7 nonprofit marketing strategies to boost donations

Nonprofit marketing FAQ

What is a nonprofit marketing plan?

A nonprofit marketing plan outlines how your organization can raise awareness of its cause, campaigns, and events among target donor segments through various marketing channels. These guidelines will help your nonprofit through every step of its marketing approach, answering questions like:

• Who is your target audience?
• What type of marketing collateral will you create?
• Where will you market your cause (online and print channels)?
• When will you create and share content?
• Why should your target audience support your nonprofit instead of another organization serving a similar purpose?

What are the benefits of effective nonprofit marketing strategies?

A cohesive, strategic marketing plan can:

• Raise awareness for your cause: Whether you’re hosting an awareness campaign or simply want people to learn more, a strong marketing strategy can educate your community about your nonprofit’s mission and increase exposure for your organization.
• Expand your reach: By leveraging a multichannel marketing strategy that targets your audience, your nonprofit can introduce new donors to your cause and direct them to your donation page.
• Build strong donor relationships: A well-designed marketing plan keeps existing donors up to date on your projects and services, reminding them of the reasons they should continue supporting your organization.
• Strengthen your digital presence: A strong digital presence communicates professionalism and trustworthiness to your supporters, increasing the likelihood they’ll deepen their involvement with your nonprofit.
• Highlight upcoming events: A nonprofit marketing plan provides the guidance needed to nail down event messaging and target the right people on the right platforms.
• Attract new volunteers: Advertising your volunteer program boosts sign-ups and helps you build a loyal volunteer base.
• Increase service and program revenue: By integrating search engine optimization (SEO) into your strategy, your nonprofit can attract more visitors to key pages on your site and encourage them to purchase additional services and products, such as trainings, curriculum, and event tickets.

Think of your nonprofit marketing plan as a roadmap for all communications. A thorough plan with effective marketing strategies will give your team the clarity and organization needed to lead any marketing campaign on any channel and produce outstanding results.

What are the components of a nonprofit marketing plan?

A detailed nonprofit marketing plan should cover:

• Messaging and positioning: Clearly articulate your mission statement and craft compelling messaging that resonates with your audience. Consistency across all marketing materials builds trust and ensures your supporters have a clear understanding of your values and impact.
• Brand guidelines: Define your brand identity through verbal elements (such as messaging and tone) and visual elements (such as your logo, fonts, color scheme, and overall theme). A unified visual presence enhances brand visibility and fosters stronger connections with donors.
• Audience overview: To tailor your approach, determine your audience’s age range, interests, preferred channels, and giving habits. Then, you can create audience personas for different types of supporters you’ll market to, such as donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries.
• Digital marketing strategies: Amplify your nonprofit’s digital footprint by outlining comprehensive strategies, such as SEO, email marketing, online advertising, and social media marketing, to engage your community across the web. 
• In-print marketing strategies: Develop a strategy that includes targeted print channels and integrates seamlessly with your digital efforts. For instance, promote the virtual aspect of a hybrid fundraising event online while sending personalized, handwritten invitations to major donors for the in-person component.

How to build your nonprofit marketing plan

Set SMART goals

Before putting your nonprofit marketing strategies into action, solidify your campaign goals. However, it’s not enough to set broad goals like “We want to expand our social media presence.” The more detailed you are in the goal-setting process, the more effective your organization will be in driving positive change.

This is where the SMART model comes into play: Specific (what exactly do you hope to achieve?), Measurable (how will you measure success?), Achievable (is this goal realistic for your resources?), Relevant (does it align with your mission?), and Time-bound (what is your deadline for achieving this goal?). 

For example, let’s say you want to boost attendance for an upcoming fundraising event. Here’s how you might set a SMART goal: 

• Specific: We will increase attendance at our annual fundraising gala through targeted social media ads, email invitations, and community partnerships.
• Measurable: Our goal is to increase attendance by 20% compared to last year.
• Attainable: Last year’s event had 200 attendees. With our improved marketing efforts, a 20% increase, equating to 240 attendees, is within reach.
• Relevant: Higher attendance at our fundraising gala will increase donations, boost community engagement, and enhance awareness of our cause.
• Time-bound: We will start our promotional campaign three months before the event and aim to increase attendance by 20% on event day.

Understand your target audience

Now that you have your SMART goals nailed down, analyze your target audience. One way to do this is to develop supporter personas, fictitious profiles that outline characteristics that are typical of real-life supporters. 

To craft a supporter persona, consider the following details about your existing donor base:

• Age
• Income
• Geographic location
• Interests 
• Causes they support
• Preferred communication methods
• Giving preferences and levels

Developing personas is easy with a dedicated nonprofit CRM, as you can segment your supporters based on the above details. For example, say you’re running a capital campaign and want to create a persona for a new major donor. Use your segment of existing major donors to find commonalities and determine characteristics to look for in prospects.

