In order to reduce the burden of fundraising, we find that nonprofits need to be just as effective as businesses in how they present their organization to "investors."
Nonprofits are unique because they have two very different types of customers they have to serve simultaneously. On the one hand, you have the people the organization serves. On the other hand, do you have the donors that the nonprofit relies on for funding. We are increasingly seeing nonprofits embrace a hybrid model where they continue to fundraise but also charge for goods and services. Managing these two very different customer types can be challenging, and often, nonprofits struggle to serve both well.
We try to look at our nonprofit clients the same way we do our business clients. They have something that they're selling that needs to align with what their customers want to buy. During our assessment process with nonprofit clients, we focus on understanding what donors, partners and recipients need. It's not unusual for nonprofits to focus heavily on the meaningful work they are doing and lose sight of what donors want to see from them.
When working with nonprofits, we like to look for ways to align fundraising and service. Often, there is a core offering that the nonprofit provides the donors are most easily excited about. We look for these overlaps as opportunities to align the messaging to all the people who interact with the organization. Simple, clear messaging is critical for nonprofit fundraising.
We treat our nonprofit clients like businesses looking for investment; this allows us to help them paint a much more robust picture of the impact they're creating. Ultimately, donors are buying impact, and nonprofits need to demonstrate effectiveness to get the funding they need. We also help our clients paint a picture of where they are going and how their donors can play a significant role in getting there.
Most of our nonprofit clients come to us wanting to develop additional revenue streams to support their work. We help them evaluate these opportunities and how to create an offering and build a business model around it. Once we design the model for the new offering, we work on integrating it into the organization's primary offerings and ensuring it doesn't hurt how donors perceive the organization.
We like to help our clients unlock value for themselves and the people they serve so they can increase their support and impact. Sometimes, this is as simple as changing how they position their fundraising requests or how they talk about the way they serve their community. In order to reduce the burden of fundraising, we find that nonprofits need to be just as effective as businesses in how they present their organization to "investors." Helping clients unlock new value is something we love to do. If you want to learn more about how we can help you, let's schedule a call.
How we work with nonprofit clients:
Brand Strategy - Nonprofits often don't have a clear brand positioning strategy that aligns with their target donor. We help our clients identify key messages, signals, and experiences they can use to engender trust and align their organization with their supporters and critical partners.
Fundraising - We help our clients identify the most important things to show donors and how to build their pitch around a compelling narrative of where they are going.
Service Positioning - Value-based thinking helps our clients change the way that they position their offerings and what solutions they are providing. Often times this is the cheapest and most impactful change a nonprofit can make.
Growth Strategy - Once a nonprofit is on the right track, the big question is how they can grow their impact. We can help our clients build a growth strategy around the unique value they create for people and translate that to the rest of their operations to ensure they delight donors and everyone they serve.
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