… and I am not an UnMarketing expert! I do have 45 years of video production experience and over 35 years as a small business owner/manager/marketer (think concurrently… I’m old, but not that old.) My first experience as a nonprofit volunteer was in 1990. Over the last 22 years, I’ve produced at least 100 videos for nonprofits from Florida to North Carolina to California. As a volunteer, I’ve been a nonprofit Board Chairman, graphic artist, and web designer. However, I didn’t develop an interest in nonprofit marketing until 2010. That’s when I got serious about helping Asheville Pregnancy Support Services and that experience is what led me to UnMarketing.
Asheville Pregnancy Support Services, APSS for short, is a nonprofit that provides compassionate care to women and men dealing with all the issues surrounding an unplanned pregnancy. As its CEO, Deborah Wood, recalls, “I got this call from Steve telling me I needed a video. I remember thinking, ‘I do?’ The first video he produced for us told the story of a family from Western North Carolina whose daughter came to the Center for help. We played that at our fund-raising Gala and I don’t believe there was a dry eye in the house.”
Reasons for Video
There are a number of reasons I suggested a video for the APSS Gala:
1. There is less pressure on the storytellers. “If you make a mistake, we’ll just start over.”
2. The flow and pace of the story are determined in editing. At a live event, you must get it right the first time.
3. Music and graphics can be added to enhance the experience.
4. The finished product (with the permission of the storyteller) can be used on the nonprofit’s website.
Over the next several years, I created a number of videos for the annual Galas. Then, as I learned more about the organization, I concluded that their web presence needed improvement. As with many other Christian nonprofit service organizations, APSS’s clients and donors had different perspectives. We set out to develop a site exclusively for supporters and then rework the client site with an emphasis on the client’s point of view.
Because of Deborah Wood’s passion for using volunteers wherever possible, I decided to learn WordPress and develop the new donor site myself. The WordPress platform is flexible, powerful, easy to support, and free. With the help of a talented volunteer graphic designer, the site was completed as a totally volunteer effort.
Currently I’m using Google Analytics to evaluate how APSS donors are using the site so that we can improve its reach into the community. This is the point where I began learning about Internet marketing (or more specifically UnMarketing.)
Developing a New Base of Committed Advocates Using the Internet
As I became more involved with website content creation and using Google Analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of the content, I began reading books about Internet marketing. I studied Twitter Power 2.0, Inbound Marketing, The Next Evolution of Marketing, and UnMarketing, to name a few. In addition, I’ve discovered a number of websites and blogs that are devoted to both for profit and not for profit social media marketing. Then I kept hearing from people I met at the fund-raisers, “I never knew something like this organization existed.” Usually these people said this while they making their first donation.
Could there be a large untapped group of future advocates just waiting to discover your organization? People who today don’t even know you exist? What if you developed Internet content that would both interest these future advocates and introduced them to your organization? If you did, you could use UnMarketing to develop an entirely new donor base… a base of people who today don’t even know you exist.
I think this is exciting. What do you think?
