Nonprofits Can Succeed with Simple Marketing/PR Tools
by Eric Whittington
June 01, 2009
Nonprofit organizations, especially charitable ones, have always faced a quandary when it comes to marketing and public relations. They need to market themselves to various audiences — users of their services, philanthropists, funding agencies and others. But they sometimes worry that spending money on such campaigns might look like an inappropriate use of funds.
So, the decision to actively market a nonprofit often comes down to this: Yes, let's start a campaign, but make sure it doesn't look expensive. The truth is, it doesn't have to look expensive or be expensive. Plenty of examples demonstrate that charitable community service organizations can take a gradual, one-step-at-a-time approach to PR and marketing and get great results over time.
Case in point: Southwest Mental Health Center in San Antonio. This 122-year-old in-patient and out-patient hospital for children with serious mental illnesses has undergone substantial changes in its mission and its name over the years. The center provides a wonderful environment for South Texas children and their families to undertake the extremely difficult journey of dealing with debilitating conditions such as bi-polar disorder, severe depression and others. But until several years ago, it was barely known in San Antonio's philanthropy, civic and corporate communities.
Today Southwest Mental Health Center (SMHC) has solid corporate financial support from many of San Antonio's most respected companies, including Valero, USAA, Holt Cat, Taco Cabana and HEB. It has strong relationships with the area's leading media outlets and its professional staff are quoted frequently in coverage of mental health and children's issues. And the SMHC brand is well-known locally for commitment to children, professionalism and positive outcomes for kids and their families.
That kind of success didn't happen overnight. It's been almost a decade in the making. But it also wasn't frighteningly expensive.
It happened because the board and the executive staff committed the resources — financial and human — to develop an ongoing PR and marketing program. And they committed to developing the program gradually over a number of years. Slow and steady, brick by brick.
I was on the board of directors and, prior to that, doing pro bono PR work for SMHC for most of those years and provided advice and counsel to Development VP Steve Herlich as he developed this highly successful outreach program.
So, what were the key bricks in the wall?
The first ones were the most basic: Putting out news releases when they had any news at all. New professional staff hires and promotions, new programs and grant awards are the stuff of simple news releases that could be quickly written and disbursed both to media outlets and to key contacts such as donors, civic leaders, elected officials and others of influence. We wanted to get the city's leaders familiar with SMHC, and keeping them up to date even on small news events was a way to get on their radars. If we got the occasional news item in the paper or on the radio, so much the better
This also enabled the center's communications director to begin building and nurturing mutually beneficial relationships with reporters and editors, who over time came to trust the quality of the center's information and expert resources. This nearly constant contact with the media has resulted in SMHC's professional staff being quoted numerous times in news coverage of various mental health issues.
Another very important step was the creation of the Hope for Children Award. Launched in 2001, this award recognizes a local or regional leader who is committed in some way to children's causes. It also gives SMHC a great foundation on which to build a major corporate outreach effort.
The idea is simple but powerful: Bestow the award on a worthy and well-known and connected leader who has the ability to pull in other business and civic leaders. By tapping into each award winner's circle of influence, SMHC now has up-close and personal contact with many of the region's most high-powered people and companies, all with the financial means to provide significant support to the center. They come to the award event, held at the center each May, and they discover a hugely important community resource about which they might otherwise had never learned.
Another simple, effective tool, the testimonial. The Mental Health Center was sitting on decades of amazing and powerful stories of its patients and the help they had received there. But with such a societal stigma around mental illness — few people want to disclose that they have a mental health problem — it wasn't going to be easy to get former patients to publicly talk about their story.
But at least a few agreed to do just that.
Nothing tells the center's story as compellingly as a parent talking about the depths of despair that their child's mental illness brought to the family, and the hope that a caring team of SMHC physicians and nurses provided. When those courageous parents stand before the crowds gathered for the annual Hope for Children Award and choke back tears as they relay their child's story, no one escapes the emotional tractor beam. In some cases, those same testimonials can be used in other formats too, such as newsletters and videos.
The SMHC newsletter, in fact, is another critical tool the Mental Health Center has used effectively. Its content is well-written and presented, it's a quick read with actionable information, and each issue includes an easy-to-use envelope readers can use to send a check to the center. Copies are mailed to donors and other contacts, providing the center with another way to touch its audience inexpensively and efficiently, ensuring that the center retains top-of-mind awareness with its target audience.
It would be easy for other non-profits to look at Southwest Mental Health Center's PR and marketing program, throw up their hands and shrug, "We'll never be able to do all that! We don't have the budget and we don't have the resources."
But remember, ten years ago SMHC was in the same boat. They didn't luck into a pile of money and suddenly launch a high-dollar, multi-media campaign. They started small and took one cautious step at a time, first with basic news releases and public service announcements, later with a powerful fund-raising video (donated, by the way), a newsletter, an award program, a gradually expanded and improved website, and so on.
The Mental Health Center continues to re-invest in these and other effective and efficient communications with the public, donors, and the area's corporate and civic leadership. Much like the treatment provided to the children in their care, success comes day by day, step by step, not overnight.