Editors Note: This article is Part Two of Trey Ryder’s excellent article, “How To Start and Market Your Own Non-Profit Organization.” Part One of the article was featured in last week’s issue. To read Part One, go to aweber.com/t/IpkM8
In Part One of this article, Trey Ryder introduced us to “one of the best-kept secrets in lawyer marketing.” Forming your own non-profit organization gives you a major marketing advantage. While serving a need in the community as well.
There are multiple ways to market your non-profit organization. Here are numerous examples:
- Offer to mail or email written information about your subject to anyone who contacts your office. This helps you identify potential members and build your mailing list. You can offer these materials through public service announcements, advertising, newspaper and online publications, interviews on the TV news and radio talk shows, direct mail to interested parties and referral sources, and your website.
- Offer seminars presented by respected authorities and include fliers about your seminars in the packets you mail. Start by inviting your advisory board members and referring professionals to speak. If the geographical area you serve is large, the offer webinars for people who cannot attend your meeting in person.
- Make sure you, as the group’s legal advisor and founder, take the opportunity to speak on legal issues affecting your group. Also, announce that you’re always available to discuss legal matters, even if you are not the featured speaker at that meeting.
- Start a telephone answer-line staffed by volunteers to offer advice and resources to people who need help. The answer-line could be available only a few hours each week or 24-hours a day. Then promote the answer-line so you receive calls from your target audience. If the person calls another group, you may lose a prospective client. So you have a lot to gain by attracting the call before anybody else.
- Send a free monthly newsletter by hard-copy or email to everyone on your mailing list. Your newsletter could include a president’s message, articles by referring professionals, a question/ answer column, and notices of meetings and events. Also, you can offer your free educational materials and ask for mailings, volunteers to help with your mailing and answer-line.
- Register your group with information and referral agencies, chambers of commerce, libraries, and other places where people go for information. Tell them the resources you have available, including your written materials, monthly speakers, support groups and newsletter.
- Set up information booths at malls and trade shows. A booth for a non-profit group that helps people solve problems creates a much better appearance than a booth for attorney in search of new clients.
- Send a memo of expertise to the media. Invite inquiries about your organization. Offer your group and its professionals at resources when editors have questions. Ask editors to refer people who need information and services.
- Mail and email news releases to the media at least monthly. Enlist the media’s help to educate the public, invite people to meetings, quote upcoming speakers, introduce your answer-line, and offer your free newsletter and announce future events. Invite reporters to attend your monthly meetings so they can write articles about the speaker’s subject. The more exposure you get the more prospective clients you attract, and the more value you provide to people in the community.
- Set up a website where you post information and resources available to your target audience, announce monthly meetings, and introduce members of your advisory board with their biographies and photos. Also, post articles written by advisory board members, news releases that you’ve sent to the media, and back issues of your newsletter. In most cases, the more information you have on your website, the higher search engine ranking you’ll get. Also, make search engines aware of your website through their submission procedure.
Contact organizations and professionals who have an interest in your subject and ask them to include a link on their website that takes people to your group’s website. The more links you have coming back to your site from other respected websites, the higher your search engine ranking.
The list of marketing ideas is nearly endless. The point is to offer as much as you can in helpful, charitable ways so the media supports your efforts and gives you publicity. And the more people you help, the more pleasure you get from assisting persons with problems.
In practice, here’s one example of how this might work:
You want to attract clients with brain and spinal injuries. You form the Kansas City Foundation for Brain and Spinal Injuries, with you as the founder and chairperson. Next, you form an advisory board, so you invite as members prominent physicians, psychologists, and anyone else you believe has contact with the patients you want to reach.
Then you send news releases to all local media (print and broadcast) announcing the formation of your group and offering information to people you can help. As a result, you gain publicity throughout the geographical area you serve.
Next, schedule monthly meetings, asking one member of your advisory board to speak at each meeting. Prior to each meeting, send news releases to the media announcing the meeting, inviting interested persons to attend, and going into detail about the speaker and what he or she will present.
It’s likely your news release or an announcement will wind up in print, perhaps on a few publications. Naturally, your speaker is thrilled to be the subject of an article in the newspaper and perhaps, interviews on radio and TV.
When the meeting begins, you’re the host. You open with remarks, introduce the new members and visitors, conduct business, and introduce this month’s speaker. Even when you aren’t the guest speaker, you play a prominent role at each monthly meeting because you are the group’s chairperson.
Each month, as a result of your news releases, your advisory board gets publicity because of their knowledge, skill, judgement and experience. And, occasionally, you are the monthly speaker, addressing legal topics of interest to the families and friends of victims with head, brain or spinal injuries.
Bottom line: You are the person with the highest profile because you are the group’s founder and spokesperson. You surround yourself with professionals who can help the people you want to reach. You invite onto your advisory board professionals who can refer clients to you. And, if you wish, you can include on your advisory board other attorneys who practice in your area of law
From then on, it’s; all marketing. The higher your group’s profile, the more people you can help and the more new members you’ll attract. At least some of those new members will be qualified prospects for your legal service.
I’m not suggesting that you use the non-profit organization as a “front” for your law practice. Instead, I’m suggesting that you form and operate and honest-to-goodness non-profit organization that benefits a specific group of people. The fact that you are key player in the non-profit group—since you are founder and president—means you benefit from building relationships with everyone you meet. This includes the professionals you invite onto your advisory board and the relationships you build with the people you help, which can lead to lawyers/client relationships.
I can count on one hand the number of lawyers I know who have started their own non-profit organizations. This certainly doesn’t mean they don’t work. Instead, it emphasizes the number of opportunities available for you.
A legitimate non-profit organization can easily gain ongoing media publicity. All you do is maintain an education-based marketing program that attracts members and recognized professionals to your organization. And send out news releases and newsletters so your group maintains a high local, statewide or nationwide profile.
So… if you want to attract a specific type of prospects—and if you want to help those people solve their problems—start your own non-profit group. With good marketing, your group could attract new clients from the many prospects you meet and the referral relationships you build. Plus, you’ll make a substantial difference in people’s lives, a feeling that you’ll enjoy for a lifetime.
