An effective and comprehensive communications plan can be a gamechanger for your nonprofit organization — especially when it comes to managing your time and your priorities. It helps you remember the big picture (your mission!) and remember just why you’re spending so much time on those email newsletters, those social media posts, those stewardship letters, etc. If you don’t have a communications plan in place or simply need a refresher, we’ve got you.
Here are six steps to building a communications plan for your nonprofit:
Audit Time, Baby!
This is the time to assess what’s working and what’s not working internally. Try to earmark a specific period of time for review, such as the last six months or the last twelve months to understand how your communications are performing across the board. Questions you should be asking yourself include:
- Do you have messaging in place? If so, is it being used consistently?
- How are you delegating tasks and responsibilities to staff members, board members, and volunteers? Is it effective?
- How much time is your team expected to spend on communications-related tasks? How much time do they realistically have to spend on communications-related tasks?
- Do you have SOPs and templates in place for ease of use? Or do they first need to be created?
Understanding what exists, what doesn’t exist, and what gaps there are to bridge the two are a great first step to building an effective communications strategy.
Evaluate Your Channels
Next, it’s important to evaluate your channels of communication. These are all the ways in which you might connect with your target audience members — direct mail, email, social media, paid media, earned media, your website, your blog. How are you measuring performance and gauging value? What is the return on investment for each channel? Do certain channels require more time or cash investment than others?
For example, if your account is active on multiple social media platforms but followers on Facebook and LinkedIn are far more engaged than Instagram, TikTok, and any one of the Twitter-type platforms, refocus your efforts only on Facebook and LinkedIn! Just because you’ve done it before doesn’t mean you need to keep doing it. Streamlining your efforts allows for more targeted communications and better outcomes.
Included in this should be a review of your donor database — is it working for you? Can it handle communications and assess the performance of said communications? If not, now might be the time to evaluate your options. Review all of your distribution channels and determine whether they’re working for you, if there’s opportunities to use them more efficiently, or if it’s time to look for a new tool that can better serve your needs.
Craft Your Goals
Common marketing goals for nonprofit organizations include increasing dollars donated, finding new board members, recruiting new volunteers, and raising awareness of your programs and services. Those are your big picture goals! But because they’re so broad, it’s important to break them into SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
A good way to do that is by looking at what’s happening in the next 3-6 months and building goals and objectives around those. Are there any fundraising initiatives coming up, such as a capital campaign? What about a gala event to celebrate a major milestone? Maybe it’s a workshop or a series of workshops that require registration. These have associated deadlines, which allow you to focus your efforts, time, and resources. Figure out what the deliverable is, what needs to happen to achieve it, who is going to do what, and when it needs to be done by.
Understand Your Audiences
This is a crucial component of a successful communications plan. If you don’t understand what your audience is looking for in communications from you, they won’t be successful. For example, the language you use in a message to a recipient of your organization’s direct services might be very different from a message to a board member. A legislator might prefer a one-pager explaining your needs whereas a prospective funder might want more comprehensive information about how you operate. Know who your respective audiences are, what the best channels to reach them on are, and tailor your communications to accommodate that.
An often overlooked audience is your staff! They too need to be considered in your communications plan — both in terms of how information is relayed to them and how time is allocated for them to achieve their part in supporting your communications efforts. That’s why we ask about staff availability for communications-related tasks in the very beginning.
Start Building!
If you’ve done the previous steps as recommended, you might be feeling a bit of information overload. Something that helps us when we reach that point is creating a summary document. In this summary document, we break down the individual goals, the tactics we’re going to use to achieve those goals, and the distribution channels that will support us in those efforts.
For example, if one of our goals is to position the organization as a thought leader, we might say blogging is the mechanism that can support that goal. Then we’ll think through what we need for that to happen. Do we have a blog? Do we have a content strategy for blog posting? How often do we want to post? Do we have an internal process for writing, reviewing, and publishing blogs? How do we promote them once they’re live? And who is responsible for which steps? Breaking each goal into small, digestible actions and working backwards is key.
From there, you can start to build out your communications plan. We favor spreadsheets for this exercise because 1) they can be set up for ease of visualization of tasks, and 2) if you use a project management system, they’re easier to import.
Columns should include the task at hand, the staff member responsible for the task, the timeframe during which the task needs to be completed, the distribution channel(s) used, and the audience to whom the communication is targeted. We like to do a quarter at a time, unless there’s a specific campaign that has multiple moving parts across a desired timeframe.
If implementing a new system or creating SOPs are part of your goals, they too should be incorporated into your communications plan. Remember: some of your tactics may be one-time occurrences, some may be recurring, and others may be specific to infrastructure building. And don’t forget about holidays when your office is closed, staff vacations, team retreats, and other factors that may impede timelines.
Finally, make sure you set aside time to work on a communications plan for the next quarter before this one ends!
Gauge Performance
An effective communications plan is both about internal and external communications. So once the first one is complete, it’s time to see how you did. Did everyone meet their deadlines and expectations? What information can you glean from built-in dashboards on websites, email marketing platforms, social media platforms, donor databases, etc.? Have there been any shifts in behavior or engagement?
The first time you do a communications plan, you’re setting a baseline. Each subsequent time you create one, you’re observing what’s working, what’s not, and what is inconclusive at this time to adjust and adapt for the next quarter. Know what metrics you’re tracking and observe performance over each quarter — jettison what isn’t working and keep or tweak the rest!
All right friends — you’ve got this! And if you don’t, we do! However you choose to tackle your communications plan, your future self will thank you for the structure and organization. Good luck!
