How Much Should Nonprofit Groups Spend on Marketing?

Nonprofit groups have a reputation for not spending much time telling their stories to potential supporters.

With tight budgets and often lofty ambitions, marketing and communications often takes a back seat to fund raising and service delivery.

But some marketing experts say nonprofit groups would actually raise more money and, in turn, deliver more services, if they spent more of their resources on marketing.

Nancy E. Schwartz, a marketing and communications consultant in New York and author of the blog Getting Attention, told participants at a recent Chronicle online discussion that she recommends groups spend between 10 and 20 percent of their budgets on marketing.

That might seem like a big number to many organizations. But Ms. Schwartz suggests that marketing shouldn’t necessarily be a separate line item in a nonprofit group’s budget. Rather, it should be incorporated into many of its activities.

“I’ve found it far more effective to integrate marketing in program budgets, rather than to create independent marketing budgets,” she writes. “Makes more sense to more people, so the budget is likely to be larger.”

You can read the full discussion here.

What do you think? Should nonprofit groups devote 10 percent or more of their budgets to marketing? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.