An Organization Made up of Organizations
By: Suzanne Smith, Social Impact Architects
“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”
- MARGARET MEAD
With Giving Tuesday approaching, you may be wondering: How do some nonprofits make fundraising look so easy? What helps them stand out and inspire people to give?
Based on our research, many successful fundraisers have one important thing in common: They know their unique value proposition and know how to communicate it to donors.
In The Nonprofit Flywheel, I define a unique value proposition as “a clear statement of what makes your organization distinct, whom it serves and why people should choose to support, join or partner with it.”
A strong unique value proposition is simple, compelling and memorable. It should be easy to identify and recall because it creates a powerful association with the organization’s brand. It can be explicit or implicit, but it should serve as the centerpiece of your organization's positioning statement.
In the social sector, though, there is an important twist to the traditional business definition. Businesses often use a value proposition to explain why a customer should choose them over the competition. As we have mentioned previously, nonprofits should not compete head to head in quite the same way. Our ultimate goal is not to beat another organization, but rather to address a need and create the greatest possible impact.
If another nonprofit does something better, collaboration or referrals may serve the community more effectively than duplicating its work. Your value proposition should clarify the distinctive role your organization plays, not suggest that you need to do everything yourself.
How Do You Develop a Nonprofit Value Proposition?
I recommend starting with three steps. Although we’ll focus on donors, you can use the same process to develop messaging for clients, volunteers, partners or employees.
Step 1: Know Your Audience
To inspire donors to invest in your organization, you first need to understand what motivates them.
Some donors appreciate public recognition, while others want to remain anonymous. Some view their contributions as donations and trust the organization to use them wisely. Others see their giving as an investment and want to understand the impact of their donation. These preferences can also vary across generations.
Put yourself in their shoes and consider: Why do they give? Is there a personal connection? Is it tied to a need recently highlighted in the news? What does success look like to them? Are they moved by personal stories, or do they want to see data?
The best way to find out is to ask. Talk with your donors about what first connected them to your organization, what keeps them involved and what other causes they support. Review their giving histories for additional insights.
And remember, there is no magic number of emails, social media posts or positive interactions that guarantees a donation. Donors are people, and people are rarely that predictable. But you do need to develop enough trust and connection for them to think of your organization when they are ready to give.
With different audiences in your donor database, you may want to develop two or three messages and target donors accordingly. One size no longer fits all.
Step 2: Identify What You Do Really Well
This is often where nonprofits get into trouble. Nonprofits can do many things, but not all of those activities drive impact. When organizations try to describe every program and service, their message becomes a laundry list rather than a compelling value proposition.
Instead, ask your participants and constituents through interviews, focus groups or surveys: What does our organization contribute that is especially valuable to the people and community we serve? Ask your donors and partners too. Typically, you are already known for the things you do well.
And remember, what you do really well is often less a list of activities and more your collective contribution to the community. It may be the trust you have built with a certain population. It may be your ability to bring different groups together, respond quickly or stay involved for the long term.
Make sure your claims are supported by evidence. If you say your program gets better results, you should have data to back that up. If you say your organization is trusted by the community, the community should agree.
Step 3: Understand the Larger Ecosystem
Once you know what your audience values and what your organization does well, look at other organizations working in your space.
A competitive analysis can help you understand what services others provide, where their strengths lie and how they communicate their value. Review their websites, vision and mission statements, fundraising materials, annual reports and Form 990s. You can also use AI to help you organize this research and identify patterns, although you’ll want to verify its findings.
Here are our favorite prompts to get to the heart of this question as a starting point.
Don't limit your analysis to direct competitors. Look at organizations offering alternative solutions, potential collaborators and referral partners. Ask participants what other services they use, donors which other organizations they support and partners where they see gaps or duplication.
You may discover that another organization is better equipped to deliver part of your work. That can be useful information, even if it is not always what you want to hear. It may lead to a partnership, a referral relationship or a decision to focus your resources elsewhere.
This is one of the biggest differences between business and the social sector. A business may want to capture a greater share of the market. A nonprofit should want the need addressed, whether it does all the work itself or not.
Find Your Unique Value Proposition
Once you have this information, you can solve the equation and arrive at your unique value proposition:
What your audience needs and cares about
+
What you do really well
–
What other organizations already do well
=
Your unique value proposition
The subtraction sign is important. It encourages you to focus on the contribution your organization is best positioned to make rather than defining your value around work someone else already does well. It also helps us see where collaboration may make more sense than competition.
Keep the Message Simple and Specific
For those of us who have worked in the social sector for a long time, it is easy for the language in our value statements to become stale and lose its meaning and impact.
Think about some of our favorite nonprofit words: We transform. We empower. We innovate. We provide holistic solutions. None of these words is necessarily wrong, but they are not very helpful if everyone uses them.
Sometimes the words we use are so aspirational that it becomes difficult for donors, participants or volunteers to know exactly what to expect from our organization. Or we sound like every other organization or use words that should only be used in a grant.
Instead, describe your value in terms people can understand and recognize. Be specific about whom you serve, what you contribute and why it matters.
The best messages are simple and easy to understand. They also help you rise to the top because they are specific enough for people to recognize your organization in them.
Tailor the Message to Your Audience
Your unique value proposition should remain consistent, but the way you communicate it through messaging and tactics may change based on the audience.
For example, a college-access organization might say to a student:
-
Get help before an unexpected expense becomes the reason you leave college.
To a donor, it might say:
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A small emergency grant can keep a first-generation student on track to graduate.
And, to a volunteer, it might say:
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Use your experience to help a first-generation student navigate college.
The organization’s value is the same, but each message focuses on what matters most to that audience.
This is why you need to develop your value proposition before jumping into marketing messaging and tactics. You can spend a great deal of money promoting a message that does not connect. A new website or social media campaign may make your message look better, but it cannot fix a value proposition that is unclear.
Test Your Value Proposition
Once you have developed a draft, test it. Don’t just share it with your board and staff. You already know too much, and you speak fluent nonprofit.
Ask donors, participants, volunteers and community partners what the statement means to them.
Is it clear? Is it believable? Does it reflect their experience with your organization? Is it different from what they hear from other organizations?
Then ask what they remember later.
A value proposition should not require a long explanation after you say it. If people respond with a polite “That sounds nice,” you may need to keep working.
You want them to say, “Yes, that is exactly what you do.”
AI can help identify jargon, compare your language with similar organizations and flag phrases that everyone seems to use. But it cannot tell you what your community values or what you truly do best. You still need people for that.
Know Where You Add the Most Value
Developing your unique value proposition does more than improve your fundraising and marketing. It can also help you make better decisions about which programs to grow, which partnerships to pursue and which opportunities to decline.
In a sector where needs are growing and resources are limited, we can’t afford to be everything to everyone. We need to understand what we do especially well, communicate it clearly and recognize when another organization is better positioned to help.
The community does not need every nonprofit to do everything. It needs each organization to understand where it adds the most value and how its work connects with others.
We would love to hear how your organization developed its unique value proposition for donors, participants, volunteers or employees. What did you learn, and did it cause you to start, stop or change anything?