Marketing Your Nonprofit

Discover how to increase membership, expand program value, attract media, entice donors, and develop volunteers. If your organization relies on a diverse mix of fees, events, and /or contributions for support, you're sure to find this information-packed course indispensable.

6 Weeks / 24 Course Hrs

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Learning method

Self-Guided

$190

No instructor. Study on your own schedule

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Instructor-Moderated

$175

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Starting March 12 | April 16

Details + Objectives

Course code: myn

Under pressure to increase membership, expand program value, attract media, entice donors, and develop volunteers, all while keeping an eye on the bottom line? In the face of stiff competition, more worthwhile causes, more regulations, more watchdog agencies, and fewer funding opportunities, you need to work smarter—not longer.

This course will show you how to use powerful marketing techniques to compete more effectively for customers, donors, members, and volunteers. You'll also learn how to persuade the media to communicate your organization's message and further its ideals and goals. Before you know it, you'll be ready to improve your market share by learning to evaluate and implement effective promotions, advertising campaigns, and communication techniques. If your organization relies on a diverse mix of fees, events, and/or contributions for support, you're sure to find this information-packed course indispensable.

What you will learn

Learn powerful marketing techniques to compete more effectively for customers, donors, members, and volunteers
Learn how to persuade the media to communicate your organization's message
Evaluate and implement effective promotions, advertising campaigns, and communication techniques

How you will benefit

24 course hours Learn to compete more effectively for customers, donors, members, and volunteers
Add more value to your organization with effective marketing skills
Open the door to additional opportunities to help your nonprofit

How the course is taught

Instructor-Moderated or Self-Guided online course
6 Weeks or 3 Months access
24 course hours

Outline

In the first lesson, you'll learn the basics of marketing and the common terminology used in the marketing field. This will all be important to you because it will help you understand the role that marketing plays in your nonprofit organization and the benefits it can bring to those you serve.

In this lesson, you'll explore how and why nonprofit marketing succeeds. You'll learn to tie benefits to features to create a winning marketing program for your organization. The lesson will show you how to set marketing goals and objectives—no more guessing for you! You'll also learn how to think big, imagine great things, and understand how to measure your success. By the end of this lesson, you'll think like a professional marketer, ready to take on any challenge.

Four marketing techniques work great in helping nonprofits find their niche, and they're all virtually free! You'll go over all four of them in this lesson. You'll also learn how to differentiate your nonprofit from others and you'll come to understand what targeting clients, positioning, and branding can do for your organization. You'll see how to apply these marketing tools to help your organization stand out, creating a platform where your organization can proudly show its stuff!

In this lesson, you'll learn how to conduct a marketing audit using the six P's: Product, Publics, Price, Place, Production, and Promotion. A marketing audit is a reality test. You'll assess in detail what it will take to achieve your agency's marketing goals, and how your existing programs are serving your organization. You'll see why it's best to see that what you thought was pure genius, really is pure genius—or not. Armed with this information, you'll be ready to begin developing your actual marketing plan.

Successful nonprofits either intuitively or implicitly have a strategy, and they'll use it for one purpose only: To help the nonprofit do a better job of getting to where it wants to go. In this lesson, you'll look at different types of strategies that help nonprofits focus their resources and energy to meet their goals and objectives. This is a powerful lesson that creates another practical and informative management tool for your marketing efforts.

Once the word is out that your agency has money to advertise, you become fair game for every ad salesperson out there. Considering the money you invest in advertising isn't your own and you have to justify your expenses, it's prudent to know something about what works best and why. This lesson provides timely information that will empower you to make wise advertising choices on behalf of your nonprofit.

There's so much to learn about marketing and advertising on the Internet that you could take a whole class on it. This lesson will provide you with an introduction to this fascinating subject, and you'll add three specific tools to your advertising toolbox: website design, website ads, and event support. With just these three tools, you can build an Internet strategy that is second to none.

In this lesson, you'll take a close look at who your volunteers are, what those volunteers bring to the workplace, and how to maximize their contributions to your marketing efforts.

In this lesson, you'll look at three different ways to get your message across to the public: PR, media outreach, and publicity. Each is unique in its own way, but they all blend harmoniously in the end to bring forth a brilliant program that will get your nonprofit noticed!

