About a month or so ago, I arrived at my first PR job. I came here starry-eyed and excited to start My Real Career. I came here to a gray desk nestled in a corner, beside a coatrack. I came here, and I found no direction.
To be fair, I knew what I was getting myself into. Right from the interview my employers were clear that I had a desk, but the rest was up to me. And I thought what a great opportunity to explore PR and get work experience! And then I thought oh shit what do I do?
Enter this book. Nonprofit Marketing – Best Practices by John J. Burnett. Burnett is a marketing professor and director at the University 
of Denver. He has worked with a ton of nonprofit organizations much higher profile than mine, and supposedly respects a zero budget.
Reading this book, I wished Burnett were not a marketing professor. He writes like a textbook. In fact, Nonprofit Marketing is in many ways just a basic marketing textbook. He goes on at some length about IMC, pricing products, distribution channels and market research, none of which are helpful to anyone with a marketing background. I appreciate where he’s coming from because most nonprofits don’t have a marketing professional, which is why they need this book. Still, for my purposes, no help.
There are two chapters in the book that, while not wholly justifying the $27 price tag, do make for interesting reading. By the way, I just checked and the suggested Canadian retail is $47.99. Please, if you need this book (and didn’t I just prove that you don’t?) get it from Amazon like I did. That’s obscene.
The first of two actually valuable chapters is: Transitioning to Services Marketing.
Most nonprofits market a service. Take the Canadian Public Relations Society for example – they market a membership that provides access to the good stuff they hide in the membership only section. Also included are discounts on professional development sessions and conference fees. This is not the same as, say, selling a flashlight. There’s nothing tangible here.
Here’s the Cole’s Notes version of Burnett’s key strategies for service marketing in this chapter:
Create Awareness – He suggests cost effective tools like direct mail (actually pretty costly, but whatever), email and targeted advertising (also potentially costly). Burnett has worked for such nonprofit juggernauts as the Red Cross and Easter Seals, so I guess we have to cut him a little slack on his idea of affordability.
Make Promises – Establish the benefits that you share with your customers or subscribers. Take a hard look into your soul and decide whether you can deliver on what they expect.
Maintenance – Burnett lists money-off vouchers, continuity programs, and the mysterious “other credits” as maintenance tools.
Dissolution – All relationships end. Even yours. Don’t piss your customer off or there’s no chance that it could be rekindled.
The above is a pretty good example of how specific Burnett is willing to get in the book, which is to say: not very. The second and best useful chapter of the book is called Raising Funds and Acquiring Volunteers. I’ll let you check that one out yourself at the library. It has some decent tactical considerations that were new information to me.
However, I could fit all that new info on one sheet of notebook paper, double-spaced. Even if you don’t have a library card, if you have a notebook, a pen and ten minutes, you can own this book too! At least the good parts.
Two out of five.
Do you use anything aside from your own awesomeness to help you out at work?
