The First 90 Days: An Action Plan for New Marketing Directors

**Welcome to your new role.** Your first 90 days as a nonprofit marketing director will shape your entire tenure. This period is crucial for establishing credibility, earning stakeholder trust, and building momentum—all while navigating smaller budgets, leaner teams, and the pressure to drive mission-aligned impact. This action plan divides your opening quarter into three focused phases, helping you launch strong without burning out.

Phase 1: Days 1–30 — Discovery & Relationship Building

Spend these initial weeks understanding the landscape before implementing major changes. Right now, your mission is to learn, not lead.

Your Discovery Checklist

Complete HR and compliance onboarding — Handle the basics immediately so you can shift focus to strategy. This means understanding organizational policies, securing tech access, and wrapping up administrative requirements (Ann Green, March 2025).

Schedule 1:1 meetings with key stakeholders — Connect with your CEO/ED, board members, program leaders, development staff, and department heads. Ask about their biggest challenges, priorities, and what they expect from marketing. These conversations uncover political dynamics and help you spot allies and potential friction points (Kwanzoo).

Audit your current state — Examine existing campaigns, email lists, website analytics, social channels, and your marketing tech stack. Fight the temptation to overhaul everything immediately. Instead, document your findings: What’s effective? What’s broken? What’s absent? (Kwanzoo).

Understand your donor base — Dig into giving data, demographics, and retention rates. This intelligence will inform your strategy for months ahead. If you’re using fundraising software, explore the analytics dashboard thoroughly.

Identify quick wins — Look for low-effort, high-impact opportunities like fixing broken donation links or optimizing email subject lines. These build early credibility (Kwanzoo).

Protip: Be strategic about scheduling those 1:1s. Begin with your direct manager and executive director, then expand to program heads and development staff. Ask everyone: “What would success for marketing look like to you in the next year?” Write down their responses—you’ll spot patterns that reveal your true priorities (Etumos, February 2024).

Phase 2: Days 31–60 — Analysis, Strategy & Activation

Time to synthesize your discoveries and take action. This phase transitions you from listening to doing, guided by data.

Establish Your Success Metrics

Before launching campaigns, define what success actually means. Collaborate with stakeholders to prioritize metrics that matter most:

Metric	Why It Matters	Nonprofit Benchmark
Online donation growth	Direct revenue impact	Organizations using modern fundraising platforms achieve 73% year-over-year growth, 3x the industry benchmark (Funraise)
Recurring donation rate	Predictable, sustainable revenue	Top-performing nonprofits achieve 52% recurring revenue growth annually (Funraise)
Email open rate	Donor engagement signal	Target 25%+ for regular communications
Website conversion rate	Giving experience quality	Well-optimized forms achieve 50% conversion among engaged visitors (Funraise)
Donor retention rate	Long-term sustainability	Focus on retention, not just acquisition
Cost per dollar raised	Marketing efficiency	Benchmark against your own historical data first

Build Your Marketing Roadmap

Develop a prioritized list of 3–5 initiatives connected to organizational revenue goals. For each one, weigh effort against impact (Etumos, February 2024). Most nonprofits benefit from:

Optimize the donation experience — Test form design, payment methods (including digital wallets), and checkout flows. Streamlining consistently delivers results.

Recurring giving campaigns — Organizations using modern platforms see 52% annual growth in recurring revenue (Funraise), making this worthy of immediate attention. Craft messaging around sustainability and lasting impact.

Content calendar development — Plan mission-driven storytelling that nurtures donor relationships year-round, not just during fundraising pushes.

Marketing technology evaluation — Do you need new tools, or better integration of what you have? According to nonprofit tech experts, consolidation beats accumulation (Kwanzoo).

Start Testing Early

Perfect conditions never arrive. Run small-scale A/B tests on email subject lines, donation page copy, and social messaging. Track what works and what doesn’t (Kwanzoo).