Choose your nonprofit marketing channels

As you build your marketing strategy, it’s important to diversify your channels to reach as many supporters as possible. Consider generating engaging content on the following platforms: 

• Social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are perfect for keeping supporters up to date on your latest activities and attracting new people to your mission. As an added bonus, the shareability of posts makes social media content a prime channel for peer-to-peer initiatives. Just make sure to tailor content to each specific platform. 
• Your website serves as the central hub for all your online activities, providing essential information and engaging content for your audience. In particular, your website should feature a striking homepage (infused with verbal and visual branding), informational event landing pages, and well-optimized donation pages. 
• Email marketing is a great way to reach your supporters more directly with highly tailored messages. You can send out weekly or monthly newsletters that cover upcoming events, fundraising accomplishments, and other relevant updates.
• Text messaging puts your communications right in front of supporters, creating more authentic one-on-one conversations. You can use texts to remind supporters about upcoming events, share updates on fundraising progress, provide links to donation or event registration pages, and thank them for donating. 
• Traditional advertising channels like direct mail, print ads, flyers, and radio or TV slots help you reach wider swaths of donors and keep your organization top-of-mind.

Don’t just choose one channel. A multi-channel approach is essential, as supporters have varied communication preferences across different demographics. Using a variety of channels helps you stay intentional with your outreach and meet your supporters where they most enjoy spending time.

Create a budget

Creating a marketing budget means strategically allocating your resources to maximize your return on investment (ROI). Your marketing budget should evolve with campaign performance, but best practices include:

• Allocating based on ROI: Direct the majority of your budget toward the channels and tactics that have historically demonstrated the highest ROI. If one channel yields a higher return for every dollar spent, it should receive greater investment.
• Building an emergency reserve: Reserve a small percentage of your budget for unexpected needs, testing new, high-potential channels, or addressing a sudden crisis or opportunity.

Additionally, it’s helpful to break your budget into distinct categories for clarity. Common categories include:

• Staffing: The cost of internal personnel hours dedicated to marketing tasks
• Technology: Investments in your nonprofit software, email providers, and design tools
• Paid media: Ad spend for Google Grants, social media ads, or traditional print and radio
• Content creation: Costs for graphic design, video production, or outsourced copywriting

Pro tip: leverage tools that streamline manual tasks, like integrated CRM and donor management platforms. By automating segmentation and outreach, you reduce time and staffing costs tied to plan execution.

Evaluate your nonprofit marketing plan’s performance

As you implement your marketing tactics, regularly reflect on how you’re doing and whether you’re meeting your goals. To track and assess your progress, use key performance indicators (KPIs) like: 

• Website metrics: Page views, time spent on page, session duration, bounce rate, and conversion rate
• Social media metrics: Number of followers, impressions, reports, likes, and comments
• Email metrics: Open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, and list growth rate

The right donor management platform will centralize all your essential data, including fundraising and marketing KPIs. As a result, it’s easier to pull up the metrics of your various communication channels and evaluate them to figure out what’s working and what needs improvement. 

Top nonprofit marketing strategies for success

1. Audit your past marketing performance

Your nonprofit may already have a marketing strategy in place, but is it producing results? To identify what’s working and what’s not, conduct a SWOT analysis: 

• Strengths: What campaigns or channels consistently exceeded your goals? Your nonprofit might be hitting its key performance indicators, sparking lively social media conversations, or generating engaging blog content. Outline the areas of your existing marketing plan that push forward your organization’s goals and are worth retaining. 
• Weaknesses: Where do your efforts fall short, and why? For example, maybe you lack the staff and volunteer support needed to post regular social media content. By identifying the obstacles that are holding your nonprofit back, you can reallocate resources, increase your impact, and operate more effectively.
• Opportunities: From your weaknesses, pinpoint opportunities to improve your marketing strategy and bolster your approach. For instance, if your nonprofit is struggling with event marketing, you might begin forming corporate partnerships to expand your reach. Pay attention to emerging trends and underutilized channels you can leverage in the future. 
• Threats: What external factors could impact performance? These could be new government policies, economic recessions, or an increase in nonprofits serving a similar mission or audience. While these aren’t in your control, you can proactively choose nonprofit marketing strategies that are flexible and adaptable.

Gather insights and opinions from a variety of stakeholders — from board members and staff to volunteers and donors — to determine how your marketing strategies can improve. Be open to both positive and negative reviews to help your nonprofit’s marketing strategy become more effective.

2. Align your messaging and branding

If the way you describe or visually portray your nonprofit changes from platform to platform, this can easily confuse supporters and erode trust. To stay consistent, align your messaging and branding across channels, considering both your verbal and visual branding.

