Big Missions, Small Teams & Practical Marketing: Our Takeaways from the NAO High Desert Conference
TL;DR: Last month, Avenue headed to Redmond, Oregon, for the Nonprofit Association of Oregon’s High Desert Conference, where we presented a practical digital marketing playbook for nonprofits. We left with new connections, fresh perspective and an even deeper appreciation for the people doing incredibly meaningful work with limited time, budgets and resources. Our biggest takeaway? Effective nonprofit marketing doesn’t require doing everything. It requires knowing which strategies can make the biggest impact with the resources you actually have.
Taking Our Nonprofit Marketing Playbook to Central Oregon
Last month, Anna and Megan packed up and headed to Redmond, Oregon, for the Nonprofit Association of Oregon’s High Desert Conference. Our contribution to the day was a session called A Practical Digital Marketing Playbook for Nonprofits, focused on helping nonprofit organizations make smarter decisions about where and how to spend their limited marketing time and resources.
With more than a decade of experience partnering with purpose-driven organizations, nonprofits are some of our favorite partners. We know that sounds a little like something a nonprofit marketing agency is obligated to say, but hear us out.
Nonprofit organizations are tackling some of the biggest challenges facing our communities. In the ~8 hours we spent at the conference, we met people working across a wide range of causes, communities and missions. Getting everyone in the same room gave us the chance to learn about work we may never encounter in our day-to-day lives and meet a whole bunch of smart, values-aligned people in the process. It was also a reminder of something we see often in our own client work: the people responsible for marketing these organizations are being asked to do a LOT.
Big Missions Don’t Always Come With Big Marketing Teams
One of the most valuable parts of the conference was hearing directly from nonprofit leaders about what they’re navigating right now.
NAO shared insights and valuable data into some of the challenges facing nonprofits across Oregon, including the impact of budget cuts and growing pressure on already-limited resources. Those challenges became even more tangible as we talked with people throughout the day about the work happening in their own communities.
We met people from organizations serving some of the lowest-income counties in Oregon, often providing essential resources while working with incredibly tight budgets themselves. These are organizations helping provide clothing to children whose families may not otherwise be able to afford it, expanding access to science and nature-based education in rural communities, and supporting people who are terminally ill, along with the family members and caregivers navigating end-of-life care alongside them.
In many cases, these organizations are also filling critical gaps in services and resources within their communities. The need is significant, but the resources available to meet that need don’t always reflect the scale or importance of the work. And then there’s the person responsible for getting the word out about all of it.
For some organizations, the “marketing department” might be one person. And that one person may also be responsible for fundraising, events, communications, community engagement and approximately 47 other things before lunch. That context matters when we talk about marketing for nonprofits.
It’s easy for marketing advice to become a giant checklist. Post more often. Start a newsletter. Make videos. Improve your SEO. Apply for a Google Ad Grant. Get on TikTok. Write more blogs. Optimize for AI search. Suddenly your helpful marketing strategy has become another full-time job.
For organizations already working within time and capacity constraints, piling more onto the list isn’t particularly helpful. What is helpful is figuring out which marketing efforts have the greatest potential to support the mission with the time, budget and people actually available.
A Practical Approach to Digital Marketing for Nonprofits
There are a lot of ways nonprofits could market themselves online. The more useful question is which opportunities make sense for your organization, audience, goals and capacity right now.
For one nonprofit, that might mean focusing on SEO and creating a handful of genuinely useful resources around the questions its community is already searching for. Strong SEO can help an organization build visibility over time and become a trusted resource for the people looking for its services, expertise or opportunities.
For another organization, paid search may be the better opportunity. Google Ads for nonprofits, particularly through the Google Ad Grant program for eligible organizations, can provide another way to reach people actively searching for relevant information, resources and services. You really can’t go wrong with $10,000 of free ad spend per month.
For others, the answer may be much simpler. Maybe your website needs to make it easier for someone to understand what you do and how they can get involved. Maybe your team needs a manageable social media strategy instead of trying to maintain five channels. Maybe you need to get measurement in place before spending another dollar promoting anything.
Good digital marketing for nonprofits starts with understanding what can actually move your mission forward and building from there.
Your Capacity Is Part of Your Marketing Strategy
This was one of the points we most wanted nonprofit leaders to take away from our session. A strategy can look brilliant in a presentation and still be completely wrong for the organization expected to execute it.
If your team has five hours a month to dedicate to marketing, your strategy should account for five hours a month. If you have a limited advertising budget, every channel probably doesn't deserve a piece of it. If you're a team of one, you shouldn't leave a marketing workshop feeling like you now need to become an SEO strategist, Google Ads expert, copywriter, videographer, social media manager and data analyst.
Your time is a resource, too, and maybe the most valuable one you can offer.
Sometimes the smartest marketing decision is deciding what not to do. Prioritizing a few strategies your team can execute well is far more useful than creating an ambitious plan that becomes another source of stress three weeks later.
That’s true whether you’re working with a marketing partner, building your strategy internally, or relying on the heroic person on your team who somehow knows the website password, runs your Instagram account and is also coordinating next Thursday’s fundraiser.
We Went to Share, and Left With Plenty to Think About
We went to the High Desert Conference to share what we know about digital marketing. We came home having learned quite a bit ourselves.
Spending the day with nonprofit professionals reinforced why we value this work so much. Behind every website, campaign, social post or Google search is an organization trying to reach real people, solve real problems and make its community a little better.
We also left with an even greater appreciation for how much nonprofit professionals are accomplishing with the resources available to them. When an organization is providing clothing to kids, expanding educational opportunities in rural communities or helping families through some of the hardest moments of their lives, marketing may understandably be one item on a very, very long list. That’s exactly why we believe it should be practical and not a gatekept labyrinth of information.
Good marketing should help more people find, understand and support the work you’re already doing. It should give your team clarity about where to focus. And whenever possible, it should make your job easier rather than handing you another impossible list of things you “should” be doing.
As a Certified B Corp, working alongside purpose-driven organizations is central to why Avenue exists. We’re here to help organizations doing meaningful work amplify their impact, and opportunities like the High Desert Conference give us another way to put that commitment into practice.
To everyone who joined our session, asked a question, introduced themselves or told us about the work happening in their corner of Oregon: thank you. We loved meeting you, learning from you and getting a glimpse into the incredible work happening across the state.
And to the team at the Nonprofit Association of Oregon, thank you for bringing this community together and inviting us to be part of it. We’d happily make the trip over the mountain again.
If you’re part of a nonprofit looking for a digital marketing partner, we’d love to hear more about your organization, your goals and where you could use some support. Reach out to our team today to start a conversation.
Not quite sure what you need yet? Submit our complimentary digital marketing audit form, and we’ll help you identify where your biggest opportunities may be and where to start.