Marketing effectiveness -
External communication

Introduction

Communication is the process of establishing a commonness of thought between you, the fundraiser, and the receiver and vice versa. It implies a listening relationship must exist.

Charities have to be very good communicators if they wish to succeed because they are totally relying on people understanding the communities/individuals/projects they represent and what they are trying to do.

There are over 170,000 charities and over 300,000 people working in the third sector.

Communication and the fundraiser

Communication from a fundraising viewpoint needs to be co-ordinated - the more people that hear about you, the more chance you have of actually making a difference both to your income and to your cause. This is not talking about PR but the need to look at your potential and current donors.

Examples of areas of communication.

Companies that have taken us on board need to be communicated with even when they are not giving.
Whilst the company is giving, there is an opening you need to tap into their workforce to see if you can get long term supporters on board. Invite them to your other events, talk about GAYE (Give As You Earn).
Let donors know what has happened in the last year. Tell them about the office staff as well as the people who benefit. Make them feel part of the extended team.
Try and get the idea communicated that you are all working for the same aims. This is especially true of gaining long-term support, which will be a very solid foundation.

Main areas available for communicating

Charity newsletters
Company internal newsletters
websites of the charity
website of the company
using the telephone
e-mail
national newspapers
local newspapers

How else do we communicate?

A. Advertising

Advertising is a difficult issue and needs to be placed within the context of what the advert is trying to make people do and whether it will be effective. There are often opportunties to run 'advertorials' which may be an interview with someone within your organisation or a celebrity who will talk about the event etc. Always negotiate advertising/advertorial rates and begin with trying to find a reason why the magazine/paper etc will benefit from helping

PR for charities without thinking about fundraising can lead down the wrong path and waste a lot of time. PR needs to be associated with fundraising activities. Unless the Charity itself has reason to have an area for public relations or for passing on information.

The main point is integration of what is going on within the charity to make sure that maximum benefits are used efficiently and effectively.

B. Personal selling

This is basically the presentation in conversations with prospective clients for getting donations. There is also the commercial area of sales promotion, which can be applied to fundraising, which is the idea of having a short term gain (e.g. incentive) for getting people to donate NOW. That could be a special product (e.g. signed print from a celebrity or to become a VIP member of the charity.

C. Publicity

Which is considered to be non-personal stimulation brought about by news or editorial and not paid for by a sponsor.

It is important to note that publicity with fundraising is the idea that you want to get hold of the same target of individuals from as many different channels as possible. The more times you can 'hit' them from different angles the better off you will probably be. Webster (1980) shows information sources a company may select. He says that companies will have to make four main decisions, choosing the target audience, what to actually tell them, what communication channels to use and the timing of the message. These are all incredibly important when you want to try and get hold of your target audience.

Cost effective communication tool:

Communication Tools: Advertising, Sales Promotion and Publicity are the most cost effective at the buyer/wearer stage i.e. no point in cold calls from sales representatives. Advertising is highly cost effective producing comprehension with personal selling coming second. Personal selling followed by advertising influences buyer conviction most.

When choosing your type of communication channels, you must choose the channel, which is most effective in getting the message to the people who can then act upon it. This is very important.

When we are looking at the frequency and timing of the message, the more one communicates the more people know about you. That hopefully means that more will be "sold". However, there is a point at which costs incurred in communications are wasted. The problem for you is to decide when this point has been reached.

When launching a new project/campaign, timing is extremely important, with more communications being used leading up to and during the launch to let the target audience know about your project. This obviously means that setting targets for communication objectives is quite hard. However, it is an integral part of a marketing strategy and does need to be constantly reviewed.

Summary

External communication needs to be co-ordinated to ensure that it supports the fundraising activities.

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Marketing effectiveness - External communication