Rather than thinking of marketing as a task to be done inside your nonprofit organization, it’s time that we start thinking about marketing as a proactive, strategic ambassador for the market internally. A function that connects your organization, your cause, and your community.
That’s my friend Noah Barnett’s perspective on how organizations need to rethink the role of marketing in the nonprofit sector. It’s a bold and challenging perspective that I think has a lot of value.
Noah is VP of Marketing at Feathr, an organization that is redefining what it means to create effective marketing for nonprofits. In fact, they’ve created what Noah refers to as the Good Marketing Framework. What I love about this Good Marketing Framework is the continuous learning model that’s built into the way they approach the work. This is the kind of curiosity that organizations need to embrace if they want to continue to build and grow their capacity to deliver mission impact in the world.
In our conversation, Noah and I talked a lot about the challenges to the nonprofit sector around rethinking marketing, how to do it well, and what might be holding back orgs from embracing new ways of thinking and acting when it comes to marketing.
One of the most insightful things Noah shared is that all too often, we relegate change to a conversation on strategy. But we never move beyond a new strategy to think about what the organizational implications are for our operating systems, our workflows, our people, job descriptions, roles and responsibilities, and even to how our incentive structures might play a role in keeping us from successfully implementing change.
Noah also challenges our sector to embrace bold leadership when it comes to systems change, particularly around marketing and the role it plays in organizations. We can’t adopt large scale change without a willingness to boldly and smartly embrace risk.
If you want to move beyond siloed, channel-based marketing tactics and move into an audience-first strategic marketing framework in your organization, check out this chat with Noah today.
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