Back in the early 2000's I stumbled upon Jay Levinson's book "Guerilla Marketing" and I have been using his framework for nonprofits ever since. It's a perfect way to get creative on a shoestring budget. Today some major companies have used these same marketing tactics fueled by larger budgets to disrupt spaces and make significant awareness increases for specific products.
Guerrilla marketing is set apart from traditional marketing by four key characteristics:
Unique
Unexpected
Humorous
Cost-Effective
For nonprofits, the key to getting started going guerrilla is all about changing your mindset and beginning to see what resources (the book calls them "weapons") are at your fingertips. Like any good marketing plan, you need to start with goals and objectives and develop your strategy for implementing your tactics to a specific audience for a specific outcome. But with guerrilla marketing, you will be employing different tactics (like participatory experiences) and/or traditional tactics with a new spin (like billboards that play on selfies). The great thing with this type of marketing framework, the sky is the limit- not your budget.
Take a minute or two to think about how you could take a core message out of it's traditional context and place it somewhere unexpected. There are many well-known guerrilla marketing campaigns done by nonprofits and businesses that can serve as inspiration.
http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/guerrilla-marketing/122-must-see-guerilla-marketing-examples/