The terms ‘non-profit organization’ and ‘marketing’ may apparently not go hand in hand. ‘Non-profit’ – the word itself contradicts the idea of marketing. But marketing concepts are far beyond mere sale or obtaining donation. It’s also about customer satisfaction, awareness, acceptance, image building. Today we get to see thousands of such organizations in our neighborhood. So unless a non-profit organization markets itself, makes the consumer aware, build brand acceptance and preference over others; it has mere chance of existence. Most importantly, the organization should build a unique brand proposition in the minds of its target people. An organization should start with brainstorming of marketing ideas. Here are some tips to get started with.

First of all, you need to know your target market very well. Peek into what other similar organizations are doing. Study their market and compare with yours. An in-depth knowledge of your target market will help you come up with better marketing strategies.

Define your objectives. Your long run objectives and short term goals to be achieved should be clear. Once the objective is clearly laid down you can work towards achieving it with a concrete marketing plan.

Route your marketing plan as per your priority. On the basis of that develop marketing materials like brochure, presentations, and campaigns. Be careful while crafting the write up about your organization, goals, services, donation opportunities, future plans, values etc. The more warmth you can generate from your writing, the better you can connect with you target audience. Sound honest, genuine, and clear. Try to bring out the softer side of every human.

These days everybody is on social networking sites. Social media marketing could actually work miracle for you. Twitter, Facebook are great ways to reach your target market at a very affordable cost. Since people on these social media sites spend some time, are generally in good mood and more receptive to social causes; reaching them and touching their hearts gets much easier. Also create your fan page and community in social media sites. Try to rope in maximum number of followers.

Make a proper website of yours. It should display all important information, news, donation detail, services, contact detail. Update it regularly. Make a blog tab. Write articles there related to the cause you deal with. Promote the same articles by sharing in article directories online. Make you website search engine optimized.

Generate monthly newsletters. Send it across to all email subscribers. It may also contain alternatives to donating money.

Keep up the research process consistent and keep updating database of your customer and prospects. Use the same for email communication, newsletters, follow up calls, event invitations, and research profiling, testimonial development.

Organize an annual event. You can invite media also to publicize your success, achievement of goals, activities done, projects completed, future plan etc. A detailed annual report presentation before the investors, donors, allied members will be of great help.

For further growth of the organization and bigger projects keep up the research work towards finding new alliances with other organizations, government help, media, foreign grants.