I spent ten years working at a nonprofit organization wishing I had the kinds of resources that large corporations can put toward their marketing efforts. A nonprofit the organization’s web site and related marketing are usually seen as overhead, and overhead is bad, therefore budgets limited. Nonprofit budgets are tight in general which doesn’t leave a lot of extra room for fancy services, tools, and consultants.
Then I started to work with large corporations. Turns out, all that money doesn’t necessarily bring you people who know how to spend it well. Yes the margins are bigger, and there is less complaining about the basic costs of doing business, but when it comes right down to it they aren’t any more strategic than a small scrappy team of people in the communications department of any organization large enough to have a communications team.
This shouldn’t have been a surprise. A great deal has been written about start-up culture and ways to help companies recreate the energy, passion, and creativity of their lean early days. And there has been a great deal written about impostor syndrome which nonprofit communications staff tend to have in spades.
Of course I’m speaking here in sweeping generalities about two massive groups, but here is what I’ve seen working with both nonprofits and for-profits:
- As a group nonprofit staff are there because they care about the cause(s) of the organization, and they are driven to help the organization succeed despite their lack of resources.
- The lack of resources — both in terms of time and money — forces NPOs to find creative solutions to their problems. They moved aggressively into social media because it was a free way to spread their message: companies then used the lessons learned by nonprofits to craft their early engagements with social media.
- Due to corporate donations, nonprofits actually have access to the best software tools money can buy. Salesforce, NetSuite, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and others give nonprofits amazing discounts that allow them access to tools companies twice their size can barely afford. I used to (legally) get $20,000 server packages from Microsoft of $200. Google gives $10,000/month ad-word grants. SalesForce and NetSuite provide amazing tools at amazing prices.
- Nonprofits are right to believe if they had access to better tools and more money they could do even better. Tools written for nonprofits tend to be second rate (look at the vast majority of fundraising toolkits), and they are held back in the places where they need specialized software. I have friends that write this stuff, they work hard, but with literally billions less in resources they have a big hill to climb.
- Organizations like N-TEN have been helping nonprofits learn from each other and from the best of the for-profit world for nearly 15 years. That community has benefited thought leaders like Beth Kanter, John Kenyon, Ryan Ozimek, and others who help NPOs focus on their goals instead of their tools.
- For-profit marketing staff do not believe they have anything to learn from nonprofits, and are often making mistakes that the subject of basic talks at conferences like NTC 5 years ago.
Nonprofits often struggle to figure out the right way to leverage new tools because they try to leverage them first. When traditional companies start trying to market in new spaces they sometimes make it look easy because they have a path to follow. A path broken by nonprofits.
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