Together, they have a detailed picture of their target audiences to inform an effective fundraising strategy. Yes, this definition encompasses raising funds, but it also speaks to the myriad projects and disparate existing systems you have to work with. And development professionals are highly valued assets at any nonprofit organization.
Gift officers can find themselves soliciting six-, seven-, eight-, and nine-figure gifts from individuals, couples, entire families, or family foundations. Depending on the organization’s mission, advancement also holds responsibility for key groups in its nonprofit community such as school alumni, grateful patients in a hospital, or member services in a museum. Advancement may also include enrollment management, career advising, and board relations, as well as externally focused IS/IT teams, data and analytics, and finance and operations teams. A person in a leadership advancement role might have a business background or focus, with a wide variety of skills and expertise relevant to the nonprofit sector. This person often has a direct report to the President or CEO and sits on the leadership team with other C-suite professionals.
What Is Advancement?
If you’ve spent any length of time in the nonprofit world, you’ve almost certainly heard the terms “development,” “fundraising,” and “marketing.” You probably know each job has to do with raising money and awareness. But while some people use the terms interchangeably, these are three distinct specialties—each of which plays an essential role in organizational success. Jeff Brook’s book on fundraising communication will teach you all kinds of strategies, including speaking and writing styles, that you can use to acquire new donors.
Valuing and Evaluating Transferable Skills
Rather than being inside one organization, I get to ebb and flow through hundreds of organizations each year, popping in and popping out for hours at a time. I’ve been able to identify patterns and similarities across even the most distinctly different organizations. We specialize in clear messaging, simple systems, and curated tools that help you reach more people, tell your story effectively, and support your fundraising efforts without burning out. At LightLIFT Marketing, we understand that in many nonprofits, you’re juggling both fundraising and marketing—often with a small team and limited time.
What Are the Benefits of Nonprofit Development and Marketing Teams Working Together?
One thing above all else has stuck with me through the years, and that is the distinction (or lack thereof) between development and fundraising. Each specialty relies on storytelling, audience engagement, and clarity about what the organization does and why it matters. Different groups keep the broader message consistent as they interact with slightly development, fundraising, and marketing different audiences. Marketing is generally ongoing to keep the organization visible and maintain engagement over time.
Eight Strategies for Keeping Teams Engaged in Uncertain Times
Ultimately, marketing teams focus on initiating relationships between supporters and your brand, while nonprofit development teams secure donor investments from those relationships. When a fundraiser does their best work, they engage donors and funders in productive ways that benefit the organization’s mission and ensure positive relationships with the institution. Fundraisers come and go, and, when they do, ideally that departure does not interrupt the relationship with the institution.
- As nonprofit development and marketing teams begin to work together, follow up to get a pulse on the collaboration.
- If your development and communications folks keep stepping on each other’s toes (if they are in fact different people), you’re not alone.
- Marketing success is measured through engagement metrics that reflect audience growth and interaction, such as attendance, social media engagement, and website visits.
- With this assessment, you’ll be able to compare the amount of time your organization spends on each fundraising strategy against the data you’ve been collecting about your donors and donations.
The urgency is heightened by the timing, making it clear that contributions will benefit students immediately as they begin their new school year. For example, marketing for the after-school program is a year-round effort, with content like upcoming program events, success stories, and holiday activities continuously shared. The objective is to keep the program at the forefront of families’ minds whenever they consider extracurricular activities for their children. Marketing content for the program might highlight the program’s mission to support students’ academic and social growth.
- If you create and maintain relationships with your donors, made on the basis of trust, it will increase the probability that they will continue to support you organization personally and with their giving.
- Nonprofit development and marketing teams each have critical insights on donors.
- Even more compelling is the fact that some of those patterns and similarities identified within nonprofits resonate back home with me here, at our for-profit company.
- If you find your talents are best suited to one specialty, you can set yourself up for a rewarding career.
While their day-to-day functions differ, the two departments can find common ground in their goals and support an overall increase in nonprofit growth. Find ways to support the two teams in your nonprofit by sharing materials and coordinating campaigns for greater efficiency and more consistent messaging. You might not see it (thanks to savvy marketing), but vendors fight, vendors scrap, and vendors scrutinize their bottom line endlessly. Nonprofits fight (for their mission), nonprofits scrap (for their resources), and nonprofits scrutinize their bottom line (to make sure programs can be funded) endlessly too, but it’s a bit different. “Development” is also about understanding who your (prospective) (long-term) donors are, and what you have to do to get them to want to support your organization.
Blackbaud is the most popular fundraising software on the market according to our directory, and for good reason. Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge offers all kinds of features including donor management, donation reports, mobile payment processing, and even unique features such as fundraising event management capabilities. The development department staff creates their communication schedules, including all appeals and updates for the supporters.
Why Nonprofit Development and Marketing Teams Need Each Other
Fortunately for job seekers, the fields require many overlapping skills, including stellar written and oral communication, research chops, and the ability to learn content management systems. Job descriptions in each area may be fluid, since nonprofit professionals are often required to wear many hats. So don’t be surprised if you get some fundraising education in a marketing or development role and vice versa. If you find your talents are best suited to one specialty, you can set yourself up for a rewarding career. It also seems clear to me that an organization’s development efforts are also seeded by the board, even if professional development staff exists.
By creating an environment of donor trust through earning the right to make the ask as the result of building lasting, long-term relationships with your donors, you make great strides in ensuring future and lasting income for your institution. Whereas, “fundraising” focuses on the “now” with no assurance of future gifts. Vendors tend to sell products to “fundraisers,” when they really mean to be targeting development professionals. The two phrases, although different, appear to the naked eye to say the same thing. If you create/maintain relationships with donors, you increase the likelihood that they will continue to give — that’s “Development.” If all you do is “Fundraising,” you make it that much harder to ensure your organization’s future.