Industry Insights: Marketing in the non-profit world
Learn more about GBA and our video production prowess!
Green Buzz Agency interviewed Dana Hagenbuch of Commongood Careers, an innovative organization that helps non-profits find the talent they need.
Dana is the Director of Marketing and Communications
What is marketing like not just in the careers field, but in the non-profit careers field?
I’ve always equated the nonprofit market with start-up or entrepreneurial marketing. You don’t have a lot of resources and the size of the market is hard to gauge. For example, if you’re selling cell phones, you’ve got the cell phone market which is very easy to target. But, we’ve got so much diversity in the non-profit sector—1.4 million organizations. Honing your message takes a lot of creative finesse.
How do you strategically market your company? What’s been the most effective?
Leveraging social media. We use Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter quite a bit. They’ve helped us develop a network of nonprofit job seekers. Our fan page on Facebook, Will Work for Social Change, has 1000 members who signed up on their own. The membership gets updates from our website through our RSS. Social media lets us attract new people and keep in touch with them in an easy low-cost way.
If someone was starting out as a marketing professional in the non-profit field, what kind of advice would you give them?
The most important thing: be a real generalist. In the corporate marketing world you might have one focus like direct advertising. In a non-profit, you need to be a jack-of-all-trades and understand a little bit of all marketing. Internships which expose how it actually works in the nonprofit world are great. They can teach how different non-profit marketing is from the corporate or government world with their structured roles.
Lots of nonprofits might not have a marketing department or even a marketing career path. Nonetheless, you might be working as part of a development team, corporate communications, or program management. Whether people know it or not, they are doing marketing in their jobs and this really speaks to the need to be a generalist.
Clients include some young, up-and-coming names like Teach for America, Kiva, and City Year. What has it been like working with these companies?
Truly amazing. The main reason we exist is to support the hiring efforts of entrepreneurial non profits. Commongood Careers believes these organizations have the ability to make huge strides in social change. We want to be part of that story, so we get the people they need to make that change.
Green Buzz Agency wants to thank Dana for her great insights and for taking the time to talk to us today!
Learn more about GBA and our video production prowess!
Related posts you might also like:
What I most appreciated about the advice given by Dana H. during her interview with Green Buzz Agency were her thoughts for NPO staff on being “the generalist.” This is still something I’m working on as director of student services at Keshet (I have more of a PR background that a marketing background, but I’m branching into new ventures this year!) and yet it feels good to know that I’m on the right track, especially when I’m winging it!
Thanks for the link Tod P!
Sharon S.
(720) 941-7288