How to Identify Your Target Audience for Your Nonprofit

​When people talk about how to identify your target audience or create a marketing persona, most of the time they’re talking about marketing strategies for for-profit businesses, but nonprofits have target audience’s, too. A lot of people don’t think of nonprofits as businesses, but just because they don’t take in a profit doesn’t mean they aren’t a business. And just because your customers are donors doesn’t mean you don’t have a target audience. Actually, your customers are technically the ones directly benefiting from the services you provide, but for marketing purposes, we’ll define your target audience as your donors.

​Just like a for-profit business can’t survive without marketing to their ideal client, a nonprofit can’t survive without marketing to your ideal donor. So let’s talk about how to identify your target audience for your nonprofit so you can more effectively market to them.

​Identify Your Goals So You Can Identify Your Target Audience

​First and foremost, you need to identify the goals your nonprofit organization is trying to achieve. How much money do you need to raise to achieve those goals? Can you raise that much money with small donations, or do you need some heavy hitters on your list?

​Once you identify your goals and what it will take to get you there, you can start looking at the kinds of donations you’ll need, which will lead you to the people who are more likely to make those kinds of donations.

Identify the Problems You’re Solving So You Can Identify Your Target Audience

The first piece of advice I like to offer to anyone starting to develop a marketing strategy is to take a good, hard look at the problem they’re solving for their clients. Once they’ve identified that pain point, they can focus their marketing around it to attract the people who are looking for solutions to that problem.

The same is true when you’re developing marketing strategies for nonprofits. Nonprofits should still focus on the problem they’re solving, just in a slightly different way. Instead of focusing on the people who will directly benefit from the services you provide, think about the people who might indirectly benefit from your services and have the discretionary income to donate. It could be people who live in the same community, but are not hit as hard by whatever problem you’re looking to solve. Or it could be people in a neighboring community who would like to help out their neighbors, but aren’t sure how to do so.

Check Out the Political Organizations to Help You Identify Your Target Audience

​Most (but not all) nonprofit ventures have a political organization trying to change the world for the better in a particular way, regardless of whether the problem they’re trying to solve is a political one. If there’s a group of people who have organized to get politically active to help solve the same problem you’re trying to solve, take a look at the kinds of people who are active in those organizations to help you identify your target audience.

Think Outside the Box When Developing Marketing Strategies for Nonprofits

​There are a lot of reasons people donate to charity, so don’t be afraid to play around with different marketing strategies for nonprofits to see what works and what doesn’t. In addition to wanting to help their immediate and surrounding communities, people also want to donate to charity to feel good about themselves. Others use it as a status symbol. Knowing all the different motivations that drive your target audience to donate will help you create and implement a nonprofit marketing strategy that gets results.

Get Help from a Strategy Rockstar to Help You Develop Your Nonprofit Marketing Strategies

​I have worked with a lot of nonprofits over the years, both as part of their staff and as a consultant, so I know the ins and outs of nonprofit marketing strategies like the back of my hand, and I’m happy to show you the way. You can start your journey towards more effective fundraising efforts by scheduling your FREE consultation today.