By Craig Fitzgerald

A small marketing budget doesn't have to mean marketing on the cheap.

How the Samaritan House spent less and got more during tight times.

Samaritan House is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of fostering safety, self-sufficiency and personal growth in adults and their children through freedom from domestic abuse and homelessness. Like all organizations these days, Samaritan House is feeling the economic pinch. Giving is way down, meaning budgets are shrinking even though people need the services of non-profits more than ever. So Melissa Estrada was in a bind.

Melissa is the communications director for Samaritan House and is charged with creating that organization’s marketing materials. She felt that last year’s materials were not up to the high, glossy standards of some of the other non-profits out there, and she wanted to upgrade the look and feel for this year’s collateral. Non-profits, like most organizations, have competition, and Melissa wanted her materials to be able to stand on equal footing with those of the other non-profits that were clamoring for the same charitable donations that Samaritan House needed.

The problem, of course, is that this year’s budget was even smaller than last year’s meager marketing outlay. As so often happens in times of crisis, a solution presented itself when Melissa and her people thought about the problem in a new and unconventional way.

Instead of printing her collateral as a single job, which is how it had always been done, Melissa combined that project with another one that also happened to have a budget of its own. Tackling two projects at once would allow Melissa to save on time and printing costs by ganging the press runs.

The additional project, called Chow!, is a slow foods and beverage gala that is held each year in May. Melissa had this project’s event materials designed at the same time as the collateral, quoted as one print job, and run on the same press sheet. Doing all of this helped reduced costs by enough to allow Melissa to utilize four-color printing on all pieces. This was a considerable step-up from the previous year’s materials that were printed two-color and one-color respectively.

In the case of the collateral, Samaritan House was actually able to obtain higher quantity over the previous year’s and higher quality, all within budget. Melissa’s new piece could stand alongside the materials of much larger non-profit agencies. And her Chow! materials gave Samaritan House’s food festival fundraiser a unique identity that will stand apart from other events in Hampton Roads.

None of these successful results would have been possible if Melissa had focused only on the budget and its limitations rather than on the task to be accomplished and finding a way to make it happen. So the next time you have a challenge that needs to be solved, why not think like the can-do but cash-strapped people who spend their days helping the neediest people of all.

Craig Fitzgerald is an associate creative director with Seventh Point. His work has been recognized and applauded by the HSMAI (Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International) Platinum Award, Telly Awards, local and district Addy Awards and the Peggy Hereford Award for Airports Council International.