Marketing a Program the Participants Don't Pay For

If your program is free to the people in it and you are still struggling to fill it, nothing is wrong with you. Free programs are harder to fill than paid ones. Price is a signal, and when you remove it you have to replace it with something else: proof, specificity and a deadline.

You are also marketing to two audiences at the same time, which almost nobody tells you. The participants have to enrol. The funder has to see that the right participants enrolled, in the right community, at the numbers in the proposal. Those two jobs pull in different directions, and most funded programs quietly optimize for the second one, filling seats with whoever is easiest to reach and discovering at report time that the story does not hold together.

The number: budget outreach as a real line, not a leftover. For a cohort-based funded program, plan on 8 to 12 percent of program cost going to recruitment in year one, falling to 4 to 6 percent once you have alumni and referral flow.

Why free is a harder sell

Three things happen when the price is zero.

Value collapses. People assume a free training is worth roughly what it costs. You have to restore the value with the things that are actually scarce: the credential, the equipment, the instructor's standing, the job on the other side. Say what the program would cost if it were not funded. "A $4,800 certification, funded to zero for this cohort" is a completely different sentence to "free training".

Commitment collapses. Free registrations no-show at rates that would end a paid program. The fix is not charging money. It is charging something else: a deposit that is refunded on completion, a written application, an interview, a required orientation. Any threshold at all filters out the people who were never coming and, oddly, raises how much the ones who stay value it.

Urgency disappears. Nobody rushes for something free, because free things feel infinitely available. Cohort dates and a hard application close are the only urgency you need, and unlike discount urgency they are true.

The two audiences, handled properly

Write for the participant. Report to the funder. Do not merge them.

Participant-facing copy should never contain the words underserved, at-risk, capacity building, stakeholder, or the funder's name in the headline. Nobody has ever enrolled in something because they recognized themselves as a target population. They enroll because of a specific outcome: a certification, a job, a skill, a license, a room full of people like them.

Funder-facing reporting needs the things participant copy will not give you unless you build them in from the start: where each participant came from, which community they live in, the cost per enrolled participant, and the story of at least three individuals told properly. Instrument this on day one. Add a "how did you hear about us" question to the application form, tag every inbound channel with a UTM, and keep a simple spreadsheet linking source to enrollment. Retrofitting it at report time is impossible, and it is the difference between renewal and a polite no.

Where funded participants actually come from

In roughly the order that works:

1. People who already asked and never started. Every funded program has a list of past inquiries, waitlists and half-finished applications. This is the highest-yield hour of work available to you and it costs nothing.
2. Institutional referrers. Workforce boards, tribal employment offices, probation and re-entry programs, community health workers, chapter houses, churches, unions, high school counsellors, employers who need the skill. One good referrer sends more people than any advertising you can afford. Treat them like partners: give them a one-page description, a link, a named contact, and tell them afterwards what happened to the people they sent.
3. Employers. If the credential leads to a job, the employer has a hiring problem and you are the solution to it. Employer-sponsored recruitment fills cohorts fast and pleases funders enormously.
4. In-person presence with a rhythm. A standing weekly or monthly open day beats sporadic events, because referrers can name a date without checking with you.
5. Free search. The Google Ad Grant gives a qualifying nonprofit $10,000 a month of search advertising. See the Ad Grant guide.
6. Paid social, last and small. Useful for a geographic radius and a specific age band, not much else. Start at a few hundred a month, and only after you know what an inquiry is worth to you.

Can the grant pay for the marketing?

Often, yes, if you stop calling it marketing.

Most funders will not fund "marketing" as a line item and will readily fund recruitment, outreach, community engagement, participant acquisition, or dissemination. Same activity, different word, and the word is not a trick — funders are guarding against overhead creep and general brand advertising, not against you finding participants for the program they are paying for.

What is usually allowed: recruitment materials, targeted advertising to reach eligible participants, community events, translation, travel for outreach, and staff time spent recruiting. What is usually not: general organizational branding, a website redesign unrelated to the program, fundraising costs, and anything that looks like lobbying. Federal awards have specific rules on advertising and public relations costs, and they turn on whether the spend is necessary to meet the requirements of the award.

Two practical moves. Put the recruitment line in the proposal budget from the beginning, with a per-participant cost you can defend. And never pay anyone a percentage of grants won; it is prohibited by most funders and considered unethical across the profession.

By Sascha Rossaint · Reviewed by Curtis Guild · August 2026

About the author

Sascha Rossaint

Founder & Head of Growth

Sascha owns growth at HolyOps — the strategy, systems and infrastructure that turn a mission into a business that can carry it. Former COO at Activation Products, with 15+ years building structure, teams and systems for teachers, institutes and conscious brands.

Reviewed by Curtis Guild, Partner & Head of Client Success.