How to Market Your Nonprofit

Last episode, we made the case that most nonprofit organizations could get better marketing results by subtracting and focusing: fewer channels, fewer tools, fewer asks.

But what about you personally? How could you get more done by doing less? What we find over and over is this: Most nonprofit leaders don't need to work harder, but they do need to stop spending their best hours on the wrong things.

Recently, two different executive directors confided in Lee that they're stuck. Both run organizations that do life-changing work, and they do it well. But both leaders have spent more than 10 years caught up in tasks instead of goals, and both said the same thing, unprompted: We could be doing so much more if we could get out of this rut.

Lee knows the pattern because he's lived it. Twenty-five years ago he sat on 13 boards, panels, committees, and commissions at the same time. Thirteen. He now caps it at three organizations, and says he makes a bigger difference on all three.

In this episode, Lee shares five signs you're doing too much, and what to do instead.

Doing less isn't doing nothing. It's refusing to spend your best hours on work that doesn't require you.

Most nonprofit marketing advice adds to your list. More social posts, more email, more video, more tools, more data. In this episode of How to Market Your Nonprofit, Counterintuity's Lee Wochner argues the opposite: If your marketing results aren't adding up, the fix may be subtraction. 

Drawing on decades of running nonprofits, serving on boards, and working with hundreds of organizations, Lee walks through eight signs your team is doing too much, and what to do instead. Fewer tools. Fewer metrics. Fewer choices on your website. Fewer asks, made better. Deeper relationships with the donors you already have, instead of an endless chase for new ones. 

Doing less is not doing nothing. It’s focusing on what your team and your budget can deliver successfully. 

Picture a small arts nonprofit. Somebody calls and wants to give $500 a month. A staffer writes down the card number, drops it into a spreadsheet, and next month a colleague pulls it up and runs the charge again. 

That's four things that would make Lauren Wu wince. 

Host Lee Wochner and privacy and compliance attorney Lauren Wu cover what to do instead: where donor data should live, what should never go into an AI chatbot, and the three things any nonprofit can do this week to protect the data it’s entrusted to hold. 

Lauren's advice is clear and doable, even for organizations that are already stretched thin. 

Most nonprofit leaders assume they know where their donors come from, which marketing channels are working, and what's standing in the way of growth. Some of these assumptions are right. But wrong assumptions can lead you down the wrong path, with your team optimizing the wrong things. 

This is part two of Lee Wochner's walkthrough of the discovery questionnaire that Counterintuity uses with nonprofit clients. This episode covers current challenges and friction points, marketing infrastructure and data, and how to define what winning actually looks like. 

One of the most useful questions Lee helps you answer is what single thing is preventing your organization from doubling its impact in the next 12 months? Not growing 10 percent. Doubling. Incremental targets produce incremental answers. Doubling forces you to name the real constraint. 

If you've ever relaunched a marketing tactic that didn't work the first time, aren't sure which of your channels is actually driving results, or think you might need to remap your donor journey from first contact to first gift, this episode is for you. 

Part 1: Who you are and who you're for 

If a stranger asked why your organization deserves to exist, could you answer in one sentence? No grant-speak. A real answer, one that stops them in their tracks and makes them want to help. 

Most nonprofit leaders can't effectively answer that question. Not because they don't know their organization, but because they’ve never sat down and put it into words, out loud, in plain language, with no jargon allowed. 

In this first episode of a two-part series, Lee Wochner walks you through a version of the discovery process that Counterintuity uses before a single word of copy gets written. Eight questions that focus on who your organization actually is and who you're trying to reach.  

Do this work first, and everything that follows, the website, the campaign, the fundraising appeal, is built on a solid foundation. Skip it, and you end up with marketing that's technically competent and strategically hollow. 

Grab a notebook. Let's get into it. 

How one nonprofit leader's absolute focus, discipline, and determination are winning the day despite enormous challenges.Nikki Beasley, executive director of Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services, has spent 10 years turning a dormant organization into a force for housing equity in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this episode, she walks through how RNHS helps first-time homebuyers bust the myths holding them back, why she launched the Emerging Developers Program to build a pipeline of community-based developers of color, and how the "Protect Your Legacy" initiative ensures generational wealth actually transfers to the next generation. 

Nikki also gets candid about the funding pressures shrinking the DEI and philanthropic landscape, how she models an intentional leadership transition, and what she means by "carrying something is not caring."  

Practical, honest, and full of lessons any nonprofit leader can use. 

