With fierce competition in today’s marketplace, savvy nonprofit organizations are increasingly finding themselves looking toward their communications approaches to ensure success. Here are ten steps you can implement today to strengthen your communications approach.

1. Understand who you are. Start by identifying words and phrases that characterize your organization. What does your current brand identity say about you? What themes emerge? Remember that your brand is more than just a logo; it is the relationship that you have with your key audiences and includes all of the attributes – good and bad – that tell your organization’s story and the important work you do.
2. Know your key audiences. Who are you talking to? Who can help you meet your mission? Audiences may include donors, companies, community or political leaders, media, volunteers, staff, or others.
3. Prioritize your audiences. Sometimes we want to please everyone who interacts with our organization, but in times of tough resources, prioritizing is key. Determine your top three audiences, and write down all you can about them. What are their demographics? What are motivates them? Then, determine what you want each audience to do. What are the benefits they receive by engaging with your organization, what stands in their way, and how will you reach them?
4. Create key messages. The words and phrases that you use to talk about your organization are critical to your success. Once you know who you want to reach, create talking points that clearly articulate what you want each audience to do, highlight the benefits of taking those actions, and minimize the real and perceived challenges for audience members. You may also want to reevaluate your mission and vision statements to ensure that articulate the true mission and vision of your organization.
5. Talk to your key audiences. Create a list of key stakeholders who will help you identify the needs, perspectives, opinions and areas of improvement for your organization. Audience members may include donors, program staff, board members, corporate funders and others. Before you finalize your key messages, it is important to answer any questions you might have about your audiences – both internal and external. Don’t make assumptions about what they want, their interpretation of your key messages, or what will motivate them to act. Seek out potential audience members, and share your thoughts and ideas. Ask them questions, and more questions. And really listen.
6. Engage your staff and board. Your communications are only as strong as those delivering them. Make sure that each member of your staff, board, and volunteer program has a clear understanding of the message points, and know how to deliver them. Ensure that each person has a clear understanding of the goals for the communication, and does not have any outstanding questions or agendas that have not been addressed. Develop a communications guide that can be used internally to ensure clarity in your expectations about how the brand will be conveyed.
7. Get your message across. Determine the best marketing activities to promote your organization. Be sure they offer the right approach in reaching your key audiences where they are likely to obtain information. Activities might include media outreach, direct mail, corporate sponsorship and special events.
8. Conduct your final checks and balances. Make sure that you have evaluated all aspects of your brand. Does your logo and tagline support the image you are conveying through your written and verbal communication? If not, what is the cost (in terms of brand awareness, finances, time) of developing new visuals that better support the brand image you are building? Do your Web site, brochure, press kit, letterhead, email, fact sheets, or case statements need to be updated in order to best support your brand image? Do they meet the needs of each audience? Are they consistent? Make sure that each piece reinforces a consistent communications platform.
9. Work as a team. Once you have built the foundation for a strong brand that can be presented to your audiences in a consistent and meaningful way, make sure that everyone understands his or her role in supporting the organization’s success. Whether it’s direct service, fundraising, event management, operations, or answering the phone, each person needs to know their role in telling your organization’s story.
10. Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate! It is important to evaluate your successes and challenges on a regular basis, to ensure that stumbling blocks are addressed, successes are shared and built upon, and that key audiences are engaged. Check with your audiences to determine what is working and what needs modification. Be honest about changes that need to be made, and make them. Hold staff and board members responsible for their role in the success of the organization. Solicit feedback and provide support when necessary.

Thanks for joining this discussion! I look forward to hearing about your insights, successes and challenges in the area of communications.

Questions:

1. Does your organization have key messages, and does it use them consistently?
2. Does your organization truly understand the wants and needs of your key audiences, or do you make assumptions about those wants and needs?
3. Do you think that more effective communications could lead to greater success for your organization?
4. Do your board and key staff understand the value of effective communications?
5. What, if anything, has stopped you from assessing and improving your communications?
6. How could you be more effective in your communications?
7. Have you evaluated your efforts? If so, what have you found – good or bad?

