ask your program team for the three questions they answer most often. Pick one and write a 200-word email that answers it. That's your first valuable email.

Goal 4: Be the trusted voice on your issue

In a strategic plan, this might read as "strengthen our credibility," "position ourselves as leaders" or "influence policy." It's the goal that makes funders, media and partners call you first.

What I recommend: create lead magnets for every audience.

Every nonprofit holds expertise that people outside its programs would value. Most of it lives in staff heads, intake conversations and binders nobody outside the building ever sees.

A lead magnet turns that expertise into something people can download in exchange for their email. A guide, a checklist, a recipe card, a tip sheet. It shows what you know instead of telling people you're the experts.

The question to ask your team is: what do we know that our audiences would benefit from?

• If you're a children's serving organization, your staff answer the same parenting questions every week. Turn those answers into a parenting tips guide.
• If you're a community kitchen, share your recipes. Meals that feed a family on a budget are useful to almost everyone in your community.

Think beyond the people you serve. Donors and the general public are audiences too. A donor who downloads your parenting guide for their own family now knows exactly what you do. And every download adds a name to your email list, which feeds goal three.

Build each lead magnet for an audience you've chosen, not for anyone who might click. A guide written for parents of toddlers will help them far more than one written for "families."

Start today: List your audiences: the people you serve, donors, volunteers, partners and the general public. Next to each one, write one thing your team knows that would help them. Circle the one you could turn into a two-page resource this month.

If your goals aren't written down

Some teams read a list like this and realize they can't point to which goals marketing is meant to support. The strategic plan talks about programs and funding, and marketing is expected to help with all of it.

That's the problem behind the best kept secret. Without goals, every request looks equally urgent, and the team ends up doing a little of everything.

So start with your strategic plan. Sit down with your executive director and fund development lead, and pick the one or two goals marketing will support this year. Then choose the actions that serve those goals, and let the rest wait. That's what gives your marketing person the ability to say "not this month" and explain why.

Which of these goals is in your strategy right now? And which one is your team actually spending its time on?