Of course your work doesn’t stop once you have a list.

• You must weigh each audience against your organization’s mission and objectives and assess their relative power for good (or harm).
• You must understand interconnections and spheres of influence between stakeholder groups.
• You must build a comprehensive list, and then you must pare it down to the most important (as we all know your resources are often constrained!) and leveraged audiences.
• And then you must get inside their heads and habits and communicate “where they live” and where their hearts are.

No small feat.

But you wouldn’t be a social entrepreneur if you weren’t willing to climb a few mountains or read a few minds…

An example:

Several years ago I worked for a growing non-profit organization in San Francisco called the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, with a mission of accelerating women-led businesses in the high tech and life sciences sectors.

Our primary stakeholders included people and/or organizations that could help our organization directly (with funding, volunteers, business services, etc.) and those that could provide support and resources for our main constituents (women entrepreneurs).

Thus, our stakeholder list looked something like this:

• Women entrepreneurs (founders and executives of high growth tech or biotech companies)
• Women business executives (who might become entrepreneurs or who had experience that was relevant to entrepreneurs and were willing to mentor and provide support)
• Venture capitalists (who could provide funding and/or business expertise for women entrepreneurs)
• Service provides (lawyers, investment bankers, web design firms, marketing consultants, PR agencies, etc. – folks that provided services critical to a fledgling business)
• Foundations, corporations and high net worth individuals (for FWE’s own funding needs)
• Media (to tell our story and to draw attention to the topic and needs of women entrepreneurs, as well as to provide publicity for FWE-supported entrepreneurs)
• Men & women interested and/or invested in the topic of entrepreneurship, women in technology, women’s leadership styles, girls and women’s education in math and sciences, etc. (this included potential partner organizations and academic institutions such as Springboard Enterprises, the National Women’s Business Council, Catalyst, Stanford University, Haas School of Business and many others).

Diana L. Reid, Conscious Communications.