Nonprofit organizations can't rely on only doing live events to raise awareness and recognition among their people. Nowadays, they need to expand their marketing efforts and plan on making an online approach and reach their donors in other ways.

As nonprofit organizations lack wealthy resources, they can only spread their word and mission, get recognition within the community, recruit volunteers, and get fundraising through donors by implementing a well-thought-out nonprofit marketing plan.

These organizations should take their marketing efforts seriously. While they might not have marketing staff available (or the resources to hire one), there are several steps that everyone could take to move one of their marketing plans and act as nonprofit marketers.

In this article, you will learn how to make a successful nonprofit marketing plan, why you need one, and where you should implement your marketing strategy.

A nonprofit marketing plan is a document that will help you establish all the main goals, ideas, missions, and strategies to raise your brand awareness.

This includes all the resources and materials your organization will need, the areas where the marketing team should focus their efforts (social media platforms, email, etc.). There’s also a marketing calendar to organize the execution of your marketing campaign better.

Your nonprofit marketing strategy and messaging should always support your core organization's mission. This document should be available to everyone, regardless of your current campaign. It will ensure that everyone on your team is on the same page and help you reach new supporters.

A nonprofit marketing plan is one of the few ways a nonprofit organization can grow. A good marketing plan will lead to new volunteers, new donors, better partnerships, and better brand awareness.

Without a well-implemented marketing plan, you run the risk of remaining in the shadows, even if your organization is doing a great job. Let's see why you need a well-crafted nonprofit marketing plan in more detail.

Raise Brand Awareness

Your mission statement is a fundamental part of your organization. An effective marketing plan will help your nonprofit organization stay focused on its mission while you are working on expanding your brand’s awareness.

A marketing plan needs to always keep its mission for all marketing activities in mind and continue to raise brand awareness to a larger audience in as many ways as possible. The wider the audience, the better the chance of getting donors to support you.

Raise Funding

Your organization still needs a budget to keep going. By spreading awareness about your brand and mission, you will reach more people and increase the chances of getting funds via donations.

These people believe in your cause, and you must keep them engaged with your nonprofit organization. You need them to maintain a steady income for donors.

But while raising awareness, you also need to build up your reputation, giving you access to reach other businesses and getting some sponsors to support you (so you don't rely solely on donors).

Engage With Current Donors

Maintaining your donors' engagement with your organization is very important, so you don't lose your current supporters and income.

A marketing plan will help you to ensure they keep contributing and engaging through content, newsletters, events, and different call-to-action strategies to keep your campaign running.

Alert the Public and Recruit New Volunteers

Nonprofits require advocates to act by spreading the word to their families and friends or noticing other representatives.

Getting them to know why your organization is needed and how it works to make a difference will encourage people to support you and act on your behalf. And a marketing plan can focus on these different areas, so you don't only stay on the mission to raise more funds.

Now that you know why you might need to make nonprofit marketing plans, we can discuss the many elements that compose it.

This is a general guideline for making an appropriate nonprofit marketing plan. It includes all the action items you must tackle, regardless of your organization's mission and ideas.

Conduct a Marketing Audit Of Your Campaigns

Before diving deep into your marketing plan, you must review your current and past performances. It will allow you to see what has worked before and what needs improvement or replacement.

To properly evaluate previous marketing efforts, you need to check if you have achieved your desired goals, when was the most successful part of your past marketing campaigns, what didn't go as expected, and what marketing materials can be reused in the future.

Once you determine the gaps that affected your strategies, you will know how to improve your next marketing campaign. Then, you could follow up with a more in-depth analysis:

• You can make a SWOT analysis. It is a planning technique to help an organization identify strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, or threats related to business competition.

• Gather your marketing assets so you have all the information in one place to better consider your options.

• Analyze your data as a whole and make notes as you go.

• Lastly, create an action plan based on what you discover from your audit.

Establish Your Marketing Goals

Just raising funds or expanding your awareness won't be enough. You need to understand why you need to get more donors and go beyond the monetary aspects, as it will help to keep you grounded and connected with your supporters.

You should implement the SMART goals method to carefully choose what are going to be your objectives. SMART stands for:

• Specific: Be as specific as possible with your objectives. Focus on one thing. If you need to raise funds, set a monetary amount. If you need to increase your volunteers, set a number to reach.

• Measurable: Your objectives are valid if you have a way to measure their success. Make sure you have the appropriate metrics to keep track of their progress.

• Attainable: Your objectives must be realistic and within the parameters of what your organization can do.

• Relevant: Your set objectives should be building toward your ultimate mission.

• Time-based: Set a deadline for your goals. If you don’t accomplish it, you scrap this information to help you in future marketing plans.