Verbal branding

Verbal branding is critical to building a strong relationship with your target audience. With your team, answer the following questions to inform your marketing communications:

• Mission: What is your core mission statement? What community does your organization serve? What ideal world are you striving to create? When discussing your organization’s purpose, use a unified language and tone so supporters have a clear understanding of who your organization is and what you stand for.
• Values: What guiding principles define your organization and inform your operations? Values shape your organization’s culture, helping to rally your team around your cause and attract like-minded supporters. 
• Challenges: What problems is your organization trying to solve? How do your projects and programs address these issues and create change? Prospective and new supporters might not have background knowledge of the issue that inspired your nonprofit’s founding, so avoid using technical language and clearly articulate the problem at hand.
• Activities: How is your organization working towards making your mission a reality? What programs, events, and activities will you lead to benefit your community and steward relationships with supporters?  Answers to these questions will help donors and volunteers see the value in supporting your organization.

It’s equally important to consider not only what you say, but how you say it. Your organization might want to adopt a casual, friendly tone to relate to a younger audience. Or, a serious, professional tone might be more appropriate to portray your organization as a trusted thought leader. Think through which tone is more likely to resonate with your target audience and make the most sense given your mission.

Visual branding

By creating a strong visual identity, supporters will immediately recognize that your content belongs to your organization. Infuse the following elements into your marketing materials:

• Fonts: Choose a legible header and body font so supporters can easily read your content. For example, many organizations use sans-serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica for their straightforward design.
• Color scheme: A color palette can communicate different emotions about your brand and evoke feelings in your supporters. Choose two to three colors that complement each other well and speak to your organization’s values. For instance, a forest conservation organization might use earthy colors like brown, green, and blue to reinforce its commitment to serving the environment.
• Logo: Your logo should be a simple, creative design that embodies your organization. Add your fonts and color scheme, and select a visual symbol that communicates your mission or values to supporters. For example, an animal welfare organization dedicated to saving homeless pets might create an illustration of a dog and a cat in a house.
• Images and videos: Photos, graphics, and videos can make your content more engaging and break up long chunks of text. You don’t constantly have to generate new visuals to share with your audience. Instead, repurpose content such as photos from your last fundraising gala or the organizational video featured on your nonprofit’s homepage.

By adding your visual and verbal branding elements into your marketing communications, you’ll strengthen your nonprofit’s online presence, increase your visibility, and connect with new and existing supporters.

3. Invest in the right nonprofit marketing tools

The right technology can streamline your marketing efforts, saving your organization time and making it easier than ever to market your campaigns, events, and activities. Invest in the following tools to reduce your team’s administrative burden and hone your marketing strategy:

Fundraising platform with built-in event marketing tools

Your fundraising and marketing strategy should work in tandem to promote your success. Leverage an all-in-one fundraising platform that has everything you need to market events and hit your fundraising goals out of the park. These features should include:

• Donor segmentation
• Multi-channel communications and marketing 
• Intelligent, personalized fundraising
• Powerful grassroots advocacy
• Tools for peer-to-peer fundraising, DIY fundraising, and other events

The right fundraising platform will fuel your organization’s fundraising and communication strategies for any event, whether you’re hosting an auction, gala, or peer-to-peer fundraiser. Do your research to find the perfect solution to meet your nonprofit’s unique needs.

Social media management software

Social media is one of the best resources at nonprofits’ disposal to expand their reach. However, organizing your content and engagement tactics on multiple platforms can quickly eat up your time and overwhelm your team. To support your social media content strategy, leverage social media management software to:

• Schedule content to be posted in advance
• Track engagement metrics
• Analyze performance across multiple platforms

Before, during, and after your campaigns and events, post engaging social content with the help of a software solution that will unify your social strategy and engage donors.

Constituent relationship management software

Constituent relationship management (CRM) software organizes all of your donor data in one place so you can develop comprehensive donor profiles, track donor behaviors, and personalize your interactions to prompt donors to give more frequently (and in larger amounts).

Throughout your different marketing campaigns, leverage your CRM to segment your supporters and tailor your communications to different subgroups. Highly relevant donation appeals and messages are more likely to drive conversions, helping you meet your goals. Your CRM will also collect data insights, which you can then use to reframe your marketing and fundraising approach in the future.

Content management system

A content management system (CMS) can help your nonprofit improve its main website and turn it into a powerful marketing tool, helping you attract new supporters and engage existing ones. Work with a comprehensive CMS to:

• Add your branding throughout your website
• Access website templates
• Develop streamlined forms
• Incorporate accessibility elements
• Mobile-optimize your site

There are many free CMS solutions available, but not all are user-friendly for nonprofits new to web design. Look for a website builder that meets your level of expertise and will support you throughout the web design process.

4. Tap your loyal supporters

To re-energize your marketing and expand your reach across a wider donor network, tap ambassadors to help out. Ambassadors are the social butterflies of the fundraising world; their large social networks, influence, and outgoing nature make them the perfect helping hands to spark some energy and creativity into your marketing campaigns.

