Marketing for charity and nonprofit organizations is not easy. The best nonprofit marketing campaigns tell stories that compel people to take actions that make change. Here are three marketing strategies for charities that rally people to cause…

The Best Marketing Strategies For Charities That Value Their Brand Reputation

It is not only businesses that need to become good at marketing, non-profit organizations and charities need to as well. The good news is we have compiled a few proven tactics you can try immediately.

Here are the most effective marketing strategies for charities and non-profits.

Create A Connection

One of the most effective marketing techniques for non-profits: Developing relationships with those donating to your cause. For charity marketing to be successful, donors must feel a personal connection to the issue, trust the organization, and a desire to alleviate the problem. 

A persuasive way of doing this is to rely on content marketing, and even more specifically, visual storytelling. Many well-known charities create compelling visual stories that quickly and effectively create a connection between donor and cause. 

To that end, be sure that you display lots of videos and pictures on your website and any other platform you use. Like this one:

Such images should include a variety of options including:

  • Charts to show donation levels
  • Testimonials from volunteers
  • Photos and videos of people positively impacted

And infographics to show how funds are used.

Make It Personal

Charity marketing is all about creating connections between donors and the organizations they help.

Ideally, you want to make the donor feel a special part of the effort to make things better. A good way to do this is personalizing your contact with them. Reinforce the idea that they are individually making a profound difference on the mission. 

Ways you can optimize your communication with donors: 

  • Encourage a conversation with individuals by including an email address where they can reply 
  • Use services like Handwritten Notes for Nonprofits, which allow you to create handwritten personalized notes for each of your donors at scale. Indeed, in this digital age, your charity will stand out and build personal connections with handwritten notes or letters. 

Good Marketing Strategies For Charities Segment Donor Communication

Send the same introduction letter to every donor you have on your list when they first sign-up. From there, cater to specific categories within your database.

To maximize donations over time, you will need to meet your donors where they currently are at the stage of their donation journey. This is known as list segmentation.

All you need to do is segment your donors into different groups based on your choice of factors. They might be:

  • Amount donated
  • Time they have volunteered
  • Type of donor

Be sure the messages that you send are crafted for their specific situation. In turn, they will be much more likely to be effective, with higher donor response.

For example, you can send a thank you to one-off donors with details on how their donation would be used. You might also describe how they could make a difference on a particular issue if they continued to donate a regular amount each month.