Here is the reality for most nonprofits and their treatment of fundraising and marketing; separate departments, separate budgets, separate focus.

In a truly donor centered organization none of this would be true.

In a “should be” (versus how it often is) world strategic marketing is about product, placement, price and positioning – in a word, brand.   Fundraising is about using the brand to deliver revenue for the short, medium and long term.

The brand has an enormous impact on the ability to raise funds.  At its most basic, it provides baseline familiarity, that necessary ingredient to even stand a chance of being noticed in the mere seconds from mailbox to trash can.  Yes, it is true that a creative representation of the brand on the carrier envelope may entice the unfamiliar, may get noticed in a commodity (i.e. unbranded) world.  But, this is akin to catching lighting in the bottle, a creative spark perhaps fueled by time and idiosyncratic circumstance.  It is only the branded piece that delivers real return over time.  Why?  Because this piece delivers a brand oriented donor.  One who gave because of a connection that, if delivered consistently over time, can be repeated and built upon.

From an accounting standpoint, a well branded (and consistently branded) fundraising effort should cost out mostly on the brand side.  Think about it, the direct mail channel is, for the vast majority of non-profits, the number one way the organization communicates with constituents and prospects.  It is the way the brand is most regularly and routinely delivered from the organization.  And if that regular, routine brand message is consistent (and too many are not) then the acquisition mail channel is creating valuable impressions; impressions that can and should lead to conversion.

And what about the marketing folks?  Shouldn’t they, as stewards of the brand, the most important asset of the organization, be considered fundraisers?  The brand is the asset being leveraged and they, as stewards, should understand the value of the asset, how it got that way, how to preserve it and how to grow it.  These are knowable things, brand needn’t be treated as soft, fuzzy and just-believe stuff.  The brand delivers donors or prevents it in the same way a lousy fundraising piece or a brilliant one fails to deliver or does, respectively.   Marketers should start by rejecting any notion that brand can’t be quantified, measured and understood just like the metrics of a fundraising campaign.

Stay tuned for part II of this post, the meatier part, where we talk about ways to measure brand that get away from all the soft and fuzzy and towards an empirical, financial understanding of it.