The Building Blocks of Your Nonprofit’s Communication Strategy
Awkward communication encounters are the worst.
You’ve probably had one happen at a restaurant at some point. The waiter told you to enjoy your meal, and you replied with an emphatic, “You, too!” before hiding your face with your hands and hope the server didn’t hear you.
There are quite a few opportunities in nonprofit communication to make mistakes like that but with higher stakes involved. Challenges naturally arise when you try to reach the masses, and overcoming those challenges requires a thorough communication strategy.
We want to help you discover the best ways to communicate your message to the masses. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to designing your nonprofit communication strategy.
4 Basic Elements of a Nonprofit Communication Strategy
Nonprofit communication rarely works without a clear plan and strategy, and the best communication strategies share the same four elements.
Communication Priorities that Align With Your Organization
Setting communication priorities helps you measure your success and drive decision-making. Some common priorities for your nonprofit may include things like:
Establishing a brand and messaging that stays consistent with everything you share
Coming up with ways to reach a larger audience and increase brand engagement
Raising awareness through creative content distribution
Gaining or sustaining support from donors
Casting a vision to recruit volunteers
Your communication priorities should always help your organization accomplish its mission. The more specific and targeted you can make these, the better. Goals can help with this, too. They offer more particular metrics that fall underneath the larger priorities to better measure the success of your efforts. You can review our recent blog post about how to set and measure goals.
Think about how hard it is to determine whether or not you “raised awareness” if you don’t have something measurable behind it. Instead, you might think of a goal like “increase social post impressions by 5%” because it gives you specific numbers getting closer to your overall priority.
A Known Target Audience
One of the most critical rules of communication is knowing to whom you’re talking. The broader you make your audience, the less effective you can be in your messaging.
Establishing a target audience allows you to reach the people who will support your organization. But first, you have to know who these people are.
Find out what they read, what they like, and what they engage with online. Send out surveys or do polls on social media. Research similar organizations to see how they’ve attracted followers or what content has had the most significant impact.
The more you know about the people you communicate to, the better chance you’ll have at reaching them with material that excites, educates, and inspires them to support your nonprofit.
Good Stories and Storytelling
People have been telling stories for as long as we’ve been around. Stories pull on audiences’ heartstrings in a way raw data can’t, and storytelling should play an important role in your nonprofit communication strategy.
Stories help your organization:
Communicate your mission and vision
Share important data
Raise support
Engage audiences through various media
If you want to see some more specific ideas and examples, review our recent blog post about nonprofit storytelling.
Multiple Communication Channels
More than ever, people get their information from a variety of sources. Nonprofits can cast their best “communication net” for their audience by utilizing the most appropriate communication channels.
With so many social media networks, print outlets, and other ways to reach people, though, how are you supposed to know which is best?
5 Best Communication Channels for Nonprofits
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to use every communication channel out there. You just have to pick the one or two that will best reach your target audience.
Below are five of the simplest and most effective channels we see nonprofits use successfully.
1. Email Newsletters
Email newsletters are a stable, long-time pro on the internet’s ever-changing roster.
Despite all the trends and changes that come and go in the digital age, email newsletters have been quietly helping organizations easily reach mass amounts of people. It’s a simple, inexpensive, and effective way to communicate.
Donor Box has compiled seven basic tips for creating your newsletter.
Have a clean email list of engaged subscribers
Create a schedule for consistency
Don’t neglect your design
Write a captivating subject line
Make your content meaningful and useful to your audience
Be concise
Repurpose content from other channels into your newsletter and vice versa
Consistently providing your audience with quick, meaningful content will drive up your engagement and keep your audience involved with your organization.
Here are some great examples of nonprofit newsletters that share different kinds of content:
2. Social Media
If email newsletters are the old veteran, social media is the fiery rookie. It hasn’t been around for as long, but, as you know, has made an incredible splash.
There are nearly 5 billion social media users across the world, each one engaging with an average of 6.6 different platforms. The growth rate is incredible, with no indication of decreasing.
Leo Pedraza – Marketing, Communication, and Brand Manager of LinkedIn for Nonprofits – explains that “with the right social media strategy, your nonprofit can create an engaged, active, and loyal online community that cares about your mission and is ready to help.” Pedraza also shows how social media can bring fundraising benefits, citing a study where 29% of donors online said the channel inspires their giving.
Other key benefits include:
Promoting awareness
Inspiring action
Garnering the attention of more media outlets for features
Attracting more volunteers
Sharing your impact
Creating and distributing educational resources
Build community. Educate the public. Raise funds. Inspire volunteers. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?
3. Printed Media
People have been mistakenly declaring print media dead for years, ignoring the fact that it’s still out there and is still a valid option for reaching your audience.
In an article for Donor Box, the author explains how print media can be a great way to thank, update, and help your supporters. They mention items like
Postcards
Calendars
Catalogs
Brochures
We at Mission Met have seen the impact that a well-designed, informative booklet can have on a nonprofit’s communication strategy.. That’s why we offer our INSPIRE service where we create a beautiful booklet of your nonprofit's strategic plan that you can confidently share with your stakeholders and donors.
Executive directors often report the following benefits of this type of brochure:
Increased fundraising success with both individual donors and foundations
Greater organizational pride for the staff and board
Deeper marketing presence
4. Video Messages
Video is a powerful medium that engages audiences through multiple senses in our visual society.
Greater Giving outlines 6 common types of video messages used by nonprofits:
Brand stories, like the one that First Descents created to explain their organization
Awareness videos, like this one from Girl Effect
Impact videos, such as this one from Vida Verde Nature Education
Event promos
Community updates
Thank you messages
Some videos will combine aspects of different types. Third Way Center has a video that tells a little about their brand, shares their impact, and gives thanks to their supporters.
You don’t need to draw a hard line that separates the categories. You just need to know the purpose behind your video and align it to your overall strategy.
5. Text Messages
Text message communication has become more commonplace for nonprofits in recent years. It’s a great way to get short, succinct messages out to your audience.
TechSoup offers a thorough guide for nonprofits looking to utilize this medium. It covers the importance of:
Defining your audience
Knowing what gets them to take action
Identifying your value proposition
Getting permission from users
Preparing to scale
Testing and measuring outcomes
Closing Thoughts
Your organization needs to communicate with your audience, but you won’t do it successfully unless you have a plan in place.
Following these simple steps will help you design a nonprofit communication strategy that pleases your audience and keeps them engaged.