At Dogwood, we work with a lot of non-profit organizations. Marketing for non-profits is so rewarding but can also present its own unique challenges. On today's podcast, Lauren talks to one of our friends, Rachel Thomas, the marketing director at First Choice Montgomery, about the unique aspects of marketing for a non-profit!
Links:
https://dogwoodmediasolutions.com/staff/lauren-cumbie/
https://firstchoicemontgomery.com/
Learn more about Dogwood at DogwoodMediaSolutions.com. At our site, you can learn more about our staff, and the services we offer. Don't forget to check out our blog full of information while you are there. You'll also find links where you can follow us on social media and become an insider to really see what it's like at Dogwood.
At Dogwood, we work with a lot of non-profit organizations. Marketing for non-profits is so rewarding but can also present its own unique challenges. On today's podcast, Lauren talks to one of our friends, Rachel Thomas, the marketing director at First Choice Montgomery, about the unique aspects of marketing for a non-profit!
Links:
https://dogwoodmediasolutions.com/staff/lauren-cumbie/
https://firstchoicemontgomery.com/
Learn more about Dogwood at DogwoodMediaSolutions.com. At our site, you can learn more about our staff, and the services we offer. Don't forget to check out our blog full of information while you are there. You'll also find links where you can follow us on social media and become an insider to really see what it's like at Dogwood.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Dogwood Media Solutions Podcast. I'm Lauren Cuby, one of your hosts, and today I have a special guest, Rachel Thomas, the marketing director for First Choice Women's Medical Center here in Montgomery. And we're going to talk all about marketing for nonprofits.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hi, and welcome to the Dogwood Media Solutions Podcast. I'm Lauren Cuby, one of your hosts, and today I have a very special guest, Rachel Thomas, the marketing director for First Choice Women's Medical Center in Montgomery. That is a mouthful. It is. It is. And it's even longer when you try to put it in an email with first choice wc.com. Right? Yeah. I feel like I always call it First Choice, but I wanted to say the whole thing because people, if they're not from here, they might not know what that is exactly. First of all, introduce yourself. Tell us how you're connected to Dogwood and all that kind of fun stuff. Like Lauren said, my name's Rachel Thomas. I'm from here in Montgomery, and I have a pretty terrific sister that works here as a marketing strategist, is that right? Yes. Here at Dogwood. And so I hear wonderful things all the time, and I feel like I'm starting to need a parking spot here.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, exactly. Yep. We love Becca Becca's great. She's pretty awesome. I was telling somebody the other day, they were asking how I know Becca, and I was like, how do I not know Becca? Because Becca's just kind of always been around. The older I get, the more I become known as Becca's sister instead of the other way around. But it's opened a lot of doors for me, and I'm the oldest, so I just accept it and roll with it. Yeah. Well, there you go. So today we're going to talk about what you do at First Choice. One of the things that we really wanted to highlight is just how marketing can be different and the same depending on what type of industry you're in. And so of course, you're in the nonprofit circle of things. So tell us a little bit about how you got into this.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Is this what you went to school for? How did you get where you are? Okay. So I actually did go to Auburn University for a degree in public relations. I liked writing. I liked the TV side, the radio side. I couldn't decide on a major. And so my advisor was like, if you do pr, you get to dabble in a little bit of everything. And that's how I ended up in public relations. But then God brought me back to Montgomery, and for a year he just kind of left me hanging and I was like, what am I going to do? And I actually ended up in Children's Church Ministry and then at home for seven years with my kiddos. But then my best friend was the nurse manager at First Choice. She asked me to attend one of our annual fundraising events, and while we were sitting there, the guest speaker said, he was talking about how we cannot have abundant life without discipleship, and he was just talking about the church's role with local pregnancy centers.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
And I remember thinking to myself, they need somebody that is kind of creating a bridge between the pregnancy centers and the churches that knows church ministry. And the Holy Spirit just said, that's you can do it. And not four months later a job opening a new job position. The description was sent to my email box and I applied and I got the position. That's awesome. I love that. Well, you touched on it a little bit, but what is First Choice and what do y'all do? Okay, so First Choice is a local pregnancy center. We are an alternative that provides free medical services, including pregnancy testing, confirmation, ultrasounds, S T I or S T D testing and treatment. But we also provide the support factor of after the pregnancy decision is made. We have parenting education classes, we have group classes, we have a father's first ministry that's just for men.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
