Charity marketing - Three surprising differences between charity and commercial marketing

When Melissa Fretwell asked me to write an article for White Camino comparing marketing for charities with marketing for businesses, I thought it would be quite straightforward. But the further I got into it, the more nuanced my points became and the more exceptions I found.

All organisations need to do marketing. After all, marketing is about making people aware that you can help them. That means it’s a broad church. And with digital media potentially offering global access for free, marketing is a powerful tool that can be used for good and less good ends. Whilst it’s created great wealth and prosperity, it’s also played a part in driving terrible inequality and over-consumption. Earth Overshoot Day, anyone?

So how do charities deal with marketing? That’s a question I started asking myself a few years ago, after many years of working in commercial marketing. I was feeling an increasing desire to support organisations with social or environmental purpose; charities seemed just the sorts of organisation I wanted to work with.

I discovered that there are some significant differences, as well as similarities, between marketing for businesses and marketing for charities. Here are three:

1. For all small organisations marketing is about generating revenue
So that sounds like a similarity then! Well, yes and no. There are two similarities in marketing across all small organisations. First, the main outcome they want is to bring in revenue. This allows charities to deliver their charitable aims and companies to support the costs of supplying their goods or services. And all organisations need to make a surplus/profit. More on that later.

Irrespective of the type of organisation, the smaller it is the more it will have to focus on a narrow range of tactics: there’s never much time for anything in a small organisation and with marketing it’s better to do fewer things well.

The second similarity is that it’s all about persuasion, by which I mean sales psychology and building trust. The question is: what do you want to persuade people to do? As a charity, how can you engage with people who’ve never heard of you and then build their trust to the extent that they take part, for example, in a challenge, or make a gift in their will, or make a donation? Equally, as a business, how can you engage with people who have never heard of you and then build their trust to the extent that they buy your thing?

Let’s now turn to the differences. For smaller charities, marketing often has to focus on fundraising, with a bit of awareness-raising thrown in. If there’s a dedicated member of staff, their job title might be Fundraising Manager, or Fundraising and Comms Manager.

Different types of fundraising are specialisms in their own right: organising a charity challenge (like a ‘fun run’, a swim, a walk or a cycle ride) takes a very different skill set to writing grant applications to trusts and foundations. So a Fundraising Manager in a small charity may be more experienced in one type than another. Many fundraising specialisms depend on digital techniques such as paid and organic search, social media, content marketing and so forth.

In smaller businesses, marketing means generating sales enquiries or actual sales. Different products and services within those broad categories will be more or less suited to different marketing disciplines, such as paid and organic search, social media, content marketing and so forth. Exactly the same as for charities?

Well, the tools, techniques and outcomes (revenue into the organisation) may be the same, but the context is different: “buy this thing for yourself” is very different to “give money to this good cause”.

It gets more confusing still…

2. Charities and businesses can use different words to mean similar things
Better Start Bradford is a charity that aims to improve the lives of children in specific Bradford postcode areas. It does this by providing early intervention programmes for pregnant women and families with young children.

Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund to the tune of £49 million over ten years, the charity doesn’t need to engage in fundraising, but it does need to raise awareness amongst its stakeholder groups, and this is done by a busy Communications team.

The team promotes the charity’s services through events, campaigns, a website, social media, email and offline marketing. Now for people who work in small businesses, that sounds like marketing…

The thing is, for businesses the word ‘marketing’ aligns closely with sales. It’s about identifying what sorts of investments will deliver high-value enquiries or sales for the least cost and, therefore, the highest profit.

People who work in charities can find this sort of language distasteful. Discussions focused on sales and profit can bring to mind Delboy from the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. ‘Profit’ can be characterised as money that’s paid to anonymous shareholders in reward for driving over-consumption (see above re Earth Overshoot Day).

You can make the discussion more palatable by moving it to one about generating a ‘surplus’ from delivering a socially or environmentally valuable service. A surplus is a profit in that it’s the difference between the cost of delivering a service and the revenue it generates. But in a charity, it won’t be distributed to shareholders.

Of course, not all charities dislike the word ‘marketing’. Groundwork, a UK-based federation of charities, runs an energy-saving advice service called Green Doctor. Housing Associations and Local Authorities buy services from Green Doctor to help their residents stay warm, stay well and save money on household bills.

Revenue from Green Doctor can be used to sustain and build the organisation as, sadly, there’s huge demand, and the surplus can be used to fund Groundwork’s charitable services. It’s a great service and I was delighted to help them design and deliver their national marketing approach to spread the word and generate new enquiries.

With the increased cost of living, and austerity, fundraising is getting harder. Innovative charities such as Groundwork are increasingly exploring ways to diversify their income. And that requires marketing.

3. And what about larger organisations?
As organisations grow, the number and variety of people involved grows too. Businesses will have more employees, customers, suppliers, partners, investors and longer supply chains. Charities will have more employees, beneficiaries, communities of donors and benefactors, suppliers, partners and related professional services.

Whatever the organisation, it’s likely to become known by a wider public and have to be more thoughtful about its messaging and brand.

In public sector and larger commercial organisations this is the Communications domain. It’ll sit alongside marketing and use many of the same digital tools and channels. It may also be responsible for areas such as PR and employee communications.

And what about charities? I looked at 10 UK-based charities whose fundraising revenues were between £10m and £20m in 2021 (source). That puts them into the ‘medium-sized’ category. Here are the job titles of their most senior marketing roles:

1. Action for Children (£17.8M): ‘Managing Director for Fundraising, Communications and Policy’
2. Guide Dogs for the Blind (£10.7M): ‘Chief Marketing and Fundraising Officer’
3. Macmillan Cancer Support (£18.8M): ‘Director of Communications’
4. Mind (£17.7M): ‘Associate Director of External Relations’ (oversees all of Mind’s marketing and communications)
5. Royal Academy of Arts (£12.3M): ‘Head of Communications’
6. Royal National Lifeboat Institution (£11.5M): ‘Director of Fundraising, Marketing and Media’
7. Royal Shakespeare Company (£10.5M): ‘Head of Media and Communications’
8. Save the Children Fund (£13.5M): ‘Executive Director of Fundraising and Marketing’
9. Shelter (£10.9M): ‘Director of Campaigns, Policy and Communications’
10. Zoological Society of London (£12.4M): ‘Chief Operating Officer (oversees Marketing and Communications)’

So, at the most senior level ‘marketing’ doesn’t often appear in a job title (three out of the above 10) but it is called out as part of the role.​​​​​​​