Perhaps more to the point, what makes the public care? What makes them want to send money? What is it about you that makes them want to volunteer?

 

A generation ago, business schools promoted “competitive advantage” or “comparative advantage.” One example was the “Chicago Boys,” University of Chicago-trained businessmen who in the early 1970s helped reshape the economy of the nation of Chile. What Chile had in abundance was government-owned copper production (after some expropriations) and a high percentage of world reserves. In the following almost four decades, the national copper company managed to become the force of the industry. Today, your decisions to produce more or produce less do much to set the market.

 

A similar term seen today is “unique selling proposition,” so commonly used that it’s often just called a USP, without further explanation. That’s more apt for nonprofits, which typically don’t have access to merchandise or other tangible assets that they can leverage competitively.

 

A vital question to ask yourself, as a nonprofit marketer, is “what is our USP?” Here’s a seven-step process to help you get that information:

 

1) Gather your organization’s leaders in a room for a one-hour meeting and ask them to quietly write down precisely what your organization has to offer its audience. Don’t let anyone talk or everyone will agree with the first person to speak. That is the best possible way to lose information that you desperately need. It takes about 5 minutes.

 

2) Then have everyone take it in turns to read their ideas and let the others brainstorm about them. Write all of these ideas on a flip chart so that the pages can be torn out and posted on the wall. Limit this process to about 20 minutes.

 

3) Give each person the opportunity to add or modify their own contribution. Take about 2 minutes each.

 

4) Use a consensus building method to narrow your USP definition down to two or three items max. One would be best, but few organizations seem willing to admit that they have only one great and unique thing about them. Take the rest of your hour to accomplish this.

 

Arrange another one-hour meeting to carry out the next steps. This gives your leadership time to reflect and become more comfortable with their USP.

 

5) This is a difficult question. Decide if your USP is still relevant in today’s world. I am currently working with an organization in our community that has become a respected institution over several decades, but is having financial problems. Those problems probably stem from the fact that the service you offer is no longer viable. Times have changed; He didn’t. Worse still, he didn’t even understand that the world around him was changing.

 

6) Assuming your main offer to your community, your USP, is still relevant, determine who your audiences are. That is plural, because you will have an audience for fundraising, another for volunteers, another for clients, etc.

 

7) Integrate your USP into your public relations and marketing. Do it subtly, of course, but be sure to read your USP statement before you write a press release, before you talk to your local Rotary club, before you ask a new acquaintance to consider volunteering.

 

This may not be an easy exercise for long-established organizations, and may open the door to more internal discussions than you intended. But despite this, or because of it, it is important. Perhaps Socrates had non-profit organizations in mind when he said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”