Nonprofits Need to Stop Treating Visibility Like a Vanity Metric

Dear nonprofit leaders, fundraisers, and marketing teams,

There is a question nonprofits love to ask after spending money on anything that isn't obviously fundraising: "But how much money did it raise?"

It's a fair question. We have budgets to balance, boards to answer to, and missions that require actual money to operate. I'm a fundraiser. I am never going to tell an organization that revenue doesn't matter.

But I do think we've gotten so obsessed with proving immediate return on investment that we've started undervaluing something fundraising absolutely depends on: people knowing who the hell you are.

Visibility gets dismissed surprisingly easily in our sector. Impressions are called vanity metrics. Marketing is treated as an expense. Community events are scrutinized because the ticket revenue didn't cover every staff hour. Communications teams are asked to prove how many donations came directly from a social media post. If we can't draw a straight line from an activity to a check, we start wondering whether it was worth doing.

Meanwhile, we're asking why more people don't donate to us. They can't invest in an organization they don't know exists.

Visibility Isn't the Finish Line

To be clear, I don't think 100,000 Instagram impressions automatically mean your organization accomplished something meaningful. Visibility without strategy absolutely can become vanity.

Going viral doesn't necessarily raise money. A packed event doesn't necessarily create donors. A press mention doesn't necessarily build a relationship. If thousands of people see your organization and you do absolutely nothing with that attention, congratulations on your impressions.

But that's an argument for doing something with visibility, not an argument that visibility has no value.

I think about visibility as the beginning of opportunity.

Someone sees your organization at a community event. A business owner hears your Executive Director speak on a panel. A foundation staff member notices your work through a partner organization. A prospective donor keeps seeing your name appear in conversations they care about. A volunteer has such a great experience that they bring three friends next time.

None of those interactions may produce revenue that day. That doesn't make them worthless. It means the relationship hasn't finished developing yet.

Fundraising professionals understand this when we're talking about major gifts. We would never expect every first meeting with a prospective major donor to end with a check. We cultivate. We steward. We create opportunities for people to experience the mission. We build familiarity and trust before asking someone to make a significant investment.

Then somehow we forget all of that when we're evaluating marketing, communications, events, and community engagement.

Sometimes the Event Raised More Than Money

I've watched this shift happen with a client producing a large community event.

The event is expensive. There are vendors, production costs, staff time, marketing, logistics, and countless details required to create something the community actually wants to attend. When you're staring at those expenses on a spreadsheet, it's easy to start asking whether the event is financially worth it.

And honestly? Organizations should ask that question. But it shouldn't be the only question.

As planning progressed, the conversation started to expand beyond direct event revenue. The organization wasn't simply producing an event. It was putting its mission in front of thousands of people. It was creating new relationships with businesses, sponsors, community organizations, volunteers, public leaders, prospective supporters, and people who may never have interacted with the organization otherwise.

The event was creating visibility. More importantly, it was creating proximity. That's where things get interesting.

A corporate sponsor gets to experience the organization differently than they would through a sponsorship proposal. A community partner sees an opportunity to collaborate. Someone attends because they want to have fun and leaves knowing there is an organization they can turn to, or support. A donor brings a friend. A volunteer discovers a deeper connection to the mission. People start talking about the organization in rooms where its staff aren't present.

You may not be able to assign all of that neatly to one revenue line. But I'd have a hard time arguing it has nothing to do with fundraising.

I Want People Talking About You When You're Not in the Room

One of my favorite indicators of fundraising momentum is when an organization starts hearing some version of, "Someone told me I should talk to you."

That sentence is gold!! It means your reputation has started traveling without you.

That's what visibility can do when it's paired with meaningful work and strong relationships. Your organization becomes familiar enough that people remember it when an opportunity arises. A company is looking for a community partner, and someone says your name. A funder starts exploring an issue area and already knows your work. Someone asks a board member where they should make a charitable gift, and your organization immediately comes to mind.

That kind of awareness is difficult to capture in a traditional fundraising report because attribution gets messy. Which Instagram post produced the introduction? Which event conversation eventually became the sponsorship? Which newsletter made someone remember your organization six months later?

Sometimes the answer is all of them. Fundraising rarely happens in the perfectly linear way our spreadsheets would like it to.

People encounter us, watch us, experience us, hear about us from people they trust, and gradually decide that they want to become part of what we're doing.

Visibility helps create the environment where those relationships can begin.

Marketing and Fundraising Are Not Separate Universes

This is also why I think the wall between Development and Marketing & Communications can be so damaging.

Development is trying to deepen relationships with people who care about the mission. Marketing is trying to help people understand, remember, and engage with the mission.

Those functions should be talking to each other constantly. I always say Fundraising and Marketing are cousins!! They’re not the same (obviously) but they are related!

Communications can help prospective donors encounter your work before a fundraiser ever reaches out. Events can create experiences Development can cultivate afterward. Media coverage can build organizational credibility. Social media can keep supporters connected between solicitations. Community partnerships can introduce entirely new audiences to your work.

None of that replaces fundraising. It makes fundraising easier.

A Development Director trying to build relationships around an organization nobody has heard of has a very different job from one representing an organization that people already recognize, trust, and talk about.

Visibility isn't the fundraising strategy. It's part of the fundraising infrastructure.

Measure What Visibility Makes Possible

So no, I'm not suggesting nonprofits stop measuring results and start celebrating impressions for the sake of impressions. I'm suggesting we ask better questions:

Did the event introduce new people to the organization? Did those people stay connected afterward? Did visibility create new partnership conversations? Did our email audience grow? Did sponsors deepen their engagement? Did volunteers return? Did someone request a meeting? Did a board member make an introduction because they had something exciting to share? Did a first-time attendee become a donor six months later?

Those are much more interesting measures of visibility than likes alone. And they require something from us after the attention arrives.

If 2,000 new people encounter your organization at an event and nobody has thought about what happens next, you don't have a visibility problem. You have a follow-up problem.

If a media story sends hundreds of people to your website but there is no clear way to engage, subscribe, volunteer, attend, or give, the media placement didn't fail. Your pipeline did.

Visibility creates an opening. Fundraising still has to walk through it.

Ask a Bigger Question

I'm still going to ask how much your event raised. I'm still going to look at fundraising ROI. I'm still going to care whether the resources you're investing are producing results.

But I'm also going to ask what else happened.

Who met you?

Who remembered you?

Who partnered with you?

Who came back?

Who started talking about you?

Who entered your orbit who wasn't there before?

And, most importantly, what are you going to do with those relationships now?

Because sometimes "How much money did it raise?" is simply too small a question for what you actually accomplished.

Visibility isn't valuable because people saw you. It's valuable because of what becomes possible once they do.

Sincerely,

Queers

Queer For Hire provides fundraising support to Queer nonprofits, LGBTQIA+ cultural competency to straight-led organizations and corporations, and individual coaching for Queer professionals.

Learn about our Fundraising Services <here> – we’ll lead or support your fundraising efforts, whether you need general support or want to focus on raising money from and for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Learn about our Fundraising Trainings <here> – we can coach your board, staff, and fundraising team on how to fundraise and how to engage LGBTQIA+ donors.

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