Communications

The Best Kept Secret in Town

“We are the best kept secret in town!” I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this phrase used to describe a church wanting to welcome newcomers or a program opening a new office or an organization seeking a higher profile. It is among the most common self-diagnosed shortcomings in nonprofit life. We just don’t tell our stories as much as we should.

We want people to know about our good work. Yet, when it comes to budgeting our time and money, communications perpetually end up as an also-ran in the allocation contest. We invest only what is left after making sure there is enough for everything else. We say we publish a newsletter but it is distributed only on the first Thursday after each lunar eclipse. Or we strain to put up a website, only to update it so infrequently that it becomes like a glacier, providing archaeological evidence of our organizational life at an earlier stage of existence.

Why? Two rationales predominate.

First, many nonprofit leaders tend to hold an almost puritanical view about spending money and time on what seems to them rather ephemeral endeavors. How do they justify spending significant dollars on projects that don’t serve clients or return more than what was spent right away?

The answer is that the benefit is intangible. When done effectively, external communications establish and nurture relationships which will prove to be critically important to the organization over time. Generally, communications are a long-term investment, producing their yield across months and years – rarely within a single accounting quarter. Yet they do produce – in the form of volunteers willing to give more time, donors giving more dollars, visitors becoming members.

The second commonly held rationale is the notion that telling people what you want them to know once or twice is sufficient. We argue that people should know about our new service times because we put up a sign on the lawn announcing them a year ago. Or, we say we don’t need to send reminders about the fundraising event because we already sent out fliers and noted it in the semi-annual newsletter’s calendar.

Yet, we also all realize that we are all bombarded with literally thousands of messages everyday. To get a message through to a recipient nowadays typically takes as many as nine times before it will register and prompt a response. So, we probably have not gotten our message across until we are practically sick of saying it!

Basic Elements of a Communications Program …
(for Organizations Operating in the Current Century)

Once upon a time it might have been sufficient to mail out a newsletter and an annual report, along with an invitation to the annual meeting or “fundraiser.” Whether or not that was ever sufficient, it is definitely not now. If an organization sincerely wants to grow – in support, in name recognition, in service to its community – it needs to cultivate public awareness of its existence and programs. … And it needs to do so in a manner that is marked by professional quality of production, consistency of distribution, and targeted, timely content. Typically, I advise organizations to think in terms of two sets of communications vehicles: one designed to reach the entire organization and the community beyond and another to stay in touch with specified target groups.

The Basic Set
Nowadays, the “new” basic vehicles for communications are:
A – A current website, together with strategic links to it. The site should be edited so as to be always current and as interactive as you can muster.
B – An e-newsletter. It should present news and information relevant to your broad audience and always link to the website.
C – An annual report. This is the one piece I still recommend printing and mailing to everyone on your list.

The Horse in Front of the Cart

It’s common for nonprofit leaders to place communications low on the priority list. … But then you get ready to launch some exciting new project or receive some major new support and you want to get the word out. Unfortunately you don’t have the infrastructure ready to do it and you are left scrambling for to get the database updated and graphics designed and a media contact list assembled all too hastily. So I encourage you to do yourself and your organization a favor … and put the proverbial horse in front of the cart. Get your communication vehicles up and running smoothly. Then, when you have really big news, you will be ready to tell the world all about it