Over at The Huffington Post, Jake Brewer, Director of Partnerships for Idealist.org, makes the case for the skills of nonprofit marketing professionals.
Professionals who make the decision to work in the nonprofit sector are often seen by their corporate counterparts as “nice folks who can’t cut it in the real business world.” The funny thing about that myth is many Directors and VPs of Marketing for nonprofits left the for-profit sector because they got sick of peddling widgets, and wanted their professional lives to be about something they cared more about (imagine that). To the bigger point, though, winning hearts, minds, AND wallets is freakin’ hard – harder than corporate marketing – particularly without a multi-million (or billon) dollar budget. In fact many organizations that serve you and your communities have a marketing budget of $0… and yet you know about them and contribute to them. These guys are damn good.
I’d love to take a team like Wal-Mart’s marketing department, strip it of any significant budget, and see just how good they are combating poverty, the climate crisis or HIV/AIDS. It’s possible they’d be pretty good… but I bet they’d be met with stark reality.
