8 Marketing Tips for Nonprofits

Marketing takes a bit of art and science to help you create effective campaigns that boost trust with donors while amplifying your mission.

The best marketing starts with a core strategy that will guide your efforts. Remembering that any marketing plan takes time to implement (and more time to see results) is also essential.

Here, we have eight tips to help you plan successful marketing for your nonprofit. Each is actionable regardless of your organization or team’s size.

1. Get to Know Donors

How much do you know about your best donors? What about those who only give occasionally? Knowing your donors can help you make marketing choices that resonate with them, including choosing the best marketing channels from social media to direct mail to email.

You can get a lot of information about donors and their preferences using a donation form, personal interactions, donor information surveys, or event registrations or forums.

You’ll often start to see patterns with donors based on their giving profiles and demographics that can help shape your marketing choices moving forward.

2. Segment Your Audiences

Once you grasp the preferences of your donor base, you can begin to segment them into specific audiences based on their needs. Segmentation can help you create more meaningful interactions with those most likely to give or support your organization in other ways, such as volunteering or in-kind contributions.

Donor marketing segmentation is the process of dividing donors into distinct groups based on shared characteristics or behaviors. Audience or donor segmentation helps your nonprofit tailor marketing efforts to engage and appeal to each group of donors.

There are a variety of ways to segment your donors based on your overall goals, including:

• By donor history and previous donation amounts
• How often someone gives or volunteers with your nonprofit
• By preferred communication type, such as mail, email, phone, or text
• How long someone has contributed to your organization (and in what ways)
• By age group (this can often indicate donation levels)
• By donation type, such as annual, recurring, or infrequent

You can get this information from your CRM or donor database. If you still need to ask for everything on donation forms, consider adding fields to ensure you have all the necessary segmentation information.

3. Incorporate Storytelling

What resonates most with donors, spurring them to give, is a connection to your mission. Combining a strong brand identity and fantastic storytelling helps connect donors and potential donors, providing a solid reason to give.

Storytelling includes focusing on your mission and vision statements with stories of impact, such as testimonials from people your organization has helped and supporters who have seen the impact of their dollars or time.

Consider a mix of storytelling techniques with photos, video, and audio in short and longer formats to connect with audiences differently. The types of stories can also vary for maximum impact. Prioritize success stories and personal narratives, which most audiences will connect with quickly.

Avoid “down” stories and focus on positive examples of your nonprofit. Rather than a “we need funds urgently” campaign, consider showing how funds are used or who they help.

4. Subscribe to Other Nonprofits

Pay attention to what other nonprofits are doing to spark your marketing creativity. It can be easy to get stuck doing some of the same things, and a tactic from another organization can help you generate new ideas.

Find other nonprofits that have a similar mission or audience. Subscribe to their email newsletters to stay updated on what they are doing. Follow them on social media and check their highest-performing posts for marketing inspiration.

5. Use Email Best Practices

Email marketing through regular newsletters is one of the most popular marketing tactics. When segmented well, a robust email ensures your audiences get the information they want from you. Just remember the call to action to donate!

There are a few other things you can do to make sure email newsletters hit inboxes as well, ensuring better deliverability:

• Work from a “clean” list, meaning you regularly remove subscribers that no longer open your emails or bounce.
• Include an unsubscribe link (it’s the law).
• Use a “named” email address in the reply-to to ensure that subscribers feel a real person is available if they want to communicate with someone.
• Be wary of spammy words or phrases that can limit deliverability.
• Send email newsletters on a set schedule to segmented audiences.

6. Repurpose Content

Working for a nonprofit, you know that working smarter is part of the job. Repurposing content so you can use it multiple times in various ways is essential.

Repurposed content can help you reach new audiences while saving time and getting the maximum value from everything you create.

Here are a few ideas for ways to repurpose some content you may already have:

• Convert blog posts into other formats, such as infographics, podcasts, or videos. Extract critical points or statistics to create visually engaging infographics or turn the content into a script for a podcast episode or video series.
• Repurpose the data and stories from your annual report into social media posts, blog series, or interactive web content. Highlight critical achievements, impact stories, and financial insights in bite-sized pieces.
• After an event, repurpose content such as photos, videos, and attendee testimonials to create recap blog posts, social media posts, or an email newsletter. Repurposing this content allows you to extend the event’s reach and showcase its success.
• Transform case studies or success stories into various formats, such as downloadable PDFs, presentation slides, or short videos.
• If your organization regularly highlights volunteers or supporters, repurpose their stories into social media posts, blog features, or newsletter articles.
• Repurpose educational content such as guides, manuals, or training materials into interactive quizzes, webinars, or email courses.
• Collect testimonials and impact stories from beneficiaries, donors, and volunteers, and repurpose them into visually appealing graphics for social media, short videos, or quotes for your fundraising materials.

7. Try AI Tools

It’s more than a buzzword: Artificial intelligence can help you generate marketing ideas and refine content with tools you may already be using.

AI also helps you improve efficiency and save time as you automate tasks and streamline processes. Trying AI tools can be the key to maximizing your marketing impact.

Some examples include:

• Canva can speed up the design and image process.
• ChatGPT can help you develop campaign ideas.
• Google and Facebook allow you to refine ad copy and suggest potential audiences.

8. Use Paid Advertising

Paid advertising can help you reach current donors and new audiences. Ads in digital spaces – such as social media and search – and traditional advertising on radio, in print, or via billboards can be a practical part of a nonprofit marketing strategy.

The key benefits of paid advertising for nonprofits include the ability to target specific audiences, have an immediate impact, measure results, and adapt to trends in the market.

Many nonprofit marketers find that Facebook and Instagram (Meta) can be two of the most effective platforms when it comes to advertising. These digital ads are pretty inexpensive, and it’s not hard to get started.

To maximize the impact, you want to outline the goals of paid advertising first. Are you looking for donations, event registrations, or something else? What audience(s) are you trying to reach? Use that information to set a budget and plan for what paid marketing channels to use. Remember, each new campaign or goal segment can result in a different “best channel” for paid efforts.

Level Up Your Nonprofit Marketing

Now is the time to level up your nonprofit marketing. Many of these tips are things you can put into action today to help generate future donations, better engage with audiences, and create a long-term marketing strategy.

GiveWP is here to help. From robust donation forms to an automatic donation database, we have the tools you need to streamline your organization’s marketing efforts. Schedule a free demo today.