Analyze Current Marketing Trends and Check On Your Target Audience

You need to consider the current trends in your industry to incorporate them. Check how other organizations are implementing such a trend, and analyze how you can do it as well.

Also, you should check on current news events and any other important occurrences. It will help you with your marketing plan by leveraging popular keyword searches, improving your SEO  (Search Engine Optimization), and better positioning your organization's website online.

But there are better ways to plan out your marketing campaign than chasing the latest trend. You need to understand who your marketing strategy is trying to reach. To outline your target audience, you can use the following concepts:

• Donor Segments: Donor segmentation will group different supporters by common traits. It allows you to create targeted strategies to connect to these specific groups. Segment them by shared characteristics, whether they are donors or not.

• Donor Persona: It is an avatar of someone with your desired audience/donor characteristics. It will allow you to better understand your audience's motivations and help you humanize your messaging.

Draw many "personas" under each donor segment and be as specific as possible. Try to include a description, how much they might give, their preferred communication channels, and other additional personal details such as careers, age, location, etc.

While you craft your main message, keep your donor persona in mind, as you could recall their past involvement, how they can help, and even offer them volunteer opportunities.

Measure Your Marketing Budget

Every nonprofit organization needs to make every dollar count. So, your marketing plan must allocate your budget properly.

Many organizations generally divide between 5% and 15% of your yearly budget and dedicate it to marketing. But if you still have doubts, it is always better to undershoot your budget rather than overestimate it.

You need to be very specific about the expenses of your campaign, as well as forecasted revenue. It will ensure that you are prepared against any unexpected obstacles. Having your budget already allocated will help get your stakeholders and board members to give you more support.

Craft Your Message

It isn't enough to have a solid mission. You need to craft a message in a way that stands out above other organizations. After all, yours isn't the only nonprofit organization trying to raise funds, brand awareness, and spread the word about its mission.

If you are having trouble crafting your marketing messaging, you can use the CRAM rule:

• Connecting: Connect your cause to your audience. Use something they care about.

• Rewarding: Make the experience satisfying

• Actionable: Your message should have impactful calls to action.

• Memorable: The experience must have tangible rewards or a sentimental value to make it memorable.

Another way to make your messaging even stronger is to tell a compelling story that motivates your people to donate. Many nonprofits use their social media platforms to post stories, photos, and videos about the communities they have helped and talk about the impact they have achieved on individuals. It is a good way to attract people to join your cause.

Create a Marketing Calendar

One of the last steps before kicking off your nonprofit marketing plan is to organize and set everything in place. You need to set everything you already planned into a schedule or calendar.

This calendar should include marketing plan actions such as the dates of events and campaigns, the team and leaders involved, the budget for each event, regular meetings with the staff, and when the material will be released.

This schedule will ensure that everyone knows their roles and responsibilities, streamlining the marketing process as it plays out.

Your mission statement is ready, and your target audience has already settled and defined how it would respond. You need to develop a content strategy.

There are several marketing channels that you can choose from and decide where your focus will be on. Below you will see which ones are the most common.

Website

You must have a website. Using your website as more than just a landing page for your digital marketing is very important. It will be your source of information, and people will visit it to offer support and donations.

Keeping that in mind, you should build your website around your mission statement (and ensure it is as clear as possible). Start with your history and how the organization came around. It will give people a sense of your nonprofit's experience, and being around for a while will demonstrate you are a trustworthy organization.

Post about your success stories, events, and campaigns to keep your mission statement at the top of people's minds. You should include pictures and videos and allow the beneficiaries' personalities to shine. Supporters will want to hear about your organization through the eyes of the most affected.

Another addition to your website is a public calendar showing the dates of your upcoming events. They should include link on how to participate and an option to spread the word (like sharing it on their social media accounts). You can create a separate page for people and companies to find more information about your upcoming live events, peer-to-peer campaigns, or online crowdfunding they can be part of.

You would also need a separate page for donations. Donors will expect to have a dedicated site to fill out a donation form and be able to do it online. Without such an option, people might lose trust in your organization. You can provide information to those who want to become a volunteer. Make a separate page to allow people to apply as volunteers, asking them for basic contact information.

Lastly, include a "Contact Us" page as people might have questions or run into some problems with their donations like a donation transaction failing or not receiving a proper receipt. Provide some clear contact details (phone number, email address, direct mail address, social media accounts, etc.) to allow them to be in touch with your nonprofit.

Blog Posts

One of the most valuable aspects to consider when creating blog posts for your website is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This practice allows you to appear first in the search results while you try to rank as high as possible for valuable keywords. A good way to do this is to appeal to a niche audience, as trying to compete against broader keywords will be hard initially.

