One of the messages I keep delivering to the nonprofit sector is simple, if obvious: If they don’t know who you are and what you do, they won’t support you. These days, that fact has greater meaning than usual – funds are scarce, competition is stiff, demands on many nonprofits to provide service and support are higher than ever, so generating support isn’t just important, it’s critical.

Here’s a good tool to use when you want to generate news media exposure for your organization and its cause: Look for trends and patterns.

There’s nothing mysterious about this technique. If you consume any news media at all, you know they cover trends frequently, reporting on everything from the rise and fall of the Dow Jones average to the changes in school attendance in flu season. Many, many nonprofits have the ability to spot trends and they ought to use that ability to generate coverage. Here are some recent examples which will help you figure out what to look for:

In food banks across the nation, demand is rising higher and higher but resources aren’t keeping pace with that demand;

As unemployment continues to rise or remain at very high levels, more and more folks without job-based insurance are turning to nonprofit clinics and hospital emergency rooms for healthcare;

Arts programs from community theaters to orchestras, from museums to festivals, are cutting back or canceling performances, exhibits and shows;

In many communities, shared donation programs like United Way or community foundations are generating far less income than they once did and those who benefit from these fundraising campaigns are suffering.

These trends are all newsworthy and they all flow from a single source, the nonprofit universe. Whether as a free-standing story (“Local Nonprofit Suffers Losses, Community Service Diminished”) or as part of a “wrap around” story (“Area Clinics, Museums, After-School Programs All Facing Hard Times”), aggressive nonprofits should spend the time it takes to catalog evidence of trends and then offer the results to local media.

Telling the public at large who you are and what you do is always a good idea – in tough times, finding and exploiting trends is an excellent way to keep your organization healthy and your cause well-served.