What We Do
Marketing and communications strategy that moves your nonprofit’s mission forward.
Your nonprofit can’t achieve its full potential without a marketing and communications strategy that is aligned with its strategic plan and the priorities of its stakeholders.
We build marcomm plans focused on driving your organization’s most important strategic objectives forward, from raising awareness and funds, to to attracting volunteers, clients and advocates, to fostering stronger relationships with your community.
Our marcomm strategy engagements are based on the Nonprofit Impact SystemTM method and Shared Power StrategyTM philosophy, which center the priorities of your stakeholders and make communications a tool for advancing equity. We also prioritize strength-based communication practices in our marketing and communications strategy work.
Our marketing and communications strategy projects typically fall within one of these three categories:
Organization-Wide Marketing and Communication Strategy
Create a comprehensive plan for your organization’s entire marketing and communications function that includes clear objectives, tactics ranging from social media to media relations, a calendar for what must happen when and accountability for who must do what. Make your plan measurable with a marketing objective and key results dashboard.
Campaign-Specific Marketing and Communication Strategy
Create a focused plan for a specific campaign, initiative or communications objective. Examples include things like a program launch campaign or a communications surrounding the announcement of a new CEO.
Messaging Strategy
Develop a set of key messages for your nonprofit that communicate the most important things your stakeholders need to know, or establish your approach to inclusive, strength-based communication, and foster adoption across all facets of your organization. We also offer two-day messaging development retreats for organizations interested in quickly and collaboratively developing a new messaging platform.
We also do nonprofit rebranding, which you can learn more about here.
Here’s how our marketing and communications strategy process works, at a high level:
People
We begin all marketing and communication strategy projects with an assessment to understand how your nonprofit’s stakeholders perceive and are affected by the way your organization communicates. Then, we tap them for input and feedback at key points in the marcomm strategy development process through surveys, interviews, focus groups, listening sessions, and/or stakeholder committees.
Involving your stakeholders in this way ensures that your communications will resonate with them. And when it comes to your beneficiaries, seeking their input is critical to ensure you’re sharing their stories in a way that is aligned with their preferences and true to their lived experience.
NEXT: Strategy
Strategy
The Strategy phase of our marcomm engagements process typically begins with assessments of how your organization and other, similar nonprofits are currently communicating and marketing themselves.
Next, we facilitate a series of workshops with members of your team to work through developing the key elements of your marcomm, campaign or messaging strategy. This often includes elements like objectives, tactical plans, marcomm calendars, and key messages. Then, we bring those elements together into a written, easy-to-follow strategy document and/or messaging guide. We seek feedback and input from your stakeholders on marcomm and messaging strategies as they are developed.
NEXT: Progress
Progress
The Progress phase is all about ensuring your marketing and communications team has the systems and processes in place to bring your plans to life.
During this phase, we help you develop measurable key results for every objective in your marcomm strategy. We also help you determine who is responsible for executing on each tactic, based on a careful evaluation of your team’s skill sets and bandwidth. Finally, we help you put dashboards in place that make it easy to see how your organization is performing against the marcomm objectives you set out to achieve.
In the case of messaging strategy and strength-based communication projects, we also often facilitate team and organization-wide trainings to help everyone at your organization begin to adopt your new approach to messaging.
Case Study
Learn how Prosper Strategies partnered with Feeding America to develop a plan for building fundraising capacity among their food banks.
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Case Study
Discover how the organization formerly known as the Robert Crown Center for Health Education rebranded to become Candor Health Education and better communicated the scope and impact of their work.
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Case Study
Find out how VOA Illinois (Volunteers of America – Illinois) collaborated with Prosper Strategies to create transformative messaging and an updated brand identity.
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Case Study
Find out Comer Education Campus partnered with Prosper Strategies to rebrand and develop the accompanying marketing and communications plan — leading to a 13.8% increase in fundraising from the previous year.
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Case Study
Let us show you how the Robert R. McCormick Foundation Communities Program partnered with Prosper to transform their messaging, grow their donor base and exceed their fundraising goals.
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Case Study
The organization formerly known as Rape Victim Advocates rebranded to become Resilience, transformed its messaging, and grew its impact. Here’s how they did it.
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Case Study
Learn how Boys & Girls Clubs of America partnered with Prosper Strategies to evaluate their messaging and evolve toward a more strength-based, equity-centered approach to communications.