Hi, I’m Jane Pfeiffer, founder and president of Fieldtrip. Thanks for watching. If you’re one of many executive leaders of a small to midsize, even large nonprofit, or if you do it all, there’s rarely an absolute answer to how we do things.
Today we’re going to talk about one of those very gray areas: the role of marketing and development. Is it stronger together or separate? Now, even if you don’t have a team or the opportunity to have development employees, marketing employees, or communication employees, it’s still an important question because you can reframe the question as, do I have a marketing strategy and a fundraising strategy, or are they the same?
So let’s think about it through that lens of just the shared strategy and plan, in case you have teams or assigned employees. What is the best and what’s the best for your organization? Because that answer may change. Let’s start by hitting the highlights of what’s better when the two are together.
When the two are combined, one of the advantages is that there can be a single strategy that’s both fundraising and development, because you really can’t completely separate the two, nor can you completely combine the two. So having a single strategy, plan, and responsibility that looks at both areas is a great approach and a strong integration.
Marketing should have the role of doing the research and listening to audiences in preparing that plan. It’s not the downward funnel, it has to be on the front end and that has to inform the overall strategy. The second advantage is that your donors have a stronger engagement experience. They have more clarity about when there is an engagement and nurturing that development, not that they would label it or you would label it, but it’s easier to smoothly have a complete donor experience because your communication and your fundraising are very closely tied and those stories can connect seamlessly across those two responsibilities.
The other strength is cost efficiency. When done right, this can save on operational costs because you’re working from a single plan. It also helps you consistently build your brand with the tone, the messaging, the images, and the events all being on brand.
Now there are some weaknesses, and one of them is the reduction of accountability. Imagine if you have both responsibilities, or you have two employees or an employee trying to do both. One is always going to take priority and the other will become a reactive strategy. So you’re thinking about, for example, your gala, your events, the things you have to do to raise revenue because that’s really important. Then marketing can become the communication megaphone, if you will, for the fundraising efforts.
And I would say that’s probably a common scenario, but it doesn’t utilize communications and marketing to its fullest extent. So how do you balance that accountability? You can’t have full accountability for both areas in one position or one team unless you really have the strength and skills of both. They’re both informing the strategy and plan.
And that goes into the next point, and I really can’t emphasize this enough, is that preference of one over the other, whether it’s a comfort level, whether it’s risk avoidance, whether it’s just a focus on revenue.
So we prioritize the events directly tied to revenues and kind of forget about the nurturing and communication part that’s so important. Or just somebody who’s more comfortable working internally than going out there in the world and making connections, looking for sponsors, and meeting donors where they are. Along the same lines, it’s that all-in-one fallacy that these two are the same, and they go hand-in-hand.
I think the biggest fallacy that sometimes lives with nonprofit leaders is that marketing is almost like a direct response effort to fundraising. We can’t have either in a vacuum. We can’t market our way to having the revenue that is needed in totality. But we also can’t do the opposite. Thinking that they’re the same is really the biggest risk.
Now, if you think and have the resources in your mind or via a plan, you can think about the strengths of when you separate these two. When you separate, one of the advantages is the strategic focus. You have clear separation, which allows each function to operate and excel. Marketing is the outreach and engagement of audiences, that listening device, while development strategy focuses on cultivating and retention of donors. You can also have a strategic focus that is specific to both, with specific goals, specific measurables, and therefore very specific accountability.
Finally, that clarity of ownership, who is responsible for what? How do we work together? Marketing and communications are like managing an investment portfolio. It needs to be done proactively or it’s always going to fall short. And fundraising, to be simplistic, could be compared to sales. The effort has to be external as much as it is what we do internally, and every organization needs both.
Now the weaknesses are, that it can create barriers to integration. There has to be time to collaborate and communicate very clearly internally. Silos are a real risk and you definitely need to watch and have a cohesive narrative around your brand and the efforts that you’re doing. Missed Synergies, or opportunities for collaboration or ideation when you have a bold idea over here in one area, how does it impact the other, and what could happen by those minds coming together and sharpening each other?
It can lead to higher operational costs, not just because you might have separate teams, separate employees, or perhaps you contract out a certain part of it, but because those synergies might be missed, if we do create silos or we minimize the importance of one over the other in creating our teams and strategies and resources. The choices between blurring the lines and maintaining a clear distinction between marketing and development really depends on your goals and capacity.
An integrated approach is best. It creates a cohesive brand and it allows expertise, as long as there is clear and decisive emphasis on both areas. If we buy into the idea that it’s all the same, or I’ve got a director of fundraising and marketing reports, you might be setting yourself up for some challenges. The short answer is to make sure that whether fundraising and communications are together or separate is a very intentional decision. That decision can’t necessarily be wrong, but it should be intentional and not a passive one.
Thanks for watching.
