Among the many lessons nonprofits and those who support them should take away from the pandemic is that how and where information is conveyed matters — a lot.
This is especially true when it comes to getting services to those in need. Confusion over issues such as unemployment benefits, eviction moratoriums, health-insurance coverage, and mask mandates could have been minimized from the start with clear and effective advertising and communications campaigns.
Marketing makes it possible for nonprofits to connect with the people they serve, but it’s often removed from grant budgets and typically isn’t top of mind for individual donors. The organization I lead, Public Health Solutions in New York, applied for dozens of grants during the pandemic to provide critical health services to low-income people. We won more than 60 percent of them for a range of operations and programs. But we weren’t awarded a single grant for marketing and communications.
This makes little sense. Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, without communications and outreach to communities, no one — especially those who stand to benefit most — will hear about a nonprofit’s work and services.
The impact of marketing is easy to understand: People see a Facebook ad on their phone or a subway banner on their way to work and learn about services that can help them and their family. After all, isn’t that how we often hear about consumer products and paid services?
It’s time to correct this double standard when it comes to funding nonprofit marketing. Foundations should invest in direct services advertising, and nonprofits should prioritize those dollars to help reach communities in need. This is especially important during an economic recovery that has left millions behind and has increased demand for services such as health care, affordable housing, and job training.
Lack of Understanding
Securing funds for community outreach and marketing remains a tough sell, largely because of a misperception that nonprofit marketing consists only of printing mailers and soliciting donations. But marketing has changed tremendously over the past decade. Direct mail and other traditional methods of reaching people have been replaced by social-media campaigns and digital ads. Unfortunately, many grant makers have a limited understanding of how these newer tools work and how effective they are at helping nonprofits connect with those they serve.
A marketing campaign may appear to provide less direct help than donors like to see, but the impact can be enormous. We saw this up close during the pandemic when millions of people lost their jobs and struggled to put enough food on the table and pay their rent. For many, losing employment also meant losing their health insurance — in the middle of the greatest public health crisis in a century. Without effective communications and marketing, how would people know whom to call to sign up for health insurance? How would they find out if they were eligible for programs that provided food and rental assistance?
Our experience shows why marketing is especially critical during a crisis. At the height of the pandemic, and despite receiving no funding for our communications work, Public Health Solutions decided to spend $15,000 on digital advertising to reach the low-income families we serve. The ads included headings such as “Have you recently lost your job and health insurance benefits?” and “Is Cobra coverage too expensive?” Almost immediately after the social-media campaign and digital ads were launched, our Google Analytics data confirmed a nearly 500 percent increase in visits to our website’s “Find Services” page. Hundreds of people who needed health services at the height of the pandemic found them because of our digital marketing and outreach.
This summer we ran another digital campaign focused on reaching New Yorkers who needed sexual and reproductive health services at a time when such services were under attack by state policymakers across the country. We launched a social-media and Google ad campaign with a budget of $14,000 aimed at people looking for free, safe, and confidential testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, birth-control options, and prenatal care.
This was the first time our sexual and reproductive health centers used digital advertising rather than printed flyers and word-of-mouth marketing, and the results were promising. During the month the campaign ran, we saw a 46 percent increase in sign-ups on our patient portal app — the most ever in a single month.
Strong Returns on Investments
For foundations looking for a high return on investment, supporting marketing of this kind should be a no-brainer. Targeted ads help eliminate extensive internet searches that can lead people down the wrong path. They direct families to services that will actually help them and save people time during periods of extreme stress. And they are highly cost-effective: Our sexual and reproductive health campaign cost less than 1 percent of our program budget.
But such advertising efforts will remain in short supply if grant makers aren’t willing to commit significant dollars to effective marketing of the programs and services they already support. That should include more unrestricted giving so nonprofits can direct funds where they’re needed most, as well as specific grants for marketing and communications.
The pandemic certainly isn’t over, but donors feel less urgency now to support critical services than at the height of the health crisis. Without effective outreach, many people may assume that emergency programs have expired and help is no longer available. In this environment, nonprofits need to step up efforts to get the word out about their essential services. And grant makers need to stop considering advertising and marketing dirty words to avoid at all costs.
