In the tech industry it’s clear who you’re users are – the people who have signed up to check out your product. Whether they’re activly engaged or not, this is a different question, but broadly speaking you have a clear idea of a ‘user.’
Non-profits – my first true love – have a more difficult time defining users. A user can be any number of stakeholders from the board members who donate their time, individual donors who send in $25 every paycheck, corporations using your brand as part of their CSR, volunteers, and on….
The first thing I learned moving from non profit to high tech is that your users– in all various incarnations – are there for a reason and they want to stick around. “Using your users” means understanding who they are, why they’re there and how you can help them stick around.
A 2005 guidestar study found the top three problems non profits dealt with were:
- Finding money
- Managing board relations, and
- Spreading the word
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! The top three problems are actually:
- Understanding who their donors are and helping them spread the word
- Managing insane board members
- Understanding who their donors are and helping them spread the word
Solve the real problem! Find out who the people who support your organization really are and go from there. But you have to start soon, because your uesrs aren’t going to wait forever.
Check out this great Q&A session with Seth Godin at the Chronicle of Philanthropy – the topic is ‘Marketing Non Profit Causes’ and he has some great advice.
