Newsletter: A Small Nonprofit Positions Itself for Big Partnerships🤩 ; How to Warm Up a Cold Call 🧊; Why I’m Wearing White After Labor Day 🥼
Mark Bryant of the Gun Violence Archive (GVA)
Last week I was teaching in the New Strategies Program at Georgetown University on what I call audience-centric fundraising.
In a nutshell, I argued that to be successful with corporate partnerships your nonprofit needs to build an audience that knows, likes, and trusts you.
Why is this important? Because companies look for audiences to tell them what is good, popular, and profitable in this world.
Plus - and this is a biggie - audience-building is the tide that raises all boats. When you have a strong, addressable audience you raise more money from everyone, including individuals and foundations.
During my presentation, I highlighted several nonprofits that have done a great job at audience-building and have attracted major corporate support.
I also introduced a new example that I think has great potential.
The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) is a small nonprofit that has tasked itself with logging every single incident of gun violence in the US in real time.
Ninety-percent of the nonprofit's $750,000 annual budget is currently underwritten by one person.
While the nonprofit isn't taking donations or recruiting corporate partners right now - and may never do either because of the nature of its work - they are well positioned to do so.
The GVA website gets two million visitors every month
19,000+ people follow GVA on Facebook
47,000+ people follow GVA on Twitter
Do you agree with me? Could GVA be a fundraising powerhouse if it opened its doors to individual and corporate support?
The key here is that GVA has built an audience that knows, likes, and trusts them. With this audience everything is possible - especially fundraising.
That's why audience comes before fundraising - both in the dictionary and in my book of success! But most nonprofits only focus on the latter without ever considering how the former makes it possible. This is especially true when it comes to corporate partnerships.
To paraphrase management guru Peter Drucker: "The aim of marketing is to make fundraising unnecessary." And for me, nonprofit marketing means audience-building.
Build an audience
Engage with that audience over time
Monetize that audience, including with corporate partnerships
That's it, friends. That's the best way to do corporate partnerships - and all fundraising - IMHO.
Question? Comments? Smahht aleck remarks? Just hit reply to this email.
✍️ Partnership Notes
1. How to warm 🔥 up a cold call.
I have a different take. Don't call a prospect unless you have an introduction from someone you and the contact both know OR have an overwhelming value proposition that is 100% focused on their needs.
2. File this under clevahh. McDonald's in Spain launches the Hamburger That Could Not Be, an empty charcoal-black box that is a stark reminder of the land and crops destroyed by wildfires over the past year. The box sells for one euro and benefits farmers.
3. Ice cream chain Molly Moon's honored four special women during Women's History Month with their own flavors. Profits from sales benefited each honoree's favorite cause.
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
1. I resend my newsletter on Fridays - but only to subscribers that didn't open the Wednesday edition. It works! My open rate goes up between 10-15%.
The author of this article did a 'strategic resend' of her email and generated 25% in new revenue!
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
1. Associate Director, Retail Cause Marketing, Children's Miracle Network, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
2. Manager of Corporate Engagement, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Remote ($80k)
3. Corporate Partnerships Account Manager, Disabled American Veterans, Erlanger, KY ($50k - $79k)
🧠🍌 Brain Food
1. Take some time this long weekend to befriend your inner voice so you can come back stronger and happier in September.😀
3. Damn it. I'm wearing white after Labor Day!
