Making It Easy.

Giving should not be difficult

To be successful at marketing and getting more donations in the coming decades, follow these three simple steps:

1. Make it easier to get information.

2. Make it easier to donate.

3. Start over at step number 1.

Here are some current examples of organizations making it easier for people to get information and give donations.

The federal government has recently approved the 211 dialing exchange for information and referral to social service organizations. In some geographic areas in the not too distant future, it could be just about as easy to get information about non-profits and their services as it is to get an ordinary telephone number. (NPT, September, 2000)

Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund has grown into one of the 10 largest fundraising organizations in the country in only eight years partly by making donating as easy as clicking a mouse. (NPT, November, 1999)

For-profit organizations have long understood the need for marketing. Nonprofits have long understood the need for donations, but not necessarily the connection between marketing and donations. With the proliferation of nonprofits and the increasingly competitive fundraising environment, the connection is clearer even if the solution isn't.

Push vs. pull

An old but still valid marketing concept helps make an important distinction. Marketing strategy ("sales "in the for-profit lexicon) can be either push or pull. In a push strategy; the producer almost literally pushes the product to the wholesaler, who pushes it to the retailer, who pushes it on to the consumer.

Those grocery store flyers that show up in end-of-the-week newspapers are a good example of push marketing. Services can be pushed too, of course, but the wholesaler usually doesn't have a role because it is a straight producer-to-consumer relationship.

Push marketing is heavily dependent on established distribution channels. Many of the products advertised in The NonProfit Times -- in fact, the entire economic logic of the publication itself -- employs push marketing. To get access to the product or service, the consumer normally needs only to do one thing like making a telephone call, sending an email, etc. The logic is all about getting the consumer to take that last little step.

Any day now we will begin seeing stories about the small company that spends most of its yearly advertising budget on a one minute ad in the Super Bowl. This is a high-stakes gamble on a pure "push" strategy.

Pull marketing, on the other hand, relies on advertising and promotion to create consumer demand. In contrast to that grocery store handbill, the Statue of Liberty is an almost pure "pull" because it figures so prominently in our national self-image.

Resources in a pull strategy must be heavily devoted to advertising and promotion. Marketers using a pull strategy try to create a demand for their product or service in the consumer's mind by distinguishing themselves in some way from the competition.

Generally, nonprofits have to push information and pull donations. Success in pushing information tends to lead to success in pulling donations. This is one of the reasons why institutions that have had long term success in establishing an identity for themselves tend to be so good at pulling donations. Groups like the Salvation Army, Boys & Girls Clubs, Harvard University, and the YMCA figure so prominently in our society that they have essentially done most of the information-pushing they need to do. They mainly have to concentrate on pulling the donations that follow the information.

Recipe for success

It is easier today to both push and pull than it has ever been before. Traditional methods of information distribution have been enhanced or replaced with new means of getting the information (or product) out. Mostly this has happened because the new methods are easier for consumers. Not coincidentally, they tend to be less expensive for the nonprofit, too.

Successful marketers and fundraisers will figure out how to push information more easily. Many already have and the accompanying table shows common means of information push.

All of the tactics on the left side make it easier to push information to consumers. The problem with relying solely on push tactics is that everyone else is doing the same thing. There is a kind of finite capacity in most of these tactics for pushing information.

Banks really only have one screen and a few seconds in the average ATM transaction to push a nonprofit's information ("We support the United Way of Anytown"). And more nonprofits develop Web sites every day that will simply languish in cyberspace without a compelling reason for consumers and donors to visit.

New means of pushing information will become necessary but not sufficient in themselves to ensure fundraising success. There has to be something else. That something else will be creative strategies for pulling donations.

Nonprofits will be learning many more ways of making it easier to pull donations in the future. Some already exist, such as hyperlinks in other Web sites drawing potential donors to charities. But the truly novel pull strategies are just beginning to be developed.

All three of the new developments described above have the effect of more easily "pulling" consumers to nonprofits for the purpose of donations or services. The essence of a pull is to motivate a consumer to take a step on his or her own, which is what each of the two fundraising innovations do.

Success in pulling is also a function of timing. ATMs originally pulled customers to banks on the basis of the novelty of the machines. Daimler-Chrysler has used radical styling to pull thousands of new customers to its PT Cruiser automobile. Over time, however, ATMs became a standard way of doing business and a must-have for all banks. Similarly the new Cruiser must eventually establish itself as a desirable piece of machinery, not just a stylish option.

The United Way pilot will initially appeal to major corporate donors for its cutting-edge aura bur will ultimately become the standard way of handling such donations because it makes it easier for donors to both get information and make donations. It also makes it easier and cheaper for companies (and the United Way) to track the whole process, thereby assisting in future plans for pushing information and pulling more donations.

But the major pre-requisite in a successful donation-pull strategy will be good branding. This is what will motivate donors to push the button for more information or seek out the agency to make a donation.

Branding obviously means the kind of position enjoyed by the top fundraising groups mentioned above, but it can also be purely local in nature. The child and family service agency with the sterling local reputation that makes it easier for donors to donate will do just as well in its own terms as the national fundraising behemoths.

Making it easier to get information and make donations will be at the heart of most marketing and development strategies for the foreseeable future. Paradoxically, making it easier for consumers and donors will consume large amounts of managers' time and attention. It isn't easy being easier.

Thomas A. McLaughlin is a nonprofit management consultant with BDO Seidman, LLP in Boston. He is the author of "Nonprofit Mergers and Alliances: A Strategic Planning Guide" and of the soon-to-be-published "Trade Secrets for Nonprofit Managers."