How to Use Influencer Marketing for Your Non-Profit Organization

It’s important to market your non-profit organization just like any other business. This is all because it helps in keeping your organization at the forefront of your audience’s minds, draws in new donors and volunteers, and makes your fundraising efforts more successful. However, marketing your non-profit organization can be difficult.

Unlike for-profit businesses, you cannot highlight the inclusivity of your product or service. But should that prevent you from promoting your non-profit organization? Without a doubt, no. The best approach is to ask influencers or celebrities to speak positively about your non-profit organization. That’s where influencer marketing steps in.

Influencer marketing can help you boost your credibility, increase trust, and enable you to reach a wider audience for your fundraising campaigns. Thousands of companies leverage this strategy. In fact, the global influencer marketing industry is expected to reach USD 84.89 billion by 2028.

Are you interested in exploring and using influencer marketing? Keep reading to discover the right way to use this strategy for your non-profit organization.

Let’s get started!

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Before discussing different ideas for non-profit influencer marketing, it’s important to understand the term clearly.

Influencer marketing is a modern-age marketing strategy where you collaborate with key industry leaders or celebrities to drive your non-profit’s message to a larger audience.

The people who spread your word are called influencers who are quite popular among their audience. These people have an impact on the decisions that their followers make.

For example, to raise awareness for their cause, UNICEF, a humanitarian relief organization active in 190 nations and territories, has teamed up with international stars like Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid, and Priyanka Chopra, etc.

You Know More Influencers Than You Think

If your non-profit is just starting out, you might not have the funds to pay influencers. However, this does not imply that you should restrict your influencer marketing to solely celebrities or those with larger social media fanbases.

Your existing donors and volunteers are also your brand advocates. These are the people who have already invested in your cause and support you.

The only difference is that advocates champion your organization for free. While influencers collaborate with your non-profit business in a way that benefits both parties (which does not have to be necessarily monetary).

Here’s How To Use Influencer Marketing For Your Non-Profit Business

Congratulations if you’re already leveraging influencer marketing to grow your non-profit organization. But if you’re new to this strategy, you might be wondering where to start.

The guide below will help you maximize your efforts and grow your non-profit business, whether you’re just starting or have already been using an influencer marketing strategy.

1. Identify Your Non-Profit Influencer Marketing Goal

Every marketing strategy for your business should have an end goal. A goal gives you direction and purpose, so you achieve better results. Hence, set an influencer marketing goal initially.

Decide whether you want to raise awareness about your brand, promote your next fundraiser, amplify your fundraising campaign or cause, etc. Eight-six percent of marketers claim that their major goal with influencer marketing is to raise brand awareness.

Another important reason for setting clear goals and strategies is that it makes it easier to find the right kind of influencers.

2. Find The Right Influencers

To an extent, the chances of your campaign becoming successful depends on the right influencer. Hence, you should always look for an influencer who genuinely believes in your cause. Their experiences and views about your organization should be honest and true.

For example, if you are an organization that believes in animal rights and choose to collaborate with an influencer who is a non-vegetarian or wears leather clothes, that won’t be a great idea. This will hurt your reputation. 

But the real question is, how do you find the right influencer?

• Start exploring your own social media platform and find influencers whose content you can most relate to.
• Don’t only pay attention to follower counts, but consider engagement rates as well. Collaborating with an influencer with one million followers but very little engagement will have little impact.
• Explore relevant hashtags on platforms like Instagram and Twitter to find accounts in your space.
• Work with a reliable agency, like The Influence Agency, to start getting connected with influencers who have a similar vision as yours. 

3. Build Trust with Influencers

Identifying influencers you believe are a good fit for your non-profit organization is just the beginning.

Before you reach out to them, it’s important that you first engage and interact with them on your social media accounts. This will make it easy for them to discover you.

Next, assess their content and what they talk about the most. This will help you find what resonates with them the most about your cause and what they might be interested in promoting.

4. Don’t Talk About Money Right Away

It’s important to understand the fact that influencers get paid to promote a brand on their social media. It’s their job. Hence, you generally can’t expect influencers to promote your brands or campaigns for free.

But it’s also vital that you don’t lead the conversation with money. Instead, introduce your non-profit, explain the concept, and mention why you believe they are a good fit for this. The decision to promote your campaign or non-profit organization for free ultimately rests with the influencers.

It’s also important to have a set budget in mind that you want to spend on influencer marketing because not all influencers rates are the same. This will ensure that you don’t overspend to collaborate with someone. 

5. Provide Influencers With What They Need

You need to provide influencers with what they need depending on your marketing goals. Make sure they have all the resources necessary to get started. This can be anything from high-quality images, videos, or copy for social media, etc.

6. Have A Partnership Agreement

So that you both know what to expect from this partnership, enter into a joint agreement with the influencers.

Remember that your audience can tell when someone is being paid to promote your non-profit organization instead of someone who genuinely cares about it. Therefore, you should only collaborate with influencers that truly support your cause.

It’s Time to Partner with the Right Influencers

As you can see, influencer marketing is a great strategy for building awareness for your organization and attracting new donors. Now that you know what influencer marketing is and how you can leverage it for your non-profit organization, it’s time to get started.

Influencers can help spread the word about your organization and make your fundraising campaigns successful. You might also reach a wider audience interested in contributing to your non-profit cause or even attract volunteers.

Thanks to annual membership forms, collecting money is simpler than ever. You can use Non-profit membership software to create membership campaigns and collect monthly and annual membership fees through different membership tiers.

Level up your influencer partnerships by embedding a donation form directly onto your site or social platforms.

Finding the right influencers is made simple with The Influence Agency. With the largest database of influencers in North America, finding your non-profit’s next collaborator is easier than ever.

Contact us to get started!