Marketing professionals understand the importance of marketing plans. But not everyone in your nonprofit is a marketing professional, nor does everyone always think like a marketing professional. To some, writing a marketing plan is a waste of time. In this lesson, you'll understand not only why your nonprofit needs a marketing plan, but also how to put a small and a large one together on your own.

In this lesson, you'll follow a series of steps that will lead you through the promotion planning process. You'll look at image, message, promotion, and implementation. This lesson is where you'll put everything together and learn to promote the most important thing on your mind—your nonprofit.

Your board and membership have expectations for what your marketing program should be doing and what constitutes success. But these don't always coincide with how marketing really works and what role it actually plays in promoting your agency. These disconnects can spell trouble, often raising doubts about how well either side is tuned in to the realities of how an effective marketing program actually works. In the final lesson, you'll look at the last piece of the marketing puzzle: How to evaluate your marketing program. You'll look at why you need to evaluate your program and how to do it.

Instructors & Support

Janet Levine

Janet Levine has been involved with grant writing and fund raising since 1988. Prior to starting her consulting company in 2007, she was the Vice President for University Advancement at a public, urban university. Levine has been a fundraiser and administrator at a number of colleges, universities and other non-profit organizations. She holds a Master of Business Administration from Pepperdine University and a B.A. from Hofstra University.

Instructor Interaction: The instructor looks forward to interacting with learners in the online moderated discussion area to share their expertise and answer any questions you may have on the course content.

Requirements

Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites to take this course.

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

This course can be taken on either a PC, Mac, or Chromebook.

Software Requirements:

PC: Windows 8 or later.
Mac: macOS 10.6 or later.
Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

Other:

Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.

FAQ

Instructor-Moderated: A new session of each course begins each month. Please refer to the session start dates for scheduling.

Self-Guided: Your course begins immediately after you enroll.

Instructor-Moderated: Once a course session starts, two lessons will be released each week for the 6 week duration of your course. You will have access to all previously released lessons until the course ends. You will interact with the instructor through the online discussion area. There are no live sessions or online meetings with the instructor.

Self-Guided: You have 3 months of access to the course. After enrolling, you can learn and complete the course at your own pace, within the allotted access period. You will have the opportunity to interact with other students in the online discussion area.

Instructor-Moderated: The interactive discussion area for each lesson automatically closes two weeks after each lesson is released, so you're encouraged to complete each lesson within two weeks of its release. However, you will have access to all lessons from the time they are released until the course ends.

Self-Guided: There is no time limit to complete each lesson, other than completing all lessons within the allotted access period. Discussion areas for each lesson are open for the entire duration of the course.

Instructor-Moderated: Students enrolled in a six-week online class benefit from a one-time, 10-day extension for each course. No further extensions can be provided beyond these 10 days.

Self-Guided: Because this course is self-guided, no extensions will be granted after the start of your enrollment.

Reviews

Thanks for the great class. You will be happy to know that I have already started applying information from this class to our organization. The information about putting together a brochure was very timely for me. We also are setting goals and reviewing our positioning. I learned a lot and printed the material for future use.

If anyone says that the learning experience can't be "fun", I strongly recommend that they take a course with Linda Kissam. Material coverage was excellent, presentation was in an easily understood language and just all around fantastic.

I have learned so much from your lessons. I think the most important thing I learned was I cannot and should not create the marketing plan alone. So my first step will be to organize a Marketing Committee to create the marketing plan we need to move our organization forward. Your step by step lessons will be so helpful in making this Committee successful. I can't wait to get started. Thank you!

I really enjoyed the class. One thing I'm taking with me is the different advertising techniques. There were many listed that I hadn't thought of and even some that were free. They will become very useful. Thank again.

I feel so much more centered on what needs to be done and how to start from square one. I really appreciated the examples of the two makrketing plans. I can copy them today and get started.

This course is very helpful to beginning nonprofit businesess, such as the one I am working on. I hope this course continues to be available. I plan to direct and highly encourage any present and future volunteers, employees, members, etc. to take this course as it can be beneficial for them as well as for my organization.

I have enjoyed this class and learned a great deal. I feel I am now able to sit down with my board and develop a very thorough marketing plan as well as setting reachable goals for our Chamber of Commerce. Thanks to my instructor, Linda Kissam, for a fantastic class.

This was my first online course and I thought it was excellent!

This was a good class. I gained information that will assist me in promoting the nonprofit in my community.