Is your nonprofit one of a kind?

By that I mean, do you do something truly unique … either in terms of mission or strategy for accomplishing your core objective?

If you do, you get to begin meeting your fundraising challenge with an enormous advantage. Your market (prospects) presumably readily recognizes you and your distinctiveness. Congratulations, you lucky dog. What a luxury. Don’t screw it up.

On the other hand, if you’re one of many perceived to be doing the same thing (whether curing cancer, protecting the environment, or whatever), your fundraising job is much, much tougher. This is the crowded, competitive space most nonprofits operate in.

If you’re one of these nonprofits, before you can even begin to plot fundraising tactics to win hearts and minds, you need to win attention.

To succeed at that, as Seth Godin argues in this brief post, you need to stand for something.

Or more precisely:

“If you are what others are, then there’s nothing here to own or protect or build upon.

Compared to what? Compared to all those that you compete with for attention, for commerce, for donations and for employees, what do you stand for? Are you one of a kind or even one in a million?”

He’s talking about your brand of course.

Now, heaps of nonsense advice gets given to and taken by nonprofits with respect to branding. Enormous amounts of navel-gazing, logo freshening, etc.

But there is a fundamental truth here.

If you serious about marketing your organization, you must differentiate from your competition. And the basis of that differentiation must be authentic … fakes and imposters are quickly found out these days.

So don’t get absorbed in navel-gazing, and don’t get talked into trying to be something you’re not by a slick ‘brand consultant’. But do make a conscious effort to extract what’s unique about your organization — for example, it might not be what you do; it might be how you do it; or, don’t be bashful, how well you do it — and then communicate that sharply and relentlessly.

As Godin suggests: “Make a list of the differences and the extremes and start with that. A brand that stands for what all brands stand for stands for nothing much.”

Tom

P.S. Roger and I hope you think The Agitator is somewhat unique. Now’s the time to tell us if you agree. So if you haven’t read or acted upon our Tuesday announcement, we hope you will.