Promoting Public Causes, Inc. (PPC) provides training and coaching to organizations whose programs and services benefit society. As co-owner of PPC, Jill Rasmussen has helped nonprofit organizations, large and small, to create effective communications strategies that have led to awareness, funding, and strong programs to support important causes. Numerous awards and accolades highlight her professional and personal dedication to community service. For more information about PPC, visit http://www.publiccauses.com.

Copyright 2005 Promoting Public Causes, Inc.

Jill Rasmussen - Mar 28, 2005 2:31 pm (#1 Total: 10)

Thanks for joining this discussion.  My hope is that we can use this forum to help each other become more effective communicators on behalf of the many causes we represent. 

To start the conversation, what are the greatest communications challenges you have had recently?

Jeff Hensley - Mar 30, 2005 12:03 pm (#2 Total: 10)
Hensley Associates

Beyond Caring

 

The ten communication behaviors you describe are spot on and make tremendous sense.  However, in our rural non-profit capacity building work through my own firm and via a United Way collaborative called Rural Connections, we have come to believe that a fundamental critical thinking skill must be in place for groups to define the differences and draw the distinctions demanded by the communication tasks you describe.

 

And the barrier to developing those skills often seems to be rooted in an organization’s very founding and in the larger community where it operates. 

 

Founding

Many of our region’s nonprofits under the most stress began because an individual saw a need and wanted to meet it. The sheer number of under supported, poorly managed small nonprofits that exist in our San Joaquin Valley speaks to this.  Those in the most trouble almost all still operate as if wanting to do good and actually accomplishing something are the same thing.  So, we’ve come to believe the first, most significant critical thinking leap is from a culture of feeling to one of performance and outcomes.  And the ability to simply draw the type of disciplined organizational and operational distinctions that make a difference is a prerequisite to the focused decision-making your communication behaviors require. 

 

Community Influence

We have also come to believe that the sophistication of the larger community in which non profit organizations operate dramatically informs the performance parameters they draw for themselves, at least in the rural areas where we work. Just as a new hire sets basic personal performance norms within 45-minutes of coming to a new job by assessing the behavior and the standards of their peers, so to do non profits seem to scan the community environment to set their performance norm.  We think the ability to overcome this community-driven obstacle must be addressed even before your item #1: Understand who you are.  Organizations that can confidently break through to set their own standards beyond an existing community mark almost always first answer the question: What must be accomplished to enable the outcome we want?      

 

And that requires the commitment to be different.

 

So, in some ways, the first and most important institutional asset for success in the path to better communications that you’ve outlined may simply be the ability to stand alone – to set your own standard:  to intentionally operate outside the current performance mainstream of your community.

 

surya prakash.Vinjamuri - Mar 30, 2005 5:04 pm (#3 Total: 10)
Life-Health Reinforcement Group

Hello Jill!

At the outset thank you for starting essential dialogue forum -Stronger Nonprofit Communications.

To begin with your openended question - about my recent communication challenge I faced in recent past.

We cater health services to citizens of hyderabad(A.P.India) and we are convinced that if food is understood and practiced most of the issues we come across could be solved more meaningfully.

With this conviction at the background, we organized a dance ballet on food - using Taitraye upanishad as the base.

We clubbed this with inputs from agricultural scientists and from some of the renowned contributors for social cause.

1500 citizens turned up for the event.

The effort to organize was huge - 26 professional dancers performed,eminent speakers delivered their position on food in indian context and 4 months of focussed preparation to make the event a grand success.

By organizing this we had the following impressions drawn upon-

Key Learning’s

1. Dream, confidence and meticulous planning with flexible strategies is the reason for success.
2. Experimentation has very little space in development sector.
3. Trust word got eroded.
4. Refuse to learn is the state of the society.
5. Need to continue the efforts.
6. Few beautiful people made the event a success.
7. Inflicting pain got established in the communities.
8. Need for composure at any given situation should be the quality of a leader.
9. Patience and control essential ingredients in situations of failed expectations.
10. Instilling hope is essential for the program to move forward.
11. Keeping promise is an indicator for assessing character.
12. Sanitized interventions have very little sanity.
13. Scriptures are to be read, understood and applied in the present day context.
14. Financial estimates have only 50% possibilities for correct assessment in experimentations.

I will get back to you again.

