Work Nonprofit National Policing Institute

National Policing Institute

Industry

What We Did

The Gap Between Reputation and Reach

The National Policing Institute has spent decades earning credibility in American policing. Originally founded as the National Police Foundation, NPI is a nonpartisan and independent nonprofit organization dedicated to creating excellence in policing through the development, translation, and application of research.

NPI came to Big Sea in fall 2024 needing help maximizing the use of HubSpot across their organization. Their original goals centered on maturing their fundraising program: automating donor engagement and recognition, and converting more one-time donors into monthly supporters. Their CRM needed a full audit and restructuring. Their Google Ad Grant was running at roughly 50% of available budget. Social media was inconsistent. There was no coordinated strategy connecting research, content, paid media, and email into a unified engine. NPI’s marketing team needed more than a vendor. They needed a strategic partner who could also train their team, build processes for data hygiene, and document new workflows and tool use.

A collection of screenshots of the revamped NPI website

Look no further. Trust me. When I first came across a Big Sea blog on HubSpot use in nonprofits, I thought sure, just like others, some help but not really what we need. Well, I’ve been proven very wrong. Big Sea gets it. They know it. They do it. They now help us do it. If you are a nonprofit that needs help with HubSpot, look no further. These folks are outstanding.

Jim Burch
President, National Policing Institute

InFocus suite - email, blog, and social post

A Partnership Built to Pivot

In spring 2025, NPI expanded their engagement into a Vision + Velocity retainer: a strategist who acted as their fractional CMO, paired with a full production team for execution. NPI’s marketing team gets ongoing access to strategic guidance on prioritizing campaigns, shaping messaging, and reviewing performance. Not a quarterly check-in, but a weekly working relationship.

That depth of partnership proved critical when NPI made a major strategic shift in 2026, moving primary revenue focus from fundraising to fee-for-services and repositioning consulting as their core business engine. Big Sea had the context, the relationship, and the infrastructure in place to redirect the entire marketing operation without losing momentum.

The Work

Content Strategy & Production

Big Sea produces NPI’s monthly InFocus newsletter end to end: topic research, blog article, HubSpot email build, and social posts. Beyond the newsletter, the team maintains a consistent cadence of new and refreshed SEO content targeting high-value search terms for law enforcement leadership, optimized for both traditional search and AI-generated answer surfaces. Big Sea also guides NPI’s content creation efforts, providing SEO outlines for NPI-authored articles, structuring new website sections and pages, and ensuring content architecture supports both discoverability and conversion.

Email Marketing

Big Sea rebuilt NPI’s HubSpot email infrastructure: deduplicating records, standardizing contact data, restructuring lifecycle stages, and building the automated workflows that power their communications. During the fundraising phase, that meant a full donor journey with welcome sequences for new donors, re-engagement campaigns for lapsed donors, and conversion flows to move one-time givers toward monthly giving. When NPI shifted to a consulting model, the team retooled that infrastructure around multiple promotional sequences and deepened the promotional opportunities woven into the InFocus email series, all designed to move law enforcement leaders from awareness to inquiry.

Lead Generation

Big Sea develops and manages lead gen campaigns tied to NPI’s highest-value content, with landing pages, form flows, and HubSpot automations built to capture and qualify new contacts. A national law enforcement leadership survey campaign expanded NPI’s reach into command-level audiences, using HubSpot sequences to manage outreach, qualification, and follow-up at scale.

Fundraising Support

Big Sea built NPI’s donor infrastructure in HubSpot: automated workflows, landing pages, and email sequences to welcome new donors, reconnect with lapsed supporters, and convert one-time givers to monthly commitments. This work established the data architecture and automation logic that made the later B2B pivot possible. When the strategy changed, the infrastructure was ready to be redirected.

Paid Media

Big Sea manages NPI’s full paid media footprint. The Google Ad Grant, once at roughly 50% budget utilization, now runs at near-full capacity with restructured ad groups covering every consulting service. On LinkedIn, the team uses a strategic mix of traditional campaigns, thought leadership, lead gen, and retargeting to increase reach and engagement across highly targeted audiences.

HubSpot Enablement & Automation

Aligned marketing channels with HubSpot to centralize insight and automation
Provided training, documentation, and ongoing support for internal team
Set clear KPIs and benchmarks for ongoing marketing measurement and reporting

A collection of social media posts created for NPI, accompanied by a photo of three smiling police officers

Big Sea has completely reshaped how we approach marketing and communications at our organization. Their team takes the time to truly understand their clients, identify the most effective strategies, and walk alongside them through implementation. I’ve not only seen the impact they’ve had with other organizations but also experienced it personally. What I value most is their commitment to not just doing the work, but also teaching and empowering us along the way.

Erin Vermilye
Former Senior Director of Strategy and Engagement, National Policing Institute

The Results

In Q1 2026, consulting sales meetings increased 2,400% and qualified deal creation grew 111%. The Google Ad Grant, once running at inconsistent 50% utilization, now operates at near-full capacity and converts consulting page visitors into inquiry form fills. LinkedIn campaigns reached 6,900 law enforcement agencies in Q1 2026 alone. CRM data quality improved 32%, giving NPI’s marketing team a significantly more actionable database for targeting and segmentation. When NPI reinvented their revenue model entirely, Big Sea was already inside with the context and infrastructure to make the pivot without losing ground.