Does your community know about your organization and the good work you do?

by | Oct 8, 2020 | Awareness | 0 comments

awareness

The main key to success for any organization, whether it be a for profit or nonprofit entity, is awareness: awareness of a product, brand or cause. Advocating and building awareness for your organization takes time and frequent outreach to drive trust, affinity for a cause and new donor acquisition.

According to our consumer survey, more than 50% of respondents knew little about their community hospital foundation. We can only deduce that the reason why this awareness is not where it should be is that these community members aren’t a part of the hospital foundation outreach. Development is a process and takes consistent outreach to the same audience to build affinity for an organization and in turn, build a new donor pool.

Below are a few reasons why frequently promoting your efforts and the good work your health system is doing can drive more donations.

  1. High competition for donor dollars: You are not alone in trying to gain the attention of donors. Think of all the non-profits messaging in your community from local to national causes. The more other non-profits market their cause, the greater the need to promote your cause and organization’s good work.
  2. Lower recognition of your organization or loyalty to your cause: Generating awareness and building trust with potential donors takes time. Gaining this trust will require more frequent outreach to get a donors’ attention and start processing your message. Delivering the right message to the right audience multiple times will build interest in your cause, affinity for your organization, and move new donors to act. 
  3. Small window of time to generate response to your campaign and cause: Adding frequency in a shorter period will increase the opportunity for people to see and process your message, ultimately moving them faster to decision. Having worked in the marketing and advertising industry for 29 years, I recommend building a 3 to 4 time cadence within a 3-month time frame to promote your mission and cause.

The role of frequent outreach is to drive curiosity, recognition and decision. Consistent marketing about your organization’s mission and efforts will help increase your speed to donation and create a stronger tie with your community.