Your non-profit does great work, but do you struggle with convincing others why they should give you their time/dollars/attention? Do you find it difficult to convince others how your organization is different? Are you concerned that your message is getting lost with shorter than ever attention spans? In the digital age where your organization can be easily dismissed with the swipe of a finger, how can your organization break through all the clutter?
To ensure you are set up right, it's important to ensure you have the fundamentals – a solid value proposition. That might not sounds as fun as a snazzy social media campaign or a sexy website revamp, but if you have a strong value proposition you are making it UNDENIABLY EASY for people to understand why they should engage with your organization. Don’t make people work to understand how your organization benefits them (most won’t want to lift a finger). Furthermore, a strong value proposition also helps people in your own organization. It provides the focus that internal staff can anchor in – ensuring clarity and decreasing spin.
Here’s a quick overview of how to develop a strong value proposition for your non-profit.
What is a value proposition?
A Google search on value proposition will give you a lot of different perspectives. Simply put, it’s communicating what benefit your organization brings to someone in a simple and compelling manner. It’s actually quite difficult to hone in on this and then turn it into a compelling, easy to understand message. To be clear, it isn’t a punchy tagline on your website. However a value proposition is a statement that a punchy tagline can be based on.
How to develop a strong value proposition? - Identify your target audiences - be it volunteers, donors, or users of your services. Each of these groups will benefit from your organization in different ways and will need their own value propositions.
- Develop personas – a fictional representation of each target audience. Give the personas a name, picture, demographic info, behavioural patterns – have fun with it! Most importantly, identify what challenge the persona is facing – what is their main need or pain point that your organization is addressing. Personas help bring something more conceptual to something tangible. Moreover, personas help ground people to ensure everyone is on the same page – helps make those internal staff discussions more efficient!
- Determine the primary benefit your organization offers for each persona. While there could be multiple benefits that your non-profit offers, determine what is the main benefit your target group is most interested in. Make sure it truly meets their needs.
- Draft your value proposition statement for each persona. This is tough – there is a tendency to throw in everything but the kitchen sink here. Be vigilant in keeping your statements concise and simple. Use plain English. Make sure your statement is about the person’s needs and not about how great your organization is.
- Evaluate your value propositions by ensuring the following is evident:
1) Who is the target audience
2) What is the benefit the target audience will receive and
3) What is the service being offered.
- Test, test and test! Get feedback on your value propositions from those internal and external to your organization. Tweak as needed. Don’t skip this step!
A few more pointers:
- Don’t develop your value proposition in a vacuum. Gather together the right individuals to participate in a value proposition development exercise. Include a cross section of people from different areas of your organization internal and external (e.g. board members, marketing, volunteers, users of your services).
- Once you’ve settled on your value proposition, don’t file it away and forget about it. Keep it visible to people in your organization – have it handy so they can refer to it, especially when developing communications.
Make it easy for people to engage with you
It may take some time, but mapping out your value proposition will have cascading effects in many of your organization’s activities – from what images you choose on your website to planning your online strategy. Having a clear sense of the value your organization brings will lay down the foundation for what you communicate across all channels. It’s all about making it obvious as to why someone will benefit from your non-profit. Do the heavy lifting to MAKE IT EASY for potential donors, volunteers, and users to WANT to engage with you.
Emily Ho is a Talent Development and Marketing professional with an award-winning program portfolio. Diverse experience in learning & development, marketing, IT and non-profit consulting.
