Many nonprofit organizations seek to promote themselves on the integrity or catchiness of their name alone. However, name along is not enough for effective fundraising. Marketing strategies are highly important to the success of a nonprofit. Marketing is about explaining briefly but effectively who you are, what you do, and where to find you.
According to Nancy E. Schwartz, who as president of Nancy Schwartz & Company helps nonprofits succeed through effective marketing and communications, "Remember that the tagline should be such a natural outgrowth of your organization's positioning statement (the one or two sentences you'd use to reply to someone asking what the organization does) that the two are inextricably linked. A great tagline differentiates you from your competitors while expressing your organization's personality and adding consistency to your marketing and communications."
To design highly effective taglines for your nonprofit, begin by researching what your successful competitors do to raise funds. What do they say in their taglines? Knowing this allows you see what works and allows you to come up with a tagline for your group that is distinct and original.
Any tagline that you come up with has to be simple, catchy, clear, engaging (such as by using active verbs like ''do,'' ''act now,'' ''get,'' ''come to,'' ''look to,'' etc.), easy to memorize, repeat, and write down, and still informative about what you do that sets you apart. It has to have cross-cultural appeal, too, especially if that is directly relevant to your nonprofit business. If you can include phrases that create a direct to your organization's logo, you should. Words and images together reinforce each other and make for a far more powerful message. Always make your tagline consistent with all of your other public and published statements about who you are and what you do, such as your positioning statement and the key message contained in any other promotional campaign you are doing or have done.
Never write a vague or generic marketing tagline, one that just isn't clear or precise enough and that might get what you do confused with what someone totally unrelated to you does. Also, never make promises you cannot keep or say you are committed to something to which you are not. Before you commit to it and begin publication of it, make sure to test your tagline with a small segment of people, some who already know who you are and some who don't, to see that it is highly effective. Make the final decision to adopt your tagline only once you are sure you're getting the audience response you desire.
One classic mistake people make when they finally settle on an effective tagline is that they grow weary of it and seek to replace it far too soon. Never change what's working for you. State Farm Insurance has been saying, "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there" since 1971 when their tagline was written by an unknown composer named Barry Manilow. No one’s gotten tired of hearing that! As a matter of fact, for a nonprofit organization, once you have found a tagline that is highly effective, you really shouldn't change it more than once every 10 years!
Once you have your logo, key messages, tagline, and positioning statement in place and top management has agreed to it all, there are other steps to supplement your marketing campaigns and increase your fundraising effectiveness.
Don't leave all communications in the hands of one person in the nonprofit organization. Now that you have your marketing concepts in place, get a group of people together to discuss communications roles, strategies, and the creation and distribution of marketing materials. The organization needs a team to lead the marketing efforts. Also, everyone in the organization should be aware of your communications efforts and what you are doing with regard to them. Distribute to personnel via e-mail materials such as writing guidelines and templates for mass-distributed marketing materials. Consistency throughout the organization is key to your nonprofit's success.
In addition, hold training sessions for all people in the organization, at which your leadership discusses with everyone why your name branding is important, what your marketing efforts are about, and how the communications process needs to flow internally and with the public.
For the nonprofit organization, simplicity and straightforwardness cannot be stressed enough. Schwartz writes, ''Eight times out of 10, when I'm seeking input on a positioning statement or new home page content, what I get back is long-winded, convoluted edits and additions…that undermine the ease of digestion that's increasingly important in today's nonprofit marketing landscape. Think about it this way: When you fail to shape content to be accessible to your base, your organization implies it doesn't care about reaching and engaging them. And audiences pick right up on this: If you don't care about them, how can they care about your organization?''