Individuals who would be a good fit for your ambassador marketing campaign include your:

• Major donors
• Staff and volunteers
• Board members
• Event committee members
• Nonprofit influencers
• Sponsors and local business connections

Make sure to set your ambassadors up for marketing success by providing them with training materials and your verbal and visual branding guidelines. This way, they can effectively communicate your mission to others, both online and in person, and build support for your cause. Plus, consider infusing your ambassador campaigns with healthy competition by creating fun contests based on who can raise the most donations or secure the most event registrations.

5. Tailor your nonprofit marketing strategy to specific events

Event marketing is the secret sauce to pulling off an unforgettable fundraising event. However, your strategies will likely look different depending on the event your organization is hosting. For example, if you’re hosting a walk-a-thon with a peer-to-peer fundraising component, you’ll want to put a heavy emphasis on social media outreach. This way, you can tap into vast networks of current and potential donors and encourage them to start their own fundraising campaigns.

On the other hand, let’s say your organization is hosting a golf tournament. These high-grossing, leisurely events are a great opportunity to connect with major donors and encourage them to make a significant contribution. To target your major donors, you might make your marketing more personal by focusing on direct mail.

Consider your event’s target audience and where it would make the most sense to reach them. Then, once you’ve nailed down the right approach, be sure to infuse storytelling into your communications to pull at supporters’ heartstrings and motivate them to register or give.

6. Amplify your website with SEO and digital ads

To boost your website’s reach, you’ll need to implement a robust SEO and digital advertising strategy for your nonprofit. 

SEO involves optimizing your website content to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), making it easier for potential supporters and beneficiaries to find you. Here are some key elements of an effective SEO strategy:

• Keyword research: Identify relevant keywords your target audience is likely to search for and incorporate them naturally into your website content.
• Quality content: Create valuable, informative, and engaging content that answers your audience’s questions. This could include blog posts, articles, videos, and infographics.
• On-page optimization: Ensure each page on your website has optimized title tags, meta descriptions, headers, and internal links. Use alt text for images and optimize your site for both mobile devices and desktop computers.
• Backlink building: Increase your website’s authority by earning backlinks from reputable sources. This can be achieved through guest blogging, partnerships, and the creation of shareable content.

On the other hand, digital advertising enables you to reach a larger audience and drive targeted traffic to your website. Consider the following digital advertising strategies: 

• Google Ad Grants: Eligible nonprofits can enroll in the Google Ad Grant program, which provides up to $10,000 in ad credits each month to spend on search ads. Use this funding to promote your events, donation pages, and educational content.
• Social media ads: Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer targeted advertising options. Create compelling ad campaigns to reach specific demographics and drive traffic to your website.
• Display advertising: Use display ads to visually engage potential supporters as they browse the internet. These ads will appear on relevant websites, encouraging users to visit your site and learn more about your cause.

Developing a comprehensive SEO and digital ad strategy takes time and effort, but the long-term benefits of increased traffic and sales are well worth it. Consistently monitoring and refining your approach will help ensure your nonprofit’s mission, purchasable services, and products are easily discoverable by those who can benefit from them most.

7. Maintain a content calendar

Once you’ve outlined your marketing tactics and the different channels you’ll use, your nonprofit is ready to create a comprehensive content calendar. A content calendar is the ultimate guide to when you’ll share your messages to promote your activities, programs, and events.

Use these best practices to create your content calendar:

• Develop a consistent posting schedule. Consistency is key to communicating professionalism and trust to your supporters. A regular posting schedule keeps your organization top of mind, helping you build strong relationships. Decide how often you’ll post on each platform and create a posting schedule that aligns with your events.
• Outline responsibilities. Determine who will be in charge of your nonprofit marketing strategies to foster accountability. Ensure that team members are aware of their roles and committed to adhering to your timeline.
• Set aside time for meetings. Regular check-ins will help keep everyone on track and unblock any issues that might arise. Decide when your marketing committee will meet to touch base and discuss more specific details as your fundraising events or campaigns get closer.
• Leverage key dates. Year-end holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas are great opportunities to amp up donations and donor engagement. Plan relevant content around major holidays and key giving days like GivingTuesday to inspire donations.

You’ll also need to consider your marketing budget. Work with your board or leadership team to figure out how much of your budget you’ll be able to allocate to your annual marketing efforts. Remember, you can always tap into corporate sponsorships to fill in gaps and jumpstart your campaigns.

Implement your nonprofit marketing strategies with Bonterra

Move past complex spreadsheets and fragmented systems, and start using the powerful technology that best supports your operations. Bonterra’s nonprofit software suite makes it easy to market your events and activities, allowing you to track how your marketing directly impacts your fundraising results. 

Explore our versatile fundraising solutions to meet the expectations of today’s donors, boosting efficiency and revenue.