| by Katya Andresen, Vice President of
Marketing, Network
for Good
Putting the Case First and the Cause Second
Part Three
The following tips are based on my book, Robin
Hood Marketing. I am pleased to be sharing them
with you, along with some new content specific to the
interests of GrantStation readers, in this third installment
of a five-part Tracks to Success series. You can also
sign up for regular marketing tips by subscribing to
Network for Good's Nonprofit Marketing Newsletter. Click
here for more information.
Robin Hood Rule 5
Build partnerships around mutual benefits or you won't
be partnering at all. Partnerships should yield clear
wins for each partner and, most importantly, the partners
should share a customer base or have complementary bases.
As nonprofit professionals, you are working at a time when
collaboration is an increasing necessity for good causes.
In the U.S. alone, there are roughly 25 nonprofit organizations
for every one grantmaking foundation. According to recent
research, many of these same foundations believe that partnerships
can achieve more sustainable results than other types of
initiatives.
Successful partnerships require effort, and for this reason
you should be careful, creative, and highly selective in
forming them. You don't want partnerships simply to please
funders - the equivalent of getting married for the wedding
presents! You need to answer five strategic questions when
identifying, assessing, and creating partnerships to ensure
that you form relationships that effectively advance your
cause:
- Who else is also trying to reach your audience? At
the start, you want to think as expansively as possible
about the organizations, both nonprofit and private, that
are reaching your funding audiences or that want to reach
your audiences. All of them could be potential partners.
Make a list of these organizations. Include those organizations
that seem to be competitors at first glance, as well as
groups working on different issues with the same audience.
- Who wins when you win? Now you want
to ask, if you succeeded in motivating your audiences to
take action, who on this list would benefit? Would organizations
you haven't thought of benefit? The list you develop is
your hit list of potential partners.
- What are the pros and cons? Now you
need to weigh the relative assets and liabilities of working
with another group. You should honestly assess the possibility
for exploitation, dependence, and blurring of mission,
as well as cultural differences, level of commitment, and
capacity limitations on each side.
- How do you form the partnership? Start
the partnership at the top of the organizational chart.
The higher the level of the person involved in each organization,
the better the chances of strong results. It's best to
have someone who has executive backing, commitment to the
cause, and significant power within his or her respective
organization in charge on each side.
- How do you stay on track? Over time,
the stronger the relationships between partners at all
staff levels and the deeper their degree of commitment,
the better. Then, staff turnover, shifting individual roles/priorities,
or isolated personality clashes will not undermine the
partnership. You want to form numerous personal connections
and be flexible with regard to the changing dynamics of
relationships and organizational politics. You don't want
to take your champions for granted, and you have to be
willing to patiently cultivate new people internally when
there is turnover.
Robin Hood Rule 6
Case first, cause second. The strategy and outcome,
and not your own mission, most effectively make the case
to funding audiences.
Receiving funding is an endorsement of your ability to deliver
a specific outcome. As such, today's funders - and potential
partners - are focused heavily on understanding your strategy
first, and your mission second.
Let's go through some steps for putting the case first in
your funding requests:
- Emphasize your goals and strategy: Funding
audiences are focused on programs that will produce a specific
outcome. To that end, prospective grantees must be fluent
in discussing their goals and strategies. By communicating
to your prospective funding audiences a well-defined set
of strategies and outcomes, you can seize their attention
in a crowded marketplace and stimulate them to take action
in your favor.
- Evaluation is key: Stating the intended
outcome and the plan to achieve those outcomes is no longer
enough. Funders require nonprofits to demonstrate how they
plan to measure progress toward their intended outcomes,
using qualitative and quantitative indicators.
- Establish a tangible and realistic timeframe:
The benefits of funding your project should be available
to your audience both in the short-term and the long-term.
- Know thy grantmaker: Too often, grant
applicants focus on their own organization's mission, and
ignore the funder's mission and priorities. It's important
to remember that funders award grants to those organizations
presenting a convincing case that they will help the funding
organization reach its long-term goals.
In the next article of this series, we will cover Robin
Hood Rule 7, The Four Things Your Message Must Do, and Robin
Hood Rule 8, Taking Your Message to Where Your Audiences
Are. |