Surya Prakash Vinjamuri-Life-Health reinforcement Group-Hyderabad-A.P.India

   

Jill Rasmussen - Mar 31, 2005 5:26 am (#4 Total: 10)

Hi Jeff, 

Thanks for your insight.  I agree wholeheartedly that without proper strategic planning, along with measurable goals and objectives, that an organization could be spinning its wheels to embark upon the communications process. 

We, too, have seen organizations with great intentions and passion have a difficult time finding success as a result of relying only on their great intentions and passion.  However, we have just as often worked with nonprofit organizations that  know what they want to accomplish, and have strong programs, but have failed to clearly engage key audiences because of inconsistent, unclear communications that didn't articulate who they were, what they wanted to achieve, and what they wanted each audience to do.  We have seen amazing results when organizations recognize the power of communications and begin to see them as the foundation for achieving their goals and objectives.

Jill Rasmussen - Mar 31, 2005 5:32 am (#5 Total: 10)

Hi Surya,

Congratulations on what sounds like a successful and creative event.  I would be very interested to learn about any evaluation measures you put in place, and what the outcomes were among attendees and even other community members who were made aware of your efforts.

Jill

Jill Rasmussen - Apr 1, 2005 7:55 am (#6 Total: 10)

Hello out there!  How can we get this discussion going?  Perhaps someone has a communications or branding success story to share?

Here's one:  A past client of our worked in the health care arena.  Various groups of physicians were a main audience for them.  When developing an educational campaign for them, they talked to us about this audience and were confident that they knew all about this audience.  We weren't so sure, so we pushed them to conduct some focus groups and one on one interviews.  The result - the physician audience they were trying to reach had many wants, needs, and perceptions that they were completely unaware of.  The result was lots of time and money saved on communications and marketing materials that would have been ineffective in helping them achieve their goals with this audience, and the development of an educational campaign that reached physicians effectively.

oldcityya1990 - Apr 10, 2005 5:32 am (#7 Total: 10)

Dear Sir Madam :

This is Marwan Bashiti ( United Nation Volunteers ) working in the Old City Youth Assocition in Jerusalem . We are a Palestinian Estabilshment in the Old City of Jerusalem , i,m wondering if any of you could help me finding new Grant Programs , also i,m sending the Senopsys about the OCYA .

 

Respect

Marwan Bashiti

Attachments:

Synopses in English.doc (104 KB)

Pamela McLean - Apr 10, 2005 7:26 am (#8 Total: 10)


Jill asked "How can we get this discussion going?"

Ten Steps to Stronger Nonprofit Communications is packed full of good advice and cause for thought - so maybe we are quiet because we are trying to do what has been suggested....

I've been struggling with "Understand who you are" and "Create key messages". A friend challenged me to start by writing three bullet points - seven words each maximimum - much, much harder than a description taking a few thousand words.

This is how far I've got for CawdNet # Links rural African communities with virtual communities # Enables collaborations for practical problem solving # Studies and tackles community development issues

I've still got a long way to go through the list - but at least I'm further on than I was - and feeling a bit more hopeful about improving our communication approach.

Jill Rasmussen - Apr 11, 2005 5:30 am (#9 Total: 10)

Hi Pamela,

Thanks for your message.  It sounds like you are off to a great start.  To clarity with further specifics, in step one, I would recommend gathering a group of your staff, board members, or other key stakeholders, and doing a brainstorm whereby you simply throw out words that describe your organization.  Once you have a lengthy list, ask each person to select the top five words.  You will likely see some themes emerge among the conversation that will enable you to begin more clearly paving the way for key messages.  You can do the same for your competitors, so as to clarify how you want to distinguish your organization.

As for key messages, these should be designed to serve as the core points that convey the purpose, vision, goals, and objectives of the organization.  These messages are designed to stand alone as talking points, and should be written in sentence format (a bulleted list), with perhaps two to three sentences to describe each point/thought.  In addition, they should serve as building blocks to be followed by more specific and tailored supporting information for various materials (e.g., brochures, an annual report, press releases, web site, etc.) and with different audiences. Strategic messages are important because they should be consistently featured in all internal and external communications. 

I hope this additional information is helpful!

Jill

soxten - Sep 22, 2005 7:29 am (#10 Total: 10)
president founder of youths sporting help association