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

How to Crowdsource and Experiment Our Way to a Fairer Economy

Economic and social inequality should be treated as design challenges that, like designs in architecture or packaging can be solved by applying some creative thinking. That's hardly a new idea, but the recession and ongoing concerns about economic inequality make crowdsourcing seem like something worth talking about.  Crowdsourcing as an Economic Justice Tool: Most people have an idea of what  crowdsourcing is and how it works - you let a group work on your problem or challenge and see what they produce. Can they produce a better answer (whatever that means) than an expert or a small group of experts? You can't answer that question until you have some real-world examples to draw upon. That's where social experiments and simulations can prove useful. Maybe there should be specific crowdsourcing projects and a place to organize all of them. We could start crowdsourcing campaigns around a range of topics: New ways of using barter to meet peoples' needs Using buying co...
Post a Comment
Read more

Setting Good Social Change Goals: The Problem of Police Brutality

No one in the United States can say they are totally ignorant of the issues surrounding last week's death of Black Minneapolis resident George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. This post is not about the incident, which has been covered in great depth by others. This post is about setting goals to pursue in the wake of Floyd's high-profile death.  What do protestors want, exactly? This is probably unknowable right now. Sure, they call for justice or for an end to police brutality, maybe in those exact words. Each one of those goals has a huge problem. Let's see why. What does justice look like exactly? Will you know when justice has been served? Theoretically, some felony convictions for the involved officers would work. Right? Maybe.  The goal of ending police brutality is far more problematic. How can we ever achieve a state of affairs where no cop ever abuses any suspect? That is what an end to police brutality might look like. Achieving perfection is a bit too amb...
Post a Comment
Read more

Try This Simple Process for Attacking a Social Problem

This short article outlines a technique you can use to focus your efforts to solve social problems through advocacy, public education, program design, or social marketing. What follows is a framework for thinking about how best to attack a given social problem This process should be helpful whether you know what your options are or not. You'll answer a series of questions about the issue starting with the most obvious question of all.  What is the problem? What is the challenge or problem you want to tackle? This is a broad social problem, like domestic violence or climate change, or something a bit narrower. Avoid stating that the lack of a specific thing is a problem - no playground in the neighborhood, no soup kitchen in the neighborhood, and so on.  There are a few reasons for not including a solution in your problem statement. First, you were probably assuming too much about the social problem in question. You will never look at other, better ways to address hunger or bul...
Post a Comment
Read more