Increasing awareness of your not-for-profit

Increasing awareness of your not-for-profit or charity, can only happen if you truly understand the people you are attempting to talk with, those who are your audience, current and potential.  This is all part of the 12 step process you need to follow you are to have a successful strategy in place, which will raise awareness for your cause, long term.

The first three steps of the process requires you to identify your stakeholders, divide them and looking at who you are missing that may also be potential targets. To really understand each of these audiences, you need to dig deeper. You can’t for example say all your friends are exactly the same – same age, same interests, same demographics etc. You don’t talk to all your friends in exactly the same way as a result. There might be small groups within your friends (for example. those you go out for drinks with v those you see because your children are friendly) where you can start to build a typical character.

What you need to do now that you have a breakdown of the all the groups, both current and potential, is build a typical version of each. Give them a name, potentially even have someone in mind who is typical of the group. For example. Cheryl is a 45-year-old mother of two teenagers. She works full-time as an educator, lives in the inner-city, etc. Put down as much as you can, so you really know the people

Remember, dividing up your stakeholders is only step four in the process in the first of the three phase to increasing awareness of your not-for-profit or charity. Each part of the process is critical and should not be glossed over.

Personas play such a critical role, because truly understanding your audience makes it easier to build an emotional bond with them. You can’t for example assume all men like watching one code of football on a weekend. If you make that assumption you will fail to connect with most of your audience. Build the emotional bond, and you not only raise awareness, but you build the strength of your brand. A strong brand for any cause is an asset which can be the turned into funding opportunities to further grow the organisation.