Resources / Ripples & Wipeouts

Here is the latest update on the activities of the Nonprofit Marketing class at Milano: The New School for Management and Urban Policy.  The students are developing a marketing strategy for our pro bono client, The Global Partnership for Afghanistan.

We began our most recent class by reviewing the latest positioning statement.  There was a groan from one classmate who didn’t like the idea of saying “tree products,” while someone else whispered, “They do more than orchards and woodlots.” But ‘the positioning statement can’t be all things to all people’, said Bonnie. So we left it behind for the moment and moved onto reviewing GPFA’s core message themes based on all our research.

The real fun stuff was talking tactics to move GPFA’s marketing strategy.  Having gotten feedback from the client on target audiences, we were busy with ideas that will be the means to draw people to GPFA’s ends.  The strategy is to reach our primary audience of progressive religious organizations and secondary audience of young professionals; the tactics are the explicit actions towards achieving GPFA’s goals.

In an energetic session, we threw out ideas ranging from Groundhog Day special events, house parties, learning toolkits for young people, Afghan food tasting during restaurant week to seed packets and bookmark gifts (that you can plant)! The ideas were all over the place, but they were meant to get the creative juices flowing. By the end of class, most of us had a specific bit of research to pursue to present cost and feasibility of various ideas in our next session. 

During the past week we’ve also worked on coming up with memorable boilerplate statements. The boilerplate should communicate “this is what we do” in a few catchy words or phrases. This statement will be attached to all things GPFA, such as brochures, newsletters, web pages, email signatures and any other official communication or product.  Please check back for our next update in about a week.

--Arpan Munier