Marketing is often a challenge for nonprofits with limited budgets, but with creativity and only a minimum of your own money and resources, you can fill your nonprofit’s marketing needs with a profit-generating, world-changing social marketing department.
The unique solution is abundant around you—your community’s youth. Involve them in a youth media agency to fill the community’s need for social marketing while providing the teenagers with a positive experience that builds career and personal skills.
The Ojai Valley Youth Foundation (OVYF), a nonprofit dedicated to connecting teenagers and adults for a healthy community, initiated a youth media agency called Generation Communications (Gen Com). Gen Com has become a self-sustaining program with many intern ‘graduates,’ an esteemed clientele, and a reputation for accomplishing measurable, positive social changes.
The goal of social marketing is to initiate waves of behavior change and/or public understanding of a particular issue, rather than to sell a product. Social marketing campaigns utilize traditional marketing techniques but go a step further by engaging the community at a grassroots level.
Any nonprofit can build a similarly successful social marketing entrepreneurship with some creative effort. Gen Com shares its most successful practices below.
- What Does a Youth Media Agency Look Like?
Gen Com is comprised of several different roles, including a team of about 10-15 youth interns, one full-time director, an assistant to the director, and as many professional mentors as possible.
Professional mentors provide invaluable training for the interns in the many skills needed to create and implement a full marketing plan. Often these adult experts in their field love the opportunity to work with kids as volunteers. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to provide a modest stipend.
More help surrounds you than you first realize. For example, an OVYF board member who provides consultation services to corporations agreed to train Gen Com interns in public speaking skills. Look for a local graphics designer who is willing to work with Graphics Design Interns, or a writer who can critique the work of the Writing Interns. Other community volunteers Gen Com has recruited include a local professional filmmaker, students of a college-level photography program and an arborist.
- Getting Started
Your first project might be a marketing plan for your own organization. This way you don’t have to worry about landing a client or working with an outside organization right away. Establish measurable objectives for your plan, then engage the help of your local youth to create it.
- Recruiting Teens
Create internships and invite teens to apply. These positions provide invaluable professional experience, on-the-job training, and community. A stipend is an excellent way to motivate and reward your interns.
Offer a variety of internships that can appeal to the particular interests of each student and meet the needs of the projects. Internships might include: Graphic Design, Writing, Photography, Video, Web Design, and Marketing. All interns will work together as a team, but each will receive the most training and practice in his or her area of interest.
Students are easiest to reach through their schools. Ask local high school teachers for the suggestion of students that would be a good fit and invite those students to participate as interns. Visit the classroom yourself; teachers will be happy to give you 5-10 minutes to discuss this opportunity with their students. Be sure to bring a sign-up sheet with a place for names and phone numbers so you can make follow-up calls.
- Training Teens
Schedule meetings at least once weekly after school and use these meetings to introduce the concepts and methodologies of social marketing to your interns. Hint: providing snacks will boost attendance at these meetings. Call the teens one or two days before the meetings to remind them to come. If your facility does not have the equipment you need consider partnering with local businesses or schools.
Most of the interns’ training will be experiential. All participants should be given an overview of the steps involved in social marketing in addition to the training in their discipline. Marketing interns should have practice leading a group discussion in which other interns role-play possible scenarios that might come up in the real focus group.
- Funding Your New Marketing Team
Research grants in your area that will pay for you to provide social marketing services. Gen Com’s first project was funded by a two-year grant that covered the salary of a full-time director. They currently receive funding from a foundation to provide social marketing to nonprofits that do not have the budget to pay for marketing services themselves.
Other important funding sources include grantors who pay for projects addressing specific issues. For example, Gen Com has received funding to publicize school-readiness programs for children birth to 5 years old, promote ocean protection, teach middle-school students how tobacco advertising works, and even to educate Ojai residents about oak tree care.
Potential paying clients include other nonprofits, schools, or government organizations. Partnerships with educational institutions can be especially fruitful, as your youth media agency can provide the ultimate insider knowledge on how to reach those institutions’ target audience, other young people.
Conclusion
Young people are a particularly rich source of creative energy and out-of-the-box ideas. Building a productive social marketing entrepreneurship can a) help you reach deeper into your community with your message and b) make money for your organization by providing marketing services to other organizations.
This article was provided by the Ojai Valley Youth Foundation. For examples of Gen Com’s work, visit its website.