If your nonprofit's funding isn't growing the way it should, the problem may not be what you think it is. 

In this episode of How to Market Your Nonprofit, host Lee Wochner makes the case that most fundraising challenges are really marketing challenges in disguise. The organizations that raise the most money have simply reached more of the right people: donors, funders, and advocates who heard about them long before any ask arrived. 

Lee breaks down why working the same donor list harder produces diminishing returns every year, what it actually takes to reach the right audience, and one question every nonprofit leader should be able to answer but often can't. 

If your mission is strong and your work is real but the funding isn't keeping up, this episode will show you where to look. 

If your website traffic has softened, your email open rates have slipped, or you're wondering whether your Google Ad Grant is still worth it, you're not imagining things. The marketing landscape has fundamentally shifted, and AI is driving most of it. 

Counterintuity CEO and Creative Strategist Lee Wochner cuts through the noise to explain what's actually happening and what nonprofit leaders can do about it right now. He covers the "zero-click universe" and what it means for search, the honest state of the Google Ad Grant, and five practical tactics you can act on today. 

Your mission, your community trust, and your real human stories can be competitive advantages in the AI era. Lee walks you through how to use them. 

From a $25,000 grant to a $50 million organization. 

Twenty years ago, the Coalition for Responsible Community Development started with a single city contract for graffiti removal in South LA. Today, it's one of the city’s most respected nonprofits, with workforce development, housing, social enterprise, and real estate development all operating under one roof.  

That kind of growth doesn't happen without smart, community-rooted marketing. 

In this episode, Lee speaks with CRCD's director of marketing and communications, Alex Medina, about the strategy behind it all: how to reach audiences that have little in common with each other, how to build the kind of institutional trust that unlocks major funding, and how to keep your messaging honest and bold when the world might be telling you to play it safe. 

If you're ready to think differently about how you connect with your community, your funders, and the people you serve, this is where you start. 

When the phone rings at 3 a.m., the story is out, and a narrative is forming. What you do in the next five minutes may be the most important thing you ever do for your organization. 

PR veteran Mike Swenson, who spent more than 30 years advising nonprofits and corporations through crises, says the organizations that come out stronger are almost always the ones that were ready before anything started. 

Most organizations make the same mistake: They react instead of responding. In the age of social media, the difference can be fatal to your reputation.  

Here's what prepared organizations do differently: Before any crisis arrives, they identify a crisis team drawn from across the organization, map every plausible risk, establish the first seven steps they'll take, build three to five key messages for each potential scenario, and designate a spokesperson. When the phone rings, there's no scrambling. The team is already assembling, the first message is already drafted, and the organization is on offense within minutes rather than hours. 

Nonprofits have a real advantage in a crisis that most executives underestimate: goodwill. 

 Years of community trust, a board of engaged civic leaders, corporate partners, and loyal volunteers are assets that can actively carry an organization through a difficult moment, if leadership knows how to activate them. (There's a sharper edge to this: The same mission-driven identity that makes a nonprofit scandal feel like a bigger betrayal is also what gets you forgiven faster, if you handle it right.) 

Mike also makes the case for measured response over reflexive action. When a named person or associated organization gets caught up in a public controversy, pausing before acting (gathering information before making a final call) is almost always better than a quick decision you can't walk back. 

The fundamentals of good crisis communication haven't changed: Be authentic, be succinct, and repeat your message more times than feels comfortable.  

What has changed is the speed at which you have to do all of it. And whether you're navigating a crisis or just trying to communicate more effectively every day, those three principles are a good place to start. 

Mike brings a perspective few crisis advisors have. He spent years as a broadcast journalist and television reporter before serving as press secretary to a governor, which means he has sat on every side of the table. He knows how reporters think, how politicians survive, and how organizations fall apart when they aren't prepared. 

The media environment makes all of this harder than it used to be. Newsrooms are a fraction of what they were, reporters are stretched across multiple states, and the old news cycle (morning paper, evening broadcast) is gone. The story moves whether you're ready or not. 

The good news is that getting ready doesn't have to be complicated.  

Mike Swenson developed a simple five-step process called Crisis Track, and in this episode, he walks former newspaper editor and reporter Lee Wochner through how it works and where you can go to put it into practice for your own organization. Any nonprofit, regardless of size or budget, can build a plan. 

So if the phone rings at 3 a.m., you're already on offense. 

Links 

https://crisistrak.com/