And we also have a really sweet baby store where parents that are participating in those education programs can get anything from baby wipes to diapers, to strollers to pack and plays. So that support piece is really important as well. Yeah, that's cool. And y'all do stuff with people even after Baby's born, they can still stick around for a while, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So our education program that can start from the moment they find out they're pregnant, it actually has curriculum for three years. Oh, wow. So normally until their child's about two. So our baby store has clothing all the way up through to T for toddlers. That's so awesome. I know that's one thing that a lot of people kind of think that pregnancy centers are kind of just for the pregnancy part, but y'all really partner with people even afterwards to make sure that they get started.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Well, we say all the time that life decisions require life support, and so that factor is so important, especially with how much the Pregnancy Center Ministry has changed in the past year or so. Yeah, for sure. So what are some of your marketing goals when you are trying to market for this specific nonprofit? Obviously it's a lot different than us when we're marketing because trying to sell a product or a service, which I guess you're selling a service, but it's not really selling, trying to let people know about it. So how is that different for you? Well, in order to provide the answer, I kind of have to give you the foundation of saying that we're very different, and this is a lot of nonprofits where we have two primary audiences. We have our supporters that can be broken down into individuals and churches and organizations or companies, but we also have our clients, and that can be broken down to individuals and local community groups, and even other local community resources that are trying to reach the same audience and serve the same community that we are.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
So I would say our main goals, if I were to sum 'em up, is certainly brand awareness, letting everybody know who first choice is and what we do. A lot of people here in Montgomery are more familiar with the name Save A Life, and that is what we started out as in 1982, but when we became a medical center with nurses and ultrasounds, that's when we became first choice. So brand awareness is one of them. Education is a big piece. Educating supporters about what we do and how they can get involved because there's so many more ways than just financial ways to get involved. Education for the clients is a lot of people do not have just basic information about pregnancies or community resources, healthy relationships. There's a lot of different education pieces out there. And I would say the other one is promoting, and that's promoting what we do and how we can help, and that's kind of mixed in with brand awareness as well.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
But in promotion, we want to make sure we promote our intentions and our heart because no matter what choice a parent makes concerning their pregnancy, we're going to be there to support them regardless. We are a safe nonjudgmental environment and we take pride in love in our clients, no matter the decision they make. Yeah. That's awesome. I think that's such an important piece of what y'all do to kind of let people know about, because I think there's this stigma that if you don't make the choice we want you to make that we're done with you buy out the door, but that's obviously not what y'all do. You care about the person. Absolutely. That's awesome. Absolutely. Yep. So those are kind of your goals and that kind of thing, but have you seen any challenges that are unique to maybe nonprofits or specifically Christian nonprofits in the times you've been doing this?
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Sure. When it comes to being a Christian nonprofit, let me touch on that one first. Everything we do, we have a set of values and every message we put out, every event we create, every relationship we try to cultivate, we put through the filter of those values. And all of those values are based on scripture. Yes, we have standards and competencies that we keep as a medical facility, but we also have a statement of faith that we keep as Christians as far as being a nonprofit and the challenges that we have. To me, that goes back to having two primary audiences. It was really hard at first to wrap my mind around the fact that it's very different messages for our supporters, supporters, love baby pictures and baby toes and the baby store and all that. But when you are marketing to clients who are feeling some very tough emotions, a baby picture makes them feel like, oh, that's the decision they want me to make.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So it is a very different message that you're trying to send out while remaining very truthful and credible with our clients. Yeah. How do you do that? I mean, how do you support the scared mom who, or maybe she doesn't want to be a mom, how do you kind of support and promote what you can do for them and that kind of thing? Without all the cutesy baby stuff, a lot of it is focusing on their services, like what we can provide for them, what is of value to them? So both in our wording and our graphics and even the swag that we give out at a marketing event for supporters, I'll have baby booties and ultrasound pictures out where at a client event to a primarily young client base, it's lanyards and key chains. And so it's just keeping in mind, it's literally putting yourself in someone else's shoes for two different audiences.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And I think that's something that we've gotten kind of used to here at Dogwood because we do work with so many nonprofits. It's really interesting to try and figure out who are those primary audiences. That's always one of the first questions that we ask, and it's unique to see how many people maybe haven't thought about the fact that they have multiple audiences, or maybe they know that, but they're not really sure what to do with that information. So I think that's one thing that's really interesting about nonprofits, and it's really important to research and stay on top of reports regarding your audience and where they fall age and trend-wise, where the client audience is kind of narrow when it comes to age-wise. Our supporter audience is anywhere from local children's ministry, children's doing mission projects all the way up to senior citizens that have been giving to the ministry since it was created.