AI Prompt: Build Your 90-Day Marketing Plan

Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or try our specialized tools and calculators built specifically for nonprofit marketing:

I'm a new marketing director at a nonprofit organization. Help me create a detailed 90-day action plan based on these specifics:

- Organization type/mission: [INSERT YOUR NONPROFIT'S MISSION]
- Current marketing team size: [INSERT NUMBER OR "just me"]
- Top organizational priority for this year: [INSERT PRIORITY - e.g., "increase recurring donors," "launch new program," "rebrand"]
- Biggest current marketing challenge: [INSERT CHALLENGE - e.g., "outdated website," "low email engagement," "no social media presence"]

Please create a week-by-week breakdown of priorities, stakeholder meetings I should schedule, metrics I should track, and quick wins I can achieve in the first 90 days. Include specific action items and expected outcomes.

This gives you a customized roadmap accounting for your organization’s unique situation and constraints.

Phase 3: Days 61–90 — Execution & Optimization

You’re entering optimization mode. With baselines established and initial tests complete, it’s time to scale what’s working.

Rally Your Team Around Vision

A critical day-90 milestone is team alignment. Gather your marketing team to discuss:

Your marketing vision and operating principles — What does success look like? Which values guide your decisions?

Clear roles and responsibilities — Everyone needs to know their accountability areas (Ann Green, March 2025).

Shared metrics and reporting cadence — Monthly check-ins maintain focus and keep everyone informed.

Plan Integrated Campaigns

Move beyond isolated social media or email efforts. Design integrated campaigns combining email, website, social, and peer-to-peer fundraising (Kwanzoo).

Community is the defining trend for nonprofit fundraising in 2026 (Funraise, November 2025). Create campaigns that invite donors into a movement, not just transactional relationships. For peer-to-peer efforts, leverage social platforms—organizations see an 83% increase in fundraiser engagement with Facebook integration (Funraise).

Protip: Share your roadmap transparently with leadership. Communicate not just what you’re doing, but why and what impact you anticipate. Include the “opportunity cost” of not pursuing certain initiatives—this helps leadership grasp urgency and trade-offs (Etumos, February 2024).

Establish Governance & Processes

Document your marketing approval workflows, campaign timelines, and asset libraries. This prevents bottlenecks and positions your team for growth (Kwanzoo). Since nonprofit teams run lean, automation matters: deploy email workflows and donor portal tools to minimize manual work and free your team for relationship-building.

If your organization hasn’t explored modern fundraising platforms, now’s the moment to evaluate options. Funraise offers a free tier perfect for testing capabilities without commitment—and the data shows nonprofits using comprehensive platforms significantly outperform those juggling multiple disconnected tools.

Document Your Strategy

By day 90, you need a comprehensive marketing strategy document covering:

• current state assessment and key findings,
• 12-month roadmap with quarterly milestones,
• budget allocation and resource plan,
• metrics dashboard and reporting structure,
• team development and hiring plan (if needed).

This document becomes both your north star and accountability tool.

Nonprofit-Specific Considerations

Your first 90 days unfold within a nonprofit context that differs fundamentally from for-profit marketing:

Limited Resources, High Stakes: You’re probably doing more with less. Prioritize ruthlessly and focus on initiatives directly impacting revenue and mission.

Donor Relationships First: Nonprofit marketing isn’t just awareness—it’s about stewardship and community. Every campaign should strengthen relationships, not merely extract donations. Organizations practicing personalized donor care see 73% online donation growth (Funraise).

Team Burnout Risk: Nonprofit staff, including marketers, face elevated turnover and burnout (Funraise, November 2025). Model healthy work habits. Decline non-essential requests. Celebrate small wins and invest in your team’s professional development.

Your 90-Day Success Checklist

By day 90, you should have:

• met 1:1 with every key stakeholder,
• completed a full organizational and marketing audit,
• identified 3–5 priority initiatives with clear success metrics,
• launched at least one test campaign and documented results,
• established reporting cadence and performance dashboard,
• created integrated marketing calendar for next quarter,
• built alignment and trust with your team,
• documented strategy in writing for organizational reference.

Your first 90 days establish the foundation for lasting impact. Nobody expects you to transform fundraising overnight—they expect you to listen, learn, and build groundwork for sustainable growth. Approach this period with curiosity over urgency. Ask questions. Nurture relationships. Let data guide your decisions.

Thriving nonprofits have marketing directors who recognize that fundraising is fundamentally about relationships, and relationships require time. Build your strategy on solid foundations, leverage the right technology to amplify your small team’s impact, and remember: your goal isn’t doing everything—it’s doing the right things well.

You’ve got this.