Leadership: When Good Development Marketing Goes BadIf your organization is blessed with staff and volunteer leadership that truly knows, embraces, and can elicit support for your mission, it can help you reach your fundraising goals. However, that same enthusiasm and passion can be a curse to your marketing copy. The challenge you face when leadership gets to edit marketing materials is this: The job of leadership is to appeal to all. A good nonprofit leader openly embraces all opinions, is offensive to none. I sincerely hope there's a special place in heaven and/or Club Med for anyone who has that skill. These leaders are the saviors of our causes. However. While that all-embracing skill is vital to fundraising leadership, it sometimes translates to vanilla yada-yada on paper. When we create marketing materials, we want to grab attention, possibly challenge opinions (within the confines our missions of course). Grabbing attention is marketing's job. That's different than "appealing to all." As a friend of mine who sits on the Board of a successful Oregon nonprofit says, "Offend nobody. Inspire nobody." Though his job as a Board member is to be an all-embracing partner, he recognizes that good marketing is the proper venue to shake it up a bit. How do you salvage marketing materials that have been blanded-out by a well-meaning leader? First: We're assuming your good nonprofit leader understands that the best thing about having a staff is that each employee has his or her own superhero power to support your organization's mission. Besides the ability to be political, articulate, and likeable/believable, a good leader hires and manages his or her team well. Second: Show and tell. We've all seen good, compelling marketing copy. Collect your favorite samples of non-vanilla work. Great photos. Humor. Eye-grabbing headlines. It's helpful to see that other organizations have NOT suffered when they took a chance at grabbing attention. Third: With the conversation started, there's a compromise to be struck. The value of a good leader is good insight. If you can open the conversation to include your more inspirational writing style, be ready to accept that their leadership includes the wisdom of understanding balance. Embrace that balance and your leader will more willing to appreciate your skills. Fourth: Show your great leader this article. At JBL, we work with our clients and students to create exciting marketing materials that appeal to donors and get your message across. Call our offices if we can help you achieve your marketing goals. |
June 2008:Archived Newsletters |
