My thoughts on interdepartmental cooperation when it comes to marketing

One time, I was hired to make a video for a nonprofit dinner gala. As always, I started on the process of setting practical goals, designing a video with a specific, measurable objective in mind. 

That was when I found that—in an unusual twist—there wasn’t a fundraising goal for the evening. In this specific instance, the event was simply focused on updating the organization’s supporters and keeping them involved.

This is a great goal to have. Engaging your supporters in a personal way makes the relationship stronger and actually benefits your fundraising in the long term.

That being said, since most galas do tend to revolve around how best to inspire giving, I still had donations on the brain.

That was when it occurred to me. If I was going to be researching, filming, and planning anyway, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to produce a fundraising video at the same time? It would be a simple matter to capture footage for both films together. It would certainly be far cheaper and more efficient than starting from scratch when the need for a fundraising video inevitably came up later.

I’ve always been a big advocate of planning in advance, trying to be smart and efficient with your resources. If you start approaching projects in this way, not only can you get the most out of every video. By considering the bigger picture, you can increase efficiency across your whole organization, freeing up funding for other opportunities.

For example, I’ve often thought that many nonprofits would benefit from sharing resources between their fundraising and recruiting departments. The needs and tools of both teams have a lot of overlap; both of them engage in outreach, trying to connect with those who have good reason to care about their cause. I don’t know why it’s so rare for these two departments to communicate, pool their resources, or try to benefit from what the other is doing.

To be clear, I’m not exactly recommending that these (or any) separate departments collaborate on their projects. I’ve actually seen that attempted before, and all too often, it results in a tangled mess. The focuses and priorities of different departments truly are different. Fundraising wants to appeal to one demographic, and recruitment another; fundraising wants to make one ask, but recruitment needs something totally different.

What I have in mind is more like cooperation. While their ultimate purpose may be too different for them to act as full-on partners, fundraising and recruiting still have plenty to offer each other. With just a little extra effort, an event, a video, or some other tool can be made to benefit both of them at the same time, if only they knew what the other one was up to. In the case of video, this might mean filming one set of footage, but cutting it into two separate films.

Can you think of times when you could have saved money by utilizing a bit of cooperation? What are the departments you think would most benefit from opening up a channel of communication? Let me know in the comments below.