Answers to your nonprofit communications FAQs
Questions about nonprofit communications
What is nonprofit communications?
Nonprofit communications is all about the message. It’s the sharing of messages to target audiences to strengthen its brand positioning, reinforcing its mission, vision and values and asserting its leadership in areas of expertise. The goal of communications are to use the right tools, channels and strategies to reach and engage with your audiences on terms that favour your brand positioning.
Okay, what about nonprofit marketing?
Nonprofit marketing is all about the sale. It’s the undertaking of sales activities that nonprofit organizations take to promote, deliver and position programs, services and other offerings. The goal of communications is to drive business using research, analysis, key tactics and strategies.
What is nonprofit storytelling?
Nonprofit storytelling is a tool that describes the process of strategically developing, shaping and sharing your organization’s brand positioning and identity (i.e., mission, vision and values) as well as its impact through stories of many kinds. Storytelling matters because it makes your organization’s mission real for people.
Wait. How is nonprofit communications similar to and different from marketing and storytelling?
Contrary to popular belief, nonprofit communications, marketing and storytelling differ as much as they overlap in similarity. What’s important to remember is that they can all play a part in developing the communications fundamentals you should have established for your nonprofit organization.
But to tell them apart, think of it like this: Communications as the strategic approach to messaging, marketing as the activities focused on packaging and delivery and storytelling as the tool or tactic that reinforces your messaging.
Where they also differ is in what they invite you to do. Communications invites you to engage with messaging. Marketing invites you to take an action. Storytelling invites you engage with brand positioning. While they each serve a purpose, they can also serve a shared purpose, if used together.
Questions about nonprofit communications and their importance
How do nonprofit communications benefits organizations, charities and social impact businesses?
- Storytelling: Nonprofit communications activities help your organization tell better stories that are more aligned and consistent with your mission, vision and values, which makes it easier for target audiences to engage with it. They help strengthen the belief in the causes you’re fighting for.
- Brand awareness: Messages are meant to be repeated. Repeat them enough, strategically, at the right time and in front of the right people, and they’ll start wondering what your nonprofit organization. In this case, nonprofit communications helps you avoid aimlessly posting on social media because you think you have to.
- Marketing: It’s easier to encourage people to answer your calls to action when they believe in your brand to begin with. There’s a higher likelihood of a return on your investment in nonprofit communications. Also, it helps you become strategically consistent in your approach to communicating with target audiences.
- Fundraising: Strong nonprofit communications helps donors and other key stakeholders understand the importance of your messages, pleas and the impact their donations. It saves you the headache that comes with starting from scratch every time you want to start a campaign.
Why do nonprofit communications seem like an expensive cost?
Storytelling begins long before the actual capturing and then telling of a story. The best kind of storytelling is planned, strategic and a collaborative effort. So, expensive because it’s not a cost per se. Rather, it’s a long-term investment in the future strategic growth and brand positioning of your organization.
How do you measure success with your nonprofit communications?
The answer depends on whether or not you’re measuring a strategy, plan or activity and in what respect. For instance, a communications strategy will measure how well you achieve your goals and objectives on the journey from where your organization is to where you want it to be. A metric could be anything that indicates consistency. However, a communications plan will measure how well you execute your plan. A metric could be anything that indicates performance.
Questions about working with me
What’s it like working with you?
Easy. Seamless. Efficient. Just a few words of feedback I’ve received over the years. I try to keep things simple because the challenges we may be dealing with are complicated. The work doesn’t have to be.
I use proven processes that spark curiosity, conversation and show you a clear way forward. Strategy, storytelling and collaboration lead the way. When we meet, you tell me about your goals, pain points and hopes for better storytelling. Then, I take what you’ve told me and investigate, report back to you and present strategic solutions I think you’d want. Finally, when you’ve chosen what works best for you, I develop it and bring it to life.
Do you charge by the hour?
Generally, I do not. For specific projects, I might if it makes sense. I like to think about this question in terms of value because that is what I offer. I offer value, thinking and experience that is unique to me but also challenging to quantify into an hourly rate. Nonetheless, I’m always open to working with people to figure out the best arrangement for a project.
How much do your services cost?
On each of the pages under Services, you can find specific fees and fee ranges for each service I offer. However, since each project is different, these prices may change accordingly.
What kind of clients do you work with?
I work with a variety of organizations in the nonprofit sector, including, but not limited to:
- Community nonprofits
- Foundations
- Social finance companies
- Social impact organizations
- Companies with nonprofit verticals
- Charitable organizations