Blog posts on your website will drive more online traffic as you provide people with meaningful content. But don't keep your posts only about your doings. Consider blogging about mission updates and nonprofit industry trends. It is a good way to provide a community and act as a source for supporters.

Social Media

Social media marketing has proven to help nonprofit organizations reach a larger audience and raise funds online. And you might be tempted to approach every social media platform. But the most beneficial option for you is focusing on one or two.

Only some social media share the same type of target audience, so you will need to do some research and check what fits you better. You can also ask your donors what social media app they mostly use.

You should do social media posts and pay more attention to this marketing strategy for several reasons. It is one of the fastest ways to reach your audience and increase it, too, as millions of users log in daily. It will also keep your current audience engaged by sharing valuable content, and your organization will be able to encourage people to click links redirected to your website and ask them to donate or participate in events.

Email Marketing

Utilize email marketing as another marketing strategy for your nonprofit marketing plan. You should be able to drive your supporters and audience to subscribe to your email list. It’s best to directly communicate with them through emails using newsletters, updates, and news, and even encourage them to donate and participate in your projects.

Of course, your emails should be interesting and high quality. People are already bombarded with marketing emails, so yours should attract attention. One way to make your emails more eye-catching is by personalizing them to address your readers by their names. It will give a better chance that people will open your email, which is a hard first step to accomplish.

Another thing to consider about email marketing is that it is quite cheap to do and less time-consuming.

Press

You should consider public relations as part of your nonprofit marketing strategy. Try to build relationships with the press and different journalists to gain recognition within the press and your community.

Print Marketing

There are still donors that may prefer to receive a campaign letter rather than receiving emails. The cost of printing has lowered, and it might be worth sending out at least one direct mail campaign.

Donors usually respond well to direct mail campaigns as they are done differently and tend to stand out from the pile of bills you receive. Suppose your mail campaign has quality in content and design, and you also take into consideration how you present your postcards and calendars. In that case, your mail campaign will most likely be successful.

You know why you need a proper nonprofit marketing plan. You know how to do it and all the elements that compose it. You are ready to create one of your own.

The best way to start is to get a template on which to base your nonprofit marketing plan and use it as inspiration to craft your own. Or you can download some of those templates and adjust them to suit your organization and vision. Below you will find several templates that are available to download for free. You only need to have installed Microsoft Word and Excel on your PC to properly open them and be able to edit them.

If you need a CD key for any of these programs, you can purchase one at a low cost at the RoyalCDKeys store. You will get the latest version of the Office package, which includes programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, and more.

Simple Nonprofit Marketing Plan Template

This is a complete simple marketing plan template, as it provides basic details that you can edit the information to reflect the details of your own plan. You can add or remove any section to create your customized planning sheet.

You can download this template as an Excel spreadsheet from Smartsheet.

Sample Nonprofit Marketing Plan Template

This template replaces many tables and fields the previous one had in exchange for a more formal approach. It covers all the necessary topics to make a proper nonprofit marketing plan. It allows you to go further in detail with all the information you wish to include.

Download it as a Word document from BlueHillsDigital.

Extensive Nonprofit Marketing Plan Template

If you want to be more extensive with your nonprofit marketing plan without leaving out any kind of information, this template will definitely help you out.

You can include your mission, marketing goals and budget, establish your strategic planning technique, and conduct an in-depth marketing audit. In addition to all of this, you can also set out the campaign leaders, project managers, your process's strengths and weaknesses, and more.

Download it as a Word file from HubSpot.

Social Media Nonprofit Marketing Plan Template

This social media marketing template includes a call to action, important dates, metrics to track your progress on social media, and a list of the different social media platforms. It also has a section to lay out your digital assets, as well as promotional plans.

With this worksheet, you can better organize key details for a successful social media marketing strategy and complement it with your overall nonprofit marketing plan.

Download it as an Excel file from Smartsheet.

Nonprofit Marketing Budget Plan Template

This budget template shows a breakdown of costs for your nonprofit marketing campaign. You can also use this pie chart to quickly review your resource allocation. After writing down your expenses, the template will automatically calculate subtotals.

This template also has a blank sheet for data entry and a summary sheet showing projected total costs. The total budget amount will appear at the top of the template, giving you an easy reference.

Combining this budget template with your nonprofit marketing plan template will allow you to craft a more detailed final report.

Download it as an Excel spreadsheet from Smartsheet.

Content plans are all very time-consuming. But in the end, they are simple to follow up on. Once you have come around with the right formula for your nonprofit marketing plan, everything will become easier to do.

Always keep your metrics close as you move on with every marketing campaign. Content marketing through social media and emails will encourage your supporters to donate and act sooner or later. So use some of these templates we provided to better make and craft your own marketing plan.