“Smart Strategies for Dealing with the Downturn” are Smart Strategies for Everyone
Ogilvy and Mather, one of the world’s largest marketing organizations has pointed out 6 strategies for critical focus for companies during what is now being termed, “The Great Recession.” Although these points are geared towards the world of for-profit marketing, each has an absolute cross-application in ministry. Consider each point from the for-profit position, but then consider the same point as it applies to your ministry or non-profit.
1) Search for Growth and Revenue
Ministry application: It is critical to find ways to expand constituent engagement-not simply in terms of finding new ways to obtain dollars, but in finding new constituents with whom to engage. Growth will occur as upon reaching and connection at the heart level, in efforts to bring about long-term impact.
2) Understanding and Maximizing the Value of your Customers
Ministry application: Your mission must speak truthfully into the heart-need of your constituents. Value will be communicated back by their long-term engagement. Funds will follow, but only after heart-level commitment.
3) Relevant communications in times like these
Ministry application: Is your organization trying to reach your donors and ministry constituents in a ‘one size fits all’ fashion? Are you sharing what you want to share, because it is what matters to you, or are you intentionally trying to understand their needs and desires? Are you presenting to them through winsome, relevant and helpful ways in a shifting political and social landscape? Although it is not always wise or practical to overtly acknowledge the suffering of those who desire privacy, it is critical to make available resources to help, including prayers, personal connection, encouragement, and/or practical advise.
4) Selecting and Optimizing Channels
Ministry application: Is your organization using methods that have worked in the past simply because they worked in the past? Consider how to maximize the utilization of all available resources and communication forms, harnessing available and emerging technologies that will reach next donor and constituent generations in ways that engage the hearts and minds of those to whom we seek to minister. Be certain efforts in this process are coordinated in order to leverage investments.
5) Optimizing Market Spending and Measuring ROI
Ministry application: Are you utilizing metrics-based systems to determine impact of existing processes? Are you receiving/communicating accurate reporting? Are you able to make accurate decisions based upon actual effectiveness? Measurements and metrics-based data promote good decisions, where allegorical or subjective reporting promotes decisions made with incomplete data, increasing risk and vulnerability not only to cash flow, but to integrity, which is far more costly.
6) Driving Efficiencies: Streamlining Infrastructure
Ministry application: Is your organization optimizing the pieces you already have in place for maximum efficiencies? Are you actively examining emerging technologies to have them ‘online’ as the market opens to their use, or are you simply reacting to demand? Planning now can help avoid silos, turf wars, underfunded and poorly communicated strategies later.
Today, perhaps more than at any time in history, ministries and non-profits must actively seek opportunities to engage core constituents with their primary mission both effectively and efficiently. We must acknowledge the fact that our donors and ministry partners, both those to whom we seek to minister and those who partner with us in working to fulfill our mission goals, all have similar expectations of our organization. Those expectations include the ministry’s responsibility to connect with them and to allow them to in turn ‘plug in’ in ways that are meaningful, impactful and relevant. The engagement of your constituent base is directly relative to your organization’s success, as it determines your ministry’s effectiveness, as well as the subsequent resources which will allow you to fund your ministry.
Megan Hawkes
February 26, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Good insights Megan! It’s always helpful to hear what other smart people are doing in a situation like the one organizations are finding themselves in right now.
February 27, 2009 at 6:57 am
Hi Megan! Thanks for the link to your post. Love how you are asking us to consider each of these points from both a for-profit and a non-profit point-of-view. In my world, I would add that we might also consider these points from a big-business (ministry) vs. a small business (ministry) perspective as well. The applications of each point don’t equally scale, but we still must pursue no matter how big (or small) the organization. Great post!