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Well, obviously just even the marketing pieces that you use are going to change as to which audience you're appealing to. So I think it's really important to stay tuned with who you're thinking about, even if it's within the supporter base. Yeah, for sure. So what types of things do you use currently to market, email marketing, social media, that kind of thing? Again, it depends on that, the audience, but social media is a big thing, obviously, and that's something that wasn't always the case. Even when I went through my PR degree, social media was this brand new thing, and I remember my professors saying, oh, this is going to be a big deal one day. So we use social media and Instagram, and we have platforms for both audiences. We of course have websites for both audiences. We use a lot of direct mail for our supporter side.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
We do a lot of speaking engagements and table displays at churches or charity events or things like that. But we also do events for client outreach, and the big thing we're doing right now is showing up on campuses, and that's handing out literature and that's handing out swag. And so things like that. Yeah. How do college students react to you being on campus? I like to think I'm still a little relevant, but I definitely handpick who I take with me, and it helps when you have partners when you're partnered with other student organizations. For instance, at a u m, we're really connected with the Baptist Campus Ministries and at A S U we're connected with the guidance counselor office. So it helps. They give you credibility and some will just come by and pick up the information and walk on. Some have all the questions in the world, and the more transparent and real you are with people, the more quickly that rapport is going to be built.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yeah, that's awesome. A big part of y'all's marketing isn't necessarily just the getting out in front of people, social media, email marketing, the digital things that we kind of think of. A lot of y'alls stuff is getting in front of people, physically getting in front of people. And I know y'all have several different events and fundraising initiatives and that kind of thing. I know the church that I grew up at, they do several different things with y'all throughout the year, whether it's the baby bottles that you fill up with change or the, what is it, a baby shower drive that we do, and you drop off presents. So tell us about some of those things, the events and other fundraising things that you do with your supporters. So once a year, our biggest fundraising event is our annual fall gala, and we call it Celebration of Life.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
It is coming up this year on October 26th. We have anywhere from 400 to 600 people, and that's here in client testimonies and the impact that First Choice has had in the community. And it's also a time where you can share a vision of what's coming next and God's faithfulness all over it. You mentioned baby showers. We have a lot of churches that do a drive through or come and stay baby shower where they collect baby items for our baby store. You mentioned the baby bottles. People do them throughout the year, but January is sanctity of Human Life month, and so we'll have up to 10 churches running baby bottle collections during that time where they take the bottle home, they fill it up with change cash or checks, and they bring it back to us. And you'll be surprised. I mean, if you fill those bottles up, even with just good old drawer change, they equal to $25 a piece on average.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
So that's a big deal. Yeah. Other events, we at least every other year, if not every year, we have some kind of partners in ministry event. We just did a youth pastor lunch where our school program director was able to talk about sexual risk avoidance, where she's getting in the schools and sharing about that. And so it's just a way of letting churches know what we're doing and how they can come along and partner with us. We talked a little bit about your different audiences, but what about within that audience, kind of the difference between catering to the people that have been your longtime supporters versus people that trying to reap new people that haven't ever interacted with y'all? Sure. Well, there's several ways to get involved. And so that's the first thing we do is let them know you can get involved through financially supporting us through peripherally supporting us through service projects, which are one-time things, but also volunteering.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
