Knowing your target audience or the specific group you want to affect with your messaging may seem like a simple and easy task, but it’s truly a foundational item to any organization, especially a nonprofit. After all, you want to be impactful and it’s hard to have meaningful and impactful conversations without knowing whom you’re speaking to. Right?

So let’s talk about it. Does your nonprofit organization know their target audience? Maybe you do or maybe you’re still refining who they are. If you aren’t sure yet who your target audience is… let’s take a look!

Defining your target audience

Your target audience could be multiple groups of people depending on why you are embarking on a marketing plan. Do you need more volunteers? Money? Clients? Below are examples of some typical nonprofit target audiences:

• Volunteers
• Donors (Current or Potential)
• Board members
• Attendees of an event
• Consumers/clients
• Businesses
• Youth
• Parents

Let’s look at an example. Your organization is looking at increasing donations for the year so your board wants to create a plan around this.

Who do you think your target audience is in this circumstance?

It could be current donors or it could be potential.

But, which is your team looking to increase? Do you want current donors to give more or give more often? Or are you looking for new donors?
Can you see how creating a plan for these two similar but very different groups would not be the same? Potential donors may not know anything about your organization, so you couldn’t send them an email that jumps right into asking them to increase their donation… they don’t even know who you are yet! However, that approach might work for a current donor.

Closing

If you already know your nonprofit’s target audience or audiences… think about the following questions.

Do you know what inspires your target audience? What do they care most about? How do they like to be communicated with? How does this audience feel about your organization?

Continue to ask questions… Dig deep. Treat your audiences like a new relationship. You want to know more and more about them, taking time to understand them is key to any non profit organization!

Feeling overwhelmed trying to define your nonprofit’s target audience? KM Consulting Group can help. Contact our nonprofit consulting agency to learn how we can help.