Nonprofits are everywhere, and they all have a mission to help the world somehow. However, the pandemic has had a lot of impact on their operations. According to a report by The Voice of Charities Facing Covid -19 Worldwide, over 96% of respondents have reported a negative impact on their donations and operations.
Let’s take a look at how nonprofits can still make effective use of their digital presence even on limited budgets:
Increase Your Online Donations
You’ll need to show donors that you’re open for business to increase your online donations. The best way to do this is by setting up your website. Don’t worry if you don’t have the funds or know-how to build one yourself—plenty of free online resources will help you set up a primary site and run it smoothly.
Once your site is up, make it easy for donors to donate. They want as little friction as possible between their intent and action. If possible, let them choose how much they want to give, make sure there are no steps between completing their donation, and provide an easy way for them to share their good deed with friends on social media or by email to inspire others who may not be able to give at all!
Focus on Your Branding
A successful nonprofit organization has a strong brand. A strong brand will help you stand out from the crowd, attract new supporters and donations, and solidify your place in the community.
To achieve these goals, you need to understand your brand, how it differs from other nonprofits, and how it can best communicate your organization’s mission.
A good start is by thinking about your current logo or tagline: what do they communicate? What emotions do they evoke? Is there room for improvement? And if so, how can we improve them while still retaining their core values?
Build a Digital Marketing Strategy
Once you are done setting up a website that accepts different payment methods, it is vital to define a digital marketing strategy to promote your nonprofit organization and its website. While internet usage was already accelerating, the pandemic has boosted it. Statista shows that the average in-home data usage in the USA increased by 18% in March 2020 due to the pandemic compared to the same period in 2019.
Here’s how you can make the most of these internet users by leveraging digital marketing strategy to promote your nonprofit organization.
Step 1: Define Your Target Audience
Who are you trying to reach? Is it a specific group or all people affected by the problem? How many will there be? Which age ranges, genders, and ethnicities fall into this group? By defining your target audience, you can better hone in on what is essential for them.
Step 2: Define Your Goals
What do you hope to accomplish with your digital marketing strategy? Are you hoping for donations, volunteers, or more awareness about any particular issue? Make sure that any goals are measurable so that you can track their success over time!
Step 3: Determine Your Budget
How much money do you have to spend on your digital marketing strategy? Are there any particular areas where you can cut costs without affecting the quality of your campaign? If so, this is an area where you may want to do so.
Step 4: Create a Marketing Strategy
Once the goals and budget are ready, it’s time to create a marketing strategy. The marketing strategy should combine best practices, such as traditional and digital marketing. However, the weightage on digital marketing should be more as people are less likely to interact with conventional marketing due to the pandemic.
One of the best ways to market your brand is through social media. Social media has an already existing colossal audience base that you can use. However, you need the right expertise and guidance to make the most out of it, and the right social media marketing agency can help you with that.
These agencies have years of experience in the field and are well aware of the social media marketing best practices for nonprofits. They can also help you create compelling content to reach and engage with a broader audience through text, video, audio, or infographics.
Host Virtual Events
Hosting virtual events is a great way to connect with supporters. Not only are they cost-effective, accessible, and efficient, but they also provide an opportunity for more engagement and measurable results. As you plan your next event, consider the following benefits:
- Virtual events are cost-effective because you don’t incur travel costs. Instead of flying people in from around the world, you can use technology like FaceTime or Skype to connect with them virtually.
- Virtual events are more accessible because they’re not limited by location or time constraints—anyone can join your event from anywhere at any time! You might even be able to attract younger audiences—a demographic that may not attend in-person gatherings as often as their elders due to scheduling conflicts or other factors (e.g., childcare) that make it difficult for them to attend physical gatherings.
- Virtual events are efficient since there aren’t many logistical considerations involved (e.g., transportation) outside of setting up the technology needed for people participating remotely via video conferencing services such as ZoomConference, where all participants need to access only one app called Zoom, which runs on both desktop computers as well mobile devices so everyone can participate equally regardless their location–even if someone doesn’t have access internet access needs no bandwidth limitations to existing.
Measure Your Success and Keep Improving
Once you’ve established how much of an impact you want your campaign or organization to make on its community, it’s time for the second step: measuring progress toward achieving those goals.
Use Google Analytics as a way of measuring how much traffic is coming in from various platforms (including social media), then look at which sources are sending you the most traffic—and make sure that these sources are consistent with what kind of people would be interested in visiting your site or contributing money toward your cause.
Conclusion
The importance of digital to nonprofits was made very clear in the wake of Covid -19. In the immediate aftermath of the outage, many nonprofits were forced to scale back operations and cease services while they waited for their power grids to be restored. The world is changing, and nonprofits must be ready to embrace these changes. Technology enables them to reach more people faster than ever before.
