Skip to main content

Communication Planning for Nonprofits

How can a nonprofit do a better job of communicating the value of their efforts? The advice offered here would work offline or online.

Some evaluation needs to come first, then some planning . Take a few steps back and look at your idea as objectively as you can. Consider these questions: What would be the likely consequences immediately, within the year, in one to five years, after five years? You may find a weakness in what sounded like a great idea. You may find selling points that you had overlooked.

Any communications effort should start with some basic questions. These are mostly just common sense things, but should not be skipped.

1. What do you want your readers to do or think or believe?
2. How will other people respond to the idea?
3. What objections might there be?
4. What concerns might your "customers" have if they do what you want?
5. How much will this cost? How much time will it take? How inconvenient will it be?
6. Are you financially stable? Do you have the other resources you would need?

Consider a sample project and some of the questions you might want to answer for potential supporters.

The Project: Install solar and wind energy systems on low-income apartments operated by (a) the District of Columbia, (b) nonprofits that supply assisted living or low-income housing, and (c) for profits that provide below-market housing. The goal is to reduce pollution and make the district more self-sufficient. The claimed payoff for clients would be lower utility bills.

Exposure to "green" energy systems, that work seamlessly, will make people more willing to buy the systems in the future. Now, it might be hard to cost-justify such a system but that should change. In five years, there might be many systems installed that would not otherwise exist. The program might need to expand as other organizations, like area colleges or large nonprofits want to partner with us.

Providing free installation of small wind turbines could really cut the cost down.
How much will people save on their energy bills by installing these systems? Can you give a percentage?

How much of the cost will this organization absorb? Will you work only with property managers, or with low-income home owners too? They are all responsible for their energy bills so they have some incentive to look at ways to cut their electric bills. There are a couple of bits of information you will want to include in your online marketing materials.

These questions will help you further refine what you need to say. Whether you are raising money for this project or just using it to show how your nonprofit is working to make DC a better place to live people will appreciate having answers to these questions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Web Strategy That Works

I was reading a Chronicle of Philanthropy article about online strategies that work in a bad economy. The article presented four different strategies and a nonprofit that used it successfully. This post is about the strategy of using specialized Web sites. Put up a site just for a certain crisis, event, issue, project or program. The Chronicle details how Partners in Health did this for Haiti earthquake relief. Any issue, whether a crisis or not, whether global or local is a potential candidate for replicating the Partners in Health approach. Events of global and local significance are fine subjects for a site. You are probably already familiar with World AIDS Day or World Water Day. Those global events and many others are the subject of special Web sites and advertising campaigns both online and in print. Local events from the mundane, like the beginning of a new school year, to the momentous. A crisis is another good reason to put up a specialized Web site. The epic flooding in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Brainstorming for Fundraising Success

Looking for opportunities to raise more money or just to use your fundraising resources more efficiently? This post is another of a series on brainstorming and fundraising. You need three things to think creatively about fundraising. Openness to new ways of thinking is a requirement. Attitude matters in creative thinking, so you need to be positive and nonjudgmental. You also need to be familiar with one or more brainstorming tools. In recent posts I’ve described some brainstorming tools created by Edward De Bono and described in various books of his. In those posts I referred to using random ideas or objects to spark new ideas. In this post I will rely on a fantasy question, a provocation in De Bono’s terms, as a starting point. Consider this fantasy question: What if every donor supported 1000 charities? That question can potentially spark new ideas, if examined in the right way. De Bono writes about several ways of creating movement from a provocation like that question. I’ll qui...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fundraising Ideas

Raising money is a perennial challenge for nonprofits. The Great Recession has made things tougher for some and nearly impossible for others. Your nonprofit may be working hard to deal with fundraising challenges. Traditional thinking about fundraising might lead to thinking like this - “We need to raise $600,000 more money third year. What do we need to do to make this happen?” A discussion of grant writers, fundraising consultants and mailing lists follows. There is nothing wrong with this approach. At least some of that discussion needs to happen. But, new thinking might also be needed. Lateral thinking may help you get better results. Lateral thinking is (from Wikipedia) “solving problems through an indirect and creative approach.” The point of lateral thinking is to move “sideways” to new ideas and different ways of thinking. The point of this little essay is to point out another way of approaching the subject of fundraising. Lateral thinking itself suggests a broader approach to ...
Post a Comment
Read more