Your nonprofit can afford one communications hire.The job is really five jobs.

The website, the email program, social media, the ad account, and event coverage each demand different skills. The budget covers one person, maybe an intern, and even if you make that hire, someone still has to build their systems, assign their work, and manage them. That someone is you, and you do not have the time. The Digital Department is the other answer: Higgens Media takes on all of it under one monthly retainer.

Start the Conversation

Learn More

How the one-person hireactually goes

You post the job: manage the website, run social media, send the newsletter, watch the ad account, cover events, design graphics. The salary attracts someone early in their career, or an intern with a semester to give. They arrive to find no systems, because nobody had time to build any before they got there.

Now you have a second job. You are training them, deciding their priorities, and evaluating work in six specialties you do not practice yourself. When they ask whether the email platform is set up right or why the ad account got flagged, the question comes to you, and you were never supposed to be the expert either. Two years in, they leave for more money, the passwords scatter, and the organization starts over with a new posting.

None of this is the hire's fault. The job was never really one job. It is web work, email work, social work, ad work, and production work, and each needs different skills and different supervision. That is why it fits an outside team that already does each of these every week better than a single hire learning them on your time.

One team, one monthly fee,all of it handled

The exact scope is set in discovery, and a typical Digital Department retainer includes:

Website management

This is a basic text element.

Email marketing, year-round.

A real program, meaning welcome sequences for new donors, regular updates through the year, and full campaign support for year-end and GivingTuesday. Supporters who hear from you in July give more in December.

Social media support.

Content creation, scheduling, and channel management, including LinkedIn for reaching board candidates, partners, and institutional funders.

Event coverage

On-site support for your gala or signature fundraiser: capture, same-week social clips, and a highlight reel that sells sponsorships for next year.

Google Ad Grant

Your Google Ad Grant or paid campaigns watched, adjusted, and reported on, with compliance handled so nothing quietly gets suspended.

A standing strategy session

Regular planning time with the team, so the work follows a calendar built around your fundraising year instead of reacting to whatever is loudest.

What you're actually buying

A communications hire costs more than the salary. Add recruiting, onboarding, software decisions nobody at the organization is equipped to make, the management hours the role demands from you, and the full restart every time the seat turns over. A capable full-time communications manager in Indiana runs $55,000 to $70,000 a year before benefits and before any of that, and one person still cannot be a developer, a video editor, a designer, and an ads specialist at once.

A Digital Department retainer typically lands at or below the cost of that one hire and covers the full range of the work. The management piece is the real difference. The team runs its own workload, checks its own output, and brings you decisions in a standing session instead of questions all day. Your systems arrive already built, because the team has set them up many times before.

Worth saying plainly: Higgens Media is a small team, not a floor of account managers, and the same people know your organization month after month. When a project calls for a specialist the team does not keep in house, Higgens Media hires that vendor and manages them directly. You make one call and get one invoice either way. And nobody leaves for a better offer and takes the institutional knowledge along, since documentation of your hosting, your vendors, and your site's history stays with the engagement year after year. Knowing your environment is a large part of what you are paying for.

What itcosts

Retainers start at $3,500 per month, scoped after discovery. The number depends on which pieces you need and how much of each. You will see the full scope and the full price in writing before anything is signed, including what happens when you need work beyond the retainer.

Annual commitments include a production bonus. Ask the team about it during discovery.

See what your digital department would cost

Bring the team your current setup: who does what now, what keeps slipping, what the budget looks like.

FAQ

Usually it is alongside them, and it makes their job survivable. A common arrangement puts your staff member on strategy, community relationships, and voice while the team handles execution: the web work, the editing, the ad accounts, the technical pieces. They stop being the person expected to know everything, and you stop being their help desk.

An intern does well with defined tasks and someone directing them, and the direction is exactly what your organization is missing. An intern instead of a team makes you the manager of six specialties. An intern alongside this team works great, and the team is happy to hand them the pieces that fit.

Then you do not need the full retainer. The individual services on this site, care plans, Ad Grant management, Media Days, exist for exactly that. The Digital Department is for organizations that need most of the list.

Retainers are usually scoped on a quarterly or annually basis. If your needs shrink, the retainer can step down to individual services rather than forcing an all-or-nothing decision.