In the Library, Marketing and Development go Hand in Hand

Part one of a guest post by Essraa Nawar.

Essraa Nawar is the inaugural recipient of the United for Libraries/SAGE Academic Friend Conference Grant and will be joining us at ALA Annual this year as a result. This is her first time at the conference, and thanks to this grant, she will have the opportunity to present at a poster session titled “Library Annual Reports made easy.” Wanting to learn more about her successful work, we’ve asked her to share some insights.  

 A few weeks ago, I was in Kansas City, MO attending the Academic Library Advancement and Development Network (ALADN) annual conference and presented a session entitled “Bringing Events & Programming to Life”  along with Charlene Baldwin, Dean of the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University. Charlene and I demonstrated how our library events and exhibits program strives to collaborate with other departments on campus, different library groups, friends, library and university donors, trustees and senior administrators, as well as other universities and institutes to bring programming to life. These programs result in partnerships, sponsorships and donations to the library and sometimes to other departments on campus. 

For the past three years that I have personally attended this conference, I have noticed that there were more communications and marketing professionals attending and presenting at the conference each year than the year before. I found this trend intriguing. 

First of all, what is ALADN? 

Back in 1995, representatives from academic and research libraries from the United States decided to form a continental network, the Academic Library Advancement and Development Network. Known as ALADN, the group was designed to offer networking and mutual problem-solving for professionals involved in advancement and development for academic and research libraries through an annual conference, electronic listserv participation and personal contacts. ALADN was mainly focused on professionals involved in development and advancement (development officers, special collections librarians, library administrators and deans) for academic libraries in North America. Slowly but surely, the program and the attendees have grown to include communications and marketing professionals in the same capacity as development and advancement professionals and deans. 

This year, keynote speakers Heidi Hancock & David Svet of MOSAIC Non-Profit Development, offered a presentation entitled  “One Team: Aligning Marketing & Fundraising”. Heidi and David talked about how important it is to effectively integrate the work of marketing and fundraising departments in an effort to meet common goals and improve fundraising efforts. 

I was recently appointed to be the development coordinator at Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University after serving as the assistant to the dean for communications and marketing, so I can speak to this theory in both capacities and from both perspectives. For me, without marketing, development cannot exist and without development, marketing is a missed opportunity and investment of time and budget. 

What is Development in the Library? 

Development is the planning, coordination and implementation of fundraising activities in order to identify, cultivate, solicit and track fundraising prospects and proposals consistent with approved fundraising goals. 

Development officers are pressed to interface with marketing and communication departments, yet it is extremely important that this interface be strategic because a development plan will not be relevant and successful until it finds its legitimate way. The main goal for development is to raise funds that will help the organization in not just its short-term projects but in the long run, too. 

What is Marketing in the Library? 

The definition of marketing by the UK-Chartered Institute of Marketing states: “Marketing is the management process which identifies, anticipates and supplies customer requirements efficiently…”. Thus the main goal of marketing involves finding out what the users want, then setting out to meet those needs. People in development assess the needs of the prospects and donors and try to fulfill them in the best possible way. Thus, they need the marketing expertise to be able to achieve that goal. Whether it is through a brochure that needs to be created, a website that needs to be built or a press release that needs to be drafted, nothing can be achieved without an appropriate joint marketing and communications strategy. 

However, in order to do this effectively, development professionals need to embrace the total marketing functions that involve research, analysis, planning and promotion. Marketing  professionals need to embrace the goals of development officers, too. 

How can development and marketing work hand in hand? 

Every other year, the Association of College & Research Libraries Planning and Review Committee produces a document on top trends in academic libraries. This year, after numerous discussions and literature reviews, the committee decided upon a unifying theme for current trends: deeper collaboration (College & Research Libraries News, vol. 75, no. 6, June 2014, p. 294-302). To access the full article, please visit: http://crln.acrl.org/content/75/6/294.full 

As a strong believer of collaboration myself, I totally embraced the report and all that it had to offer: from initiative ideas to success stories. I found it reassuring that we had planned to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Leatherby Libraries’ because collaboration is our main theme for this coming year. We are committed to collaborate and create partnerships with all schools and colleges and have selected academic and administrative departments in an effort to provide a platform for identifying new gifts to support the library, to highlight our mutual successes, and to lay the groundwork for the future of library services at Chapman University. 

As we partner with external departments, we will continue to collaborate internally to align our marketing and development strategies. While marketing has traditionally been viewed as a set of strategies and techniques that belong to members outside of development, now marketing and development here go hand in hand. Development and marketing will work collaboratively in order to ensure the correct branding and representation of the library both online and in all printed materials.  Here is an example of our first collaboration with our strategic marketing and communications departments, that resulted in a wonderful short movie titled “Illuminating Leatherby Libraries”. 

In short, marketing the library should  be designed in a strategic way to attract new prospects, while development  should turn those prospects into regular, loyal donors who will continue to support the library. Organizations that combine marketing and development successfully are those who get and keep loyal donors and through this partnership, attract even more. 

Special thanks to the dean of the Leatherby Libraries, Charlene Baldwin for her editing tips. 

Read Part two in Essraa’s series: Tips for bringing marketing and development together in your library.