Awareness campaigns are an intrinsic part of running an effective nonprofit organization. Whether for a specific fundraising event or for building general awareness around your cause, nonprofit awareness campaigns must be a part of your toolkit and skillset.
That being said, awareness campaigns require time, effort, and a clear vision. This guide will outline the basics of nonprofit awareness campaigns- what they are and how to manage them efficiently.
There are several occasions or situations that may call for nonprofits to run an awareness campaign. You may want to draw attention to a specific month or day on your calendar. For example, many gender and sexuality organizations do this for Pride Month or Pride walks.
Your campaign may also focus on bringing visibility to your organization’s primary cause or the work your nonprofit does. Fundraising and other organizational events can also have dedicated campaigns to get people involved and boost attendance.
No matter the reason, the primary aim of a nonprofit awareness campaign is to increase visibility and attention to an aspect of your NPO.
To help you build a vision for your campaign and stay organized, follow these tips:
You need to establish a strong foundation for your campaign decisions by defining its purpose. What is its aim and why should people care?
Awareness is not just about getting people to see your campaign. It’s also about showing them why they should care. To do this, you need to understand it first.
Once you understand the fundamental purpose, you can expand your goals further by setting other practical goals like fundraising goals, reach, etc.
You can accompany these with corresponding key performance indicators that will help you keep track of your campaign progress.
You need to create a timeline that your team and other actors can refer to for your campaign rollout. The dates you choose should give donors, supporters, and audiences enough time to engage with the campaign before it ends.
If you are working towards an event or awareness day, week, or month, then you should plan your time backward from that day. Decide how long before the date you will begin rolling out content to the public. You’ll want to do this well in advance so your audience has the opportunity to engage.
Using the rollout date, plan important milestones for your team. What tasks do they have to complete before and during the rollout? This will give them a good idea of the time frame of the campaign.
Another time factor is campaign length. The motivation for your campaign often determines how long it will run.
For example, a general awareness campaign for your organization or cause can be long-standing - a constant reminder to keep your work at the forefront of people’s minds. On the other hand, a campaign effort for an upcoming event may start a few months before the event and gather momentum closer to the event date.
Knowing your campaign’s target audience is a necessary part of creating a strategy that will achieve awareness. It will help you hone in on the kind of language, messaging, and branding to utilize, the communication channels to focus on, and more.
Identify who your current audience is by evaluating the people that support your cause and have responded well to past campaigns.
Create a profile using their age, geography, gender, and other demographics. Use this information to ensure that your campaign resonates with this profile.
With your purpose and audience in hand, you can begin crafting the nuances of your campaign. Consider language, tone, imagery, and other aspects of your message. What should be the loudest in your messaging and branding?
Make it clear to your audience why they should care, and what your vision and cause are.
Another aspect of campaign communication that will determine success is your chosen marketing channels. Opt for a variety of channels where your target audience is most active and adapt the messaging suitably including:
Establishing a campaign webpage will also help you direct traffic within your marketing plan. It will give your audience a central place to go for information on the campaign and should be a separate page from other NPO information where they won’t get lost or confused.
A web page also provides an easy-to-share URL, making it easy for people to pass on the information and expand potential reach.
Partnerships will increase the reach of your campaign by making it more visible to your collaborators’ audiences. Try to get ambassadors and volunteers to speak publicly on the campaign and share about it in their circles and on public platforms.
You can also partner with other NPOs working toward the same cause to create a mass campaign or movement. This will also draw more awareness to the campaign.
Get donors and members involved too as they can also offer valuable contributions of resources, funds, networks, etc.
Having your nonprofit marketing plan in place already makes it easier to approach potential partners with concrete requests that they can respond to.
Finally, you can use events to spotlight your efforts, especially if your campaign isn’t aimed at bringing awareness to an upcoming event.
Digital events are easy to organize and manage and have grown very popular with NPOs as they enable organizations to reach audiences across the web.
Host a webinar with experts or interesting speakers around the campaign issue. You can also leverage recent social media audio features like Twitter Spaces, podcasts, and more to host episodes or events to share information.
Keeping supporters and audiences engaged and informed is key to running a nonprofit awareness campaign. Use these eight tips to connect with people in a meaningful way and shine a light on your organization’s work.