Freedom Stones: A Start-up with Good Marketing?

Last week, some friends of mine invited me to check out the website of their start-up non-profit organization, Freedom Stones.

I was blown away.

Oftentimes, when a non-profit organization is just beginning, its marketing and promotional efforts are rather primitive. Its web presence consists of a Facebook fan page, or perhaps a website that looks okay by 1995 standards. Its print materials are 8.5" x 11" flyers that were created and printed from the founder's home computer. Its advertising occurs at random through garage-sale-signs and word-of-mouth.

And we, the public, are okay with that. We realize that the people who found non-profit organizations are usually passionate and skilled in issues like social justice, and are rarely passionate and skilled in marketing. We are happy that they are investing their initial time and energy and precious start-up capital in the operations of helping people, even if it means that their marketing efforts lag behind for a while. All of this is par for the course with a new non-profit organization. If the cause is a worthy one, we will support the organization anyway.

So marketing efforts like those of Freedom Stones come as quite a surprise.

Freedom Stones was incorporated just last year, and the site went live just a few weeks before I first looked at it. When I visited the site, I was thoroughly impressed. The design is beautiful - great layout, great colors, great photos and texture, terrific overall aesthetics. The navigation and organization are tight and easy to follow. The site is full of thick, rich, helpful, purposeful information - about the organization, its work, its staff, the issues it fights, the people it helps, the products it sells, and the ways in which supporters can get involved. And the site has a functional shopping cart system - not just a Paypal setup - for purchasing items and making donations.

Plus, the Freedom Stones website links to social media - a Facebook cause, a Twitter account (@FreedomStones), and the Freedom Stones blog. One might expect these accounts to have been thrown together, and to contain only a handful of posts about Freedom Stones.

Instead, Freedom Stones seems to have strategically planned and implemented its use of social media. The Facebook cause already has 664 members, with regular posts over the past 10 months. The Twitter account seems to have begun in mid-January, but Freedom Stones has been faithful to tweet well and often since then. And the blog, while low on posts as of yet, seems to be off to a great start.

When I see marketing efforts that look like this, I feel more comfortable with and confident in the non-profit. It seems that the non-profit is already well-established; that the founders are serious about this cause; that they have been thoughtful and strategic, and that they understand the "business" of running a non-profit; that this non-profit is well-funded, well-supported, and well-stewarded - that the non-profit is not destined to fail in six months due to poor money management or poor operational decisions.

I certainly do not begrudge start-up non-profits whose marketing efforts have not yet reached this level of quality. However, it seems that the founders of Freedom Stones realize the importance of having supporters to bring the work and mission of Freedom Stones to fruition. They have given some thought to how they will reach, attract, and communicate with supporters, in order to provide the financial and emotional legs for their ministry to stand.

And I fully expect that stand it shall.