Case Study

Turning a Profit for a Non Profit

Search Institute

Introduction:
“Search Institute is an American Treasure” -Colin Powell, Former U.S. Secretary of State

Search Institute was founded in 1958, when a PhD student named Merton Strommen was asked to develop a survey for his dissertation to understand the concerns and needs of young people within a Christian denomination. That began an entire organization focused on the needs of children and youth that continues today.

Challenge or Problem:

When I was brought on board at Search Institute, they had been resting on the success of a popular body of research they did in the 1990s called the Developmental Assets. The Assets are a list of activities that research showed correlated with lower risk behavior in teens and young adults. This list of Assets brought them world-wide acclaim from youth workers, teachers, communities, and other researchers.

From a business perspective, Assets were their cash cow. Through their popularity, Search Institute had been able to launch a number of books, products, professional development, and speaking events. The related Developmental Assets Profile survey had been administered to millions of young people in more than 30 countries and translated in more than 30 languages.

But this was a new era for Search Institute. They were looking deeper into researching relationships that kids made with adults in their life, which they called Developmental Relationships. This was their rising star. And that called for a new marketing focus.

Solution:

Starting with their email list, we looked at analytics to identify the search term that drove the most traffic to their website. That terms was “Developmental Assets”, so we created a lead magnet using the Assets framework as a download. This in itself skyrocketed their email subscriptions and allowed us to build on the popularity of Assets.

Once we had a marketing funnel in place for this product, we were able to build an automation to send out information about Asset-related products to continue that income stream. And more importantly, we were able to introduce this audience to Developmental Relationships.

We were also able to segment subscribers based on their email click behavior and self-identification of the type of organization they were part of (schools, non-profits, government, etc). Once we had this in place, we were able to create highly targeted email marketing for promotions and new research.

We also segmented their list by the problems they encountered on a daily basis to show them how the Assets and Developmental Relationship products could help them solve these problems.

In addition, we implemented the following platforms:

Videos: Videos were used to bring people deeper into Developmental Relationships so viewers could see the results of implementing them with students in their school, community, or organization.
Social media: we used social media to connect with followers and help them apply research on a daily basis.
Products: We introduced new Developmental Relationship-based products
Website: Their website was redesigned to focus on the power of Developmental Relationships.
Webinars: Webinars were an excellent way to have researchers introduce new research and talk directly to end users. This helped people who worked with youth understand how to apply the research to their daily life. Webinars were also excellent list-builders.
Ads: We used Google Search ads to focus on problem-based searches, and social media ads to bring website traffic to webinars and download lead magnets.
PR: Search Institute’s established history of quality research made media outreach easier. We were covered in many large media outlets, including CNN, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, NYTimes, Education Week, Developmental Psychology, and Huffington Post.
TEDx Talk: The CEO was able to bring Developmental Relationships to a larger audience through a TEDx talk.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The term Developmental Relationships was non-existent when I started. It is now a widely-searched term that drives significant web traffic to their website.
A family program We introduced a family program called Keep Connected for schools and community programs, and created a separate website and other marketing materials to promote it nationwide.

Results:

As their Developmental Relationships product line and services were introduced, they grew to be more than 50% of their sales revenue. Their email list grew by more than 1200%, and the Developmental Relationships brand has become synonymous with Search Institute.

Although I had worked with other non-profit organizations in the past, this project taught me that the Trail to the Sale™ framework is as powerful in the nonprofit setting as it is with the for-profit sector.

Using the same approaches, we can create strong marketing for your nonprofit organization too!