Goals are what you want to achieve. Complete the sentence: "We want to . . ."

And goals are where you need to start your marketing planning, as each step of the planning process is shaped to take you there - where you want to go.

  1. Here's How to Start:
    Begin by articulating your main organizational goal or how you'll actualize your mission. List no more than two organizational goals.

    Next, identify the ways you can put marketing to work to help achieve those goals. List one to three marketing goals that will help you achieve your nonprofit's organizational goals.

    Everything else in your plan flows from these goals, so think carefully about them.

  2. Questions to Ask as You Consider Your Goals 
    1. How can marketing be put to work to achieve your organization's goal(s)?
    2. What are your big-picture goals for the long-term? Shorter-term "goals" are more likely to be benchmarks that indicate you're on the right path, rather than defining that path as a goal should.
    3. What will you achieve through your marketing work-"sell" a  program to prospective participants, increase the qualified prospects on your donor email list, or build your supporters into a corps of effective messengers who serve as advocates for the value of your organization's work and impact?
  3. Model - Organizational and Marketing Goals
    Here is an example from a sample marketing plan for a charity, BikeWalk America:

    Organizational Goal: To improve the safety of bicyclists and walkers in local communities. 
    Note: Five test communities have been identified.

    Marketing Goals:

  • To build awareness of this new organization and its key issues
  • To improve understanding of how safer biking and walking can improve community health and the environment
  • To motivate community activism in support of safer biking and walking
  • To seed partnerships with other organizations working on community safety at the local level.

    Note how these goals start to focus in on areas where marketing can make significant headway in achieving the organizational goal.

Now It's Your Turn!

  • What are your one to two organizational goals?
  • What are your two to three top marketing goals?

 

About the Author

Nancy E. Schwartz helps nonprofits succeed through effective marketing.  Nancy and her team provide marketing planning and implementation services to nonprofit organizations and foundations nationwide.

She is the publisher of the Getting Attention e-update and blog. For more nonprofit marketing guidance like this, subscribe to her e-update at http://gettingattention.org/nonprofit-marketing/subscribe-enewsletter.html