If there’s one topic our founder Kathryn talks about the most, it’s the importance of communications plans. The reason she talks about this so much is because so many nonprofits lack the communications planning required to set themselves up for success.
In this article, we’re going to dive into the importance of communications plans, and why your nonprofit truly needs one.
By the way…when we talk about communications, we mean it as a broad term encompassing all of the field of communications, including messaging, marketing, and PR.
The importance of communications for social impact
Communications can propel your progress, or hold you back.
When done properly, a strong communication strategy will help your organization fulfill its mission and make a bigger impact on the world.
And here’s the truth: your organization’s communications won’t reach their full potential without a communications plan.
When your communications aren’t strong enough, that impacts your ability to do the following things:
- Market your programs and
- Run successful advocacy campaigns that influence decision makers
- Have your audience understand what you do
- Reach your audience
- Fulfill fundraising goals
Nonprofits want to be successful in these key areas. But in reality, you can’t reach your full potential without an effective communications plan. Communications plans help your organization raise awareness of your cause and help you make social change.
Let me provide you an example.
A nonprofit may regularly post about a program on social media. But are they communicating clearly about that program?
Are they using tactics and strategies that are resonating with their audience?
Do they even know who they’re communicating to as a target audience?
Do they know the barriers preventing people from signing up to that program?
Is their process of marketing that program a frantic last minute scramble, or is it organized?
Is the nonprofit’s communications team in sync in their program team…or are they disorganized and in a cycle of miscommunication?
All of these questions are crucial to your success. That’s why you need a communications plan.
If you’re doing things that aren’t working in comms then you’re wasting your time (and your budget).
Running a nonprofit without a communications plan is like going on a road trip without a planned destination.
Every week, your team is likely spending many hours on work related to communications.
Through building a communications plan, you’ll ensure that your staff time is actually spent effectively.
The same logic applies to your budget for vendors, like freelance graphic designers. Without a foundational strategy and plan, your budget can easily get spent on inefficient little projects here and there…but don’t actually move the needle on your organizations’ goals.
If you want your budget to be spent wisely, then you need a communications plan.
Is your messaging helping or hurting you?
If an organization doesn’t have a communications plan and an established set of key messages, it’s likely that they won’t appear crystal clear on who they are and what they do.
But this type of clarity is a foundational part of communications, and without it you won’t be very successful. When you are clear on who you are, with messaging that reflects that, then your communications will be much more impactful.
In order for your communications to propel your organization success, you need tight and clear messaging.
You must define your communications goals and how you’ll achieve them
Building a communications plans includes a robust process to determine what your communications objectives are. But here’s the most important thing to note. A proper communications objective is not “let’s make a TikTok account, start a blog, or hire a videographer”, just on a whim.
The strategy is much deeper than that, and consequentially, much more helpful as a guiding framework for your team.
Here is how you will determine your communications goals:
- First, determine your organization-wide goals. These are your organizations biggest priorities like for example increasing fundraising, gaining more traction for a new program, and prioritizing federal advocacy.
- Next,determine communications objectives that articulate how you are going to propel the success of your organization-wide goals.
For example, if you’re prioritizing fundraising then you need to increase communications with past donors to strengthen their connections with the organization so that you can motivate them to donate on a recurring basis.
Why branding is important for nonprofits
At LeBlanc (& co.) Communications, we use a brand-focussed approach to nonprofit communications. Your brand is much more than a logo: it is what people think about your organization.
Therefore your brand comprises the following elements:
- Your reputation
- Your visual brand identity
- Your messaging (and whether it’s sticking properly)
- The aggregate of what your organization does and says
Where your organization is right now is point A, and where you want to go is point B — a stronger, clearer, and more visible version of your brand. With a communication plan, you can chart out how you will accomplish this.
Nonprofit communications best practices: do’s and don’ts
Building a communications plan is a great opportunity to research best practises, and quite frankly, to make your life easier.
One way to do this is to evaluate how you can fill the gaps in your communications infrastructure.
Comms teams need infrastructure to support them, and their organizations, and this includes pieces like comms policies, to templates, and style guides.
It’s so much easier to make these pieces as one part of an overall communications planning activity, because that each piece will be connected to an overall strategy.
In summary…if your nonprofit doesn’t have a comms plan, that’s time to start planning one
Working in social impact comms can be a whirlwind. I’ve been there, and seen the grant deadlines flying. While it can be daunting to create a communications plan, you don’t have to go about that alone.
There’s two ways that you can get some support.
- Learn more about our Communications Plan services and how we can support your organization
- Download my content freebie (NAME TBD) to work independently to upgrade your communications
If you want to learn my exact process for building nonprofit communications plans for organizations who want to achieve a more significant social impact, learn more about my services. With our comms plans, we can help build the clarity you need. Because when done properly, communications truly can propel your social impact.
Communications can make a difference, and we can help you get there.