We have several volunteers that serve a minimum of four hours a week with us, and they are the backbone of, I'm able to get my job done because someone else is answering the phone. And that's awesome. But we also have them trained to do client advocacy, so they're speaking to our clients. I mean, so I'd also say that once you let them know how they can get involved, that would be the original message for someone that hasn't previously been involved. If someone has been involved for a long time, you constantly want to update them on how their contribution is being used, and you want to show results. It's not about numbers and results for us, but we know that every number is a soul. Every number is a person that's been served and loved. And even further than that, every person is someone who has had a seed planted if they don't know that they've never heard the gospel or they don't know Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Yeah, that's awesome. I love that y'all have such a big impact on people. It's not just babies, and it's not just pregnancy. You're really interested in the person's wellbeing. My director always says, we don't want transaction, we want transformation. Yeah. That's awesome. I love that. So let's see. My last question that I had for you was how do you go about coming up with how, I guess a better way of looking at it might be how do you come up with your plan of action for marketing? So how do you take all the pieces and figure it out, whether it be for a month at a time or a year at a time? What does that process, that planning process look like? Oh gosh. So in February, I'll be here four years, and I'll be honest, the first year or two, especially with coming in right about the time covid hit, a lot of it was fly by the seat of my pants.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
But I don't necessarily suggest that. I think research is a big thing. There's actually a lot of that provide research for pregnancy centers. I think following people like you on social media to see what's working for them and what's not working for them is helpful. I think following your, however you want to say it, your competitor, your alternative or whatever, following them to see what's working for them. For us, I follow Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood has a million followers. They're doing something right on the marketing scheme. And so to be able to learn from that and apply it to what we do, I normally, I know y'all do it a month out, but I normally plan my social media two weeks out, but also have to be flexible in a parent that hasn't been in a while, brings their baby in, and I get a new picture.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
It's reorganizing to get that baby's picture out there. So it's just being aware and having that mindset. It's almost like being a journalist where you are always looking for opportunities and you got to be flexible, but if I can plan social media two weeks out, but then you have event planning, that's all year long, especially right now we are in straight up sponsor mode for the gala. Excel is a big friend of mine. Love it. Good. Yeah. When it comes to planning out stuff. But I think communication's a big part too. You want to be communicating with all the people on your staff and all the departments and the directors because you need to see what their needs are and how you can meet their needs. This is not an isolated job. You literally have your hands dipped into every department of the ministry. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
I love a good Excel file. It just makes things so much easier. It does. And it prints out so pretty. Right, exactly. It doesn't stay that way long. But yeah, I know one of the things that, like you said, this isn't practical for every single organization, but one of the things that we try to do and that Becca kind of has helped us get better at is just looking at things from a higher up view and getting a basic idea of what a year's worth looks like. For example, she has one client that does men's discipleship ministry, and sometimes it's hard for us to get him to think about month to month content, but if we have a big overarching idea for each month, then it helps Becca and also helps him to come up with, oh, so if we're focusing on fatherhood for July, isn't that when Father's Day is, or June, June, June, June, there we go for June, then that helps kind of narrow in what to focus on.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
So there's just so many different, obviously you need to be flexible and work on a well, and you mentioned the challenges of being a Christian nonprofit. When you're a Christian organization, you also have to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. And so if the Holy Spirit shuts the door, or if the Holy Spirit kicks the door wide open, you got to be willing to be obedient and follow. And sometimes that means our plans go out the window, but you have to realize that that's okay. I'm still learning to let go of my grasp because his way is always better. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. I haven't thought about that very much from the Christian standpoint of it, just because most of the people that, well, at this point, the way that my job is, I don't do a lot of social media and marketing anymore anyways, but for a lot of our clients, it is more for-profit based.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
It's selling a certain thing or whatever. So yeah, that's a really good point. Well, that's all I had for you today. That's great. I hope we didn't go too long. I know. No, we did great. Alright, everybody, well, I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. It was so fun to get to talk to Rachel. We love her around here and she is, like she said, she needs to have just a parking spot that's her parking spot. But if you like what you're hearing, you can head on over to our website, dogwood media solutions.com and check out the other blogs and resources and podcasts and all that kind of stuff that we have on our site. If you want to connect with us, you can do that on the website as well. Or you can check us out on social media. We have all of our socials linked there. And then also, please, please, if you haven't, please subscribe to our podcast. It really helps us to get things out to the people that need to see it and need to listen to it. So thanks for tuning into the Dogwood Media Solutions podcast. And until next time, happy marketing.