Blurring the Lines Between Marketing and Fundraising

Go Beyond Fundraising: The Podcast for Nonprofits

What tops your 2023 New Year’s Resolutions? For Pursuant CEO and President Trent Ricker, it’s bringing marketing and fundraising together. In this episode, we talk with Trent about how organizations can ease the tension between these two departments to better serve their constituents and drive stewardship. These teams are interdependent but often have conflicting key performance indicators (KPIs). Therefore, you must structure them to be mutually beneficial. First, ensure you know who does what. Your marketing team builds awareness and visibility through advertising and social media to acquire customers and drive revenue. Your development team focuses on fundraising and retaining donors. Stewardship is where these two departments overlap. Stewardship includes reporting to your donors about how their gifts have been used and why they’re essential to your organization. Effective stewardship should lead to sustained giving, which often puts the activity under the fundraising umbrella. But spin things another way in the case of mass-communicated stewardship, and the Marketing team starts to get involved. Still muddy? Don’t worry — you can get these teams aligned. Trent shares these tips: Your C-suite leadership must be on board. Remove territorialism around budgeting and revenue goals. Everyone in your organization should think of themselves as brand ambassadors, meaning they should all be mission-driven. Have your Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Development Officer partner to discourage a competitive scarcity mindset. Encourage your marketing and development teams to work with your external agency. Get input from both departments on your creative materials and consider how each team could use the collateral. Remember, a brand is more than fonts, colors, and logos. It’s an overall sense of a constituent getting from your organization. It’s driven by every interaction and touchpoint they have with you and your team, whether through a welcome email, live event, or services directly. When everyone on your staff knows their role in fulfilling your mission, they bring clarity and cohesion to you.