You Say "Potato," I Say "Patattah": Development vs. Marketing, Part 1

There’s no difference.  There’s never been a difference.  It’s time to call a spade a spade.

When the term “development” came to be used in fundraising it was at a time when folks working in nonprofits wanted little to do with the world of “business”.  Since marketing was a business term, nonprofits invented their own term.  It was always an odd name.
If you told someone you were a “director of development”, most people outside of the public sector thought you worked in real estate or construction.

When I entered the profession 30 years ago, I made up my own elucidation of the word to explain myself in terms people could understand.  I still use this explanation:

            Like a photographer, we are taking all the resources at our disposal (e.g., camera, tripod, paper, chemicals, lighting, and subject matter) in an attempt to develop such a compelling portrait of our mission/services that people will feel compelled to jump into the photo and become an integral part of the picture.

Somewhere in the past decade or two, the nonprofit world got hip to business best practices, wanted to be more “businesslike,” and began to hire marketing staff.  Now they had development and marketing staff working side-by-side, but often at cross purposes. Development would use one message to undergird their “ask”; marketing would use another message to undergird their “sale”.  Often the two messages were crafted in a siloed environment and did not support one another.  One example:

            As development director at a Conservatory of Music, I knew the number one reason people donated was to provide scholarships/invest in the symphony and opera musicians of the future. This was the development department’s “key selling proposition.”  The marketing department, however, used the fact that the Conservatory put on more live concerts today than any other organization as their key sales message.  Development knew that donors did not want their gifts going towards this purpose; the message muddied the waters.  Also, most of the concerts were free.  Marketing did not take advantage of the opportunity to suggest a donation because they were so concerned with filling the seats.  So an opportunity to cross market was lost.

Universities and hospitals were the first to understand the natural linkages between the development and marketing functions and created departments of “advancement” or “external relations.” These were still more made-up terms.  They tried to explain the functions of advancing the organization’s mission by building constituent relationships.

Still, a lot of folks didn’t really understand that everything is about the customer experience and working with the customer at whatever point they are along a continuum of engagement. No matter what you call it, it’s the same thing:

¨      Development goes from awareness (that you exist)… to interest/education (learning more about what you offer, maybe from an annual report, newsletter or website visit)… to involvement (walking in the door to volunteer, attend an event, use a service, access a program, sign a petition, “like” you on Facebook)… to investment (making a first gift)… to loyalty (renewing/upgrading).

¨      Marketing goes from awareness (that you exist)… to interest (demonstrating relevance of product to target audience)… to desire (looking at your product because it answers a need)… to decision (buying)… to loyalty.

The strategies to move people along the continuum are varied, yet fundamentally alike. They combine art and science. Some are broad-based; some are more targeted and focused. Branding, public relations, advertising, direct mail, online and web-based, print media, TV. and radio, telephone, face-to-face and CRM.   Traditionally, as you move along the continuum from left to right your ability to measure and influence individual actions grows accordingly. With the advent of the computer, Web 1.0 and 2.0 (and the beginnings of Web 3.0) the continuum has become less linear.

What has changed is that the burden of establishing confidence in our reputation has shifted from the exclusive province of the “seller” to the sourced province of the crowd.  We can neither control where we first meet our potential customers nor what message to which they’ll first be exposed.  In addition, our customers are exposed to so many more choices that their loyalty has become promiscuous.

Because of this, we can no longer afford the luxury of separating development and marketing. It’s an inessential extravagance and a phenomenal duplication, and waste, of resources. Development has always been, fundamentally, the process of uncovering shared values (with gratitude to Kay Sprinkel Grace, fundraising guru extraordinaire, for elucidating this principle).  This is also what marketing does.  Whether for-profit or nonprofit, the organization has a “product” and “exchanges” this with the consumer who “values” it. The strategies we’ve employed in the past to facilitate this exchange have been easy to define and organize.  But it’s no longer easy.  There are so many choices of media to get our message across; each choice results in an allocation of limited resources, including staff.  We don’t want development reacting to marketing, and vice-versa.  We imperatively want them acting and making decisions strategically, as a united front.

As far as separating development and marketing into two separate departments goes, let’s call the whole thing off!

TOMORROW: You Say “Potato,” I Say “Patattah”: Development vs. Marketing,

Part 2, How to persuade your E.D. and Board that they’re the same thing.