Marketing
with DOUG MACMILLAN
Doug MacMillan is president of The Letter M Marketing in Guelph, ON. To reach him, email doug@letterm.ca.
Think like a charity when it comes to customer stewardship
I Rallying your people I watched our local Big Brothers shift from in-person to virtual youth mentoring in mere hours and it involved a lot more than downloading Zoom. We witnessed 15 poverty relief charities band together within three weeks with an incredibly organized food delivery program that has made the difference between eating and not eating for people in our community. They’ve done this without a grumble or whine (despite frequent calls from businesses that needed to pull promised funding), but with positivity, passion and incredible strength. They rallied, and they got it done. Rallying their people meant connecting with valuable donors and supporters in their time of need. Nearly every charity needed money or another form of help, and they needed it fast. They were able to call on those relationships and the trust they share to help them meet urgent needs.
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M e c h a n i c a l
’ve been fortunate over my career to work with dozens of charities across Canada. I’ve volunteered on the front lines and sat on the boards. My agency has executed high profile public awareness campaigns, created messaging and branding strategies, and sponsored its fair share of galas, golf tournaments and fundraisers. All proud moments and certainly among my most fulfilling professional and personal experiences. Over those years, I can no longer count the number of times I have heard someone say “charities need to start thinking more like a business!” It was a bit of a broken record about 15 years ago and it still is today. There is validity in the comment: some charities don’t always set effective key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the return on their investment in different programs. Applying a for-profit lens to a non-profit organization can support improved sustainability and revenue streams. At the same time, businesses can learn a thing or two from charities, too, and that record hasn’t been played enough in my opinion. Their resiliency and ability to “pivot” (that word…) is as nimble and smart as any business story I’ve read this year.
Relationship building Relat Wha charities do exceedingly well–better than nearly every business What I encounter, enc certainly including mine–is what they call “stewardship.” Stewa Stewardship, by definition, means to “take care of something” and that’s exac how they view it: they take care of their donors and volunteers exactly with w care and attention. I believe if companies with customers looked at their co communication as “stewardship” and followed some of the same prac practices, their connection with those customers–and ensuing loyalty fro those customers–would be stronger for it. This has been proven from s in spades during the pandemic, when customers were cautious about safe safety. Customers were much more likely to invite a contractor into their home when they already had a strong, trusting relationship. The relationship made them B u s i n e s s
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