Yes, nonprofits tend to be lousy at marketing – as I noted in a previous post, The Importance of Not Being Earnest.

One of my clients here in Albuquerque is The Loan Fund, a nonprofit alternative lending group. They’re smart, though. They know they need “real” marketing, and can’t afford to hire someone like me full-time – and it’d be overkill anyway – what they need done isn’t that difficult or time-consuming (if you know what you’re doing). So, I’ve been with them on retainer basis for nearly two years – works for them, works for me.

Of course, key is understanding marketing isn’t something you “do” if you have time – or after you do the “real stuff.”

In fact, when we surveyed nonprofits in the Chicago region last fall (we queried 212 and about half responded–mostly executive directors) we found out that only about a third of their agencies had dedicated communications/marketing/outreach staff. About a third of nonprofits have their development (ie, fundraising) staff do communications, too, and the rest–the director does it, a volunteer does it, a program person or community organizer or it just doesn’t get done.

I could talk about this for hours, but I think one problem is that nonprofits tend to merge communications and development in their minds, and they expect their PR and marketing to bring in money, so any small cost associated with this “extra” activity is begrudged–like doing google ad words would be rejected even though for many niche nonprofits the cost would probably be miniscule (to take one wildly random example).