When asked to justify your marketing and communications work

I am sometimes fascinated by the cluelessness of some nonprofit leaders. I recently heard about someone in the marketing and communications team of a medium-sized charity who had been asked by his boss to demonstrate in quantitative means why there should be a communications manager. In other words, the CEO of the organization was asking the marketing manager to prove that it was worth the investment in dollars and cents.

In response, the marketing manager claimed that his work had been directly related to some fundraisers and that the success of the events was a direct result of the work. That, in turn, was disputed because a “team” put on those events and there was no direct link between the marketing manager and the organization’s revenue.

The nonprofit CEO’s thinking is absurd.

How can any CEO ask a team member to financially justify their own position? It makes no sense and is a sign of a larger problem within the nonprofit that apparently has something to do with the leader and not the marketing and communications manager.

I can’t imagine asking someone on my team to financially justify their position.

That’s my job!

Either I believe that each team member in my organization has value and plays a part of the larger whole, even if they are not directly responsible for the end result, or I don’t.

If you find yourself in the unfortunate circumstance of having to prove yourself to an uninformed CEO (while looking for another job with an organization that values ​​your talents), here are some of the ways you can demonstrate your worth.

If your CEO wants data, give them lots of data.

• Look at social networks and get reports on different time periods or campaigns so you can show how your organization is performing in terms of impressions, likes, comments, retweets, etc.
• Take a look at the emails you’ve sent in support of the fundraising team (you know, the ones you’re probably writing for the fundraising group) and see the open and click rates. Also, take a look at the dollar value of these emails for donations received and the number of donors.
• Go to your website and see statistics on how many people visit your site, especially if it is linked to Google Analytics. Even if your developer created your site, I bet you and your marketing team worked on it too.
• If you have any collateral (brochures, letters, annual reports, emails, Facebook pages, videos) that you worked on and helped drive traffic, then the impressions and donations that came through all those articles were driven by your work (even if you collaborated with others as a team).
• Take a look at consultancy costs in your area for a talented external marketing and communications team. Request two or three bids from outside vendors, then see how quickly your nonprofit gets a bargain. I bet your boss has no idea how much would be spent if marketing and communications were outsourced entirely.

I’m not sure what’s up with some nonprofit CEOs and why they devalue marketing and communications. If you’ve been in the business for a while, I’m sure you’ve heard of some of the horror stories about marketing groups having to prove themselves.

However, if this happens to you or your computer, it’s bad news. It kills morale, and the reality is that there will probably never be anything you can say or do to “prove” your worth. Once a CEO asks you to prove yourself, the very question means you’re down.

The fault is not yours, but the CEO who fundamentally does not understand the role of marketing and communications for your organization and how it increases brand awareness and supports the fundraising function.