Nonprofit Communications Guide: How to Create Your Strategy

Strategic nonprofit communications pave the way for long-term fundraising success and organizational growth.

In a recent Nonprofit Communications Report, almost half of nonprofits reported growing their communications teams in the past year. Clearly, organizations realize that strategic communication is essential to successful fundraising, service delivery, and mission fulfillment. However, not everyone agrees on what exactly nonprofit communications entails.

In this guide, we’ll discuss several aspects of nonprofit communications so your team can get a better understanding of what it takes to succeed. We’ll cover:

Throughout our discussion, we’ll provide examples of successful communications and tips for improving your own. Let’s start with the basics.

What is Nonprofit Communications?

Nonprofit communications refers to any and all communication between your nonprofit and its stakeholders (donors, volunteers, staff members, etc.). 

This expansive field includes marketing campaigns, fundraising appeals, thank-you messages, and all the various other ways your organization discusses its work with internal and external audiences. A data-backed plan for communicating with stakeholders is called a nonprofit communications strategy.

Core Types of Nonprofit Communications

Since nonprofit communications has such a broad definition, it’s often broken down into a few core focus areas. Some nonprofit leaders view their holistic communications strategy as a separate plan from the following activities, while others consider each type to fall under the general umbrella of nonprofit communications. Regardless, the core types include:

Marketing

Nonprofit marketing involves creating targeted communications that spread awareness of your organization and encourage audiences to take certain actions. Typically, marketing materials ask supporters to donate, volunteer, share content, attend an event, or take another action that furthers your nonprofit’s mission. Nonprofit marketing includes both:

  • Inbound marketing: Communications that aim to draw audiences in, such as social media posts and website content

  • Outbound marketing: Communications sent out to motivate current and prospective supporters, including direct mail and email

Most organizations have an overarching marketing strategy along with distinct marketing plans for specific fundraising, awareness, and advocacy campaigns. Every campaign should have its own goals, but the general objective of marketing is to expand your support base and inspire trust in your nonprofit. 

Fundraising

Nonprofit fundraising includes all the communications you use to raise funds for your organization: appeals, campaign announcements and updates, and donation thank-you letters. These types of communications are typically highly personalized to audience segments and individual donors for the best chances of successful solicitation. They should also include standout calls to action (CTAs) that evoke emotion and provide clear instructions for donating.

For instance, take a look at this direct mail appeal the Meyer Partners team designed for Upbring’s disaster relief campaign:

Direct mail appeal designed by Meyer Partners, serving as an example fundraising communication

This appeal includes space for personalized suggested donation amounts, a large “PLEASE GIVE NOW” call-to-action, and clear instructions for several ways to give. The personalization and urgency used here were highly successful—Upbring’s campaign saw 31% higher response rates and a 20% larger average gift size than previous campaigns.

Storytelling

Storytelling is the process of using real stakeholder narratives to communicate your nonprofit’s value. It’s an essential aspect of most nonprofit communications, especially since individuals are 22 times more likely to remember information that’s conveyed through stories. Organizations often leverage storytelling within fundraising appeals, marketing campaigns, donor cultivation efforts, and impact reporting.

No matter how you use it, your storytelling communications should incorporate direct quotes or testimonials from your stakeholders and aim to evoke positive emotions in your audience. Focus on stories of triumph, hope, and success achieved with your nonprofit’s help rather than telling negative stories intended to inspire guilt or fear.

Donor Outreach

Donor outreach and stewardship communications refer to all of the messages you send with the goal of building, strengthening, and retaining relationships with donors. Common types of donor outreach communications include:

  • Event invitations

  • Advocacy messages

  • Donor appreciation and recognition efforts

  • Awareness campaigns

  • Requests for feedback

All of these examples aim to deepen donors’ connection to your organization’s cause. Even communications like the example below, a social media post raising awareness of child malnutrition in the Central African Republic, can help donors feel closer to and more deeply involved with your nonprofit’s mission.

UNICEF social media post featuring images, statistics, and text about malnutrition in the Central African Republic

How to Develop Your Nonprofit Communications Plan

Now that you know the basics, how do you combine all the types of nonprofit communications into a cohesive, data-driven communications plan that will further your organization’s goals? Take the following steps to get started.

Build Your Communications Team

First, establish who will manage different aspects of your nonprofit’s communications and how they’ll work together. Depending on your organization’s size, resources, and team members’ experience levels, you might divide responsibilities and structure your team in several different ways.

For example, a larger nonprofit might have separate communications, fundraising, and marketing teams. In this case, you’ll need to clearly define which team owns certain responsibilities. The core communications team might develop branding and strategy, while the marketing team handles copywriting, content creation, and distribution. A smaller nonprofit, on the other hand, may have one staff member serve as both the communications and development director.

If you’re unsure how to structure your team or want to fill in the gaps with an outsourced professional, consider hiring a consultant. Any organization can benefit from working with a consultant who understands their communications needs. The consultants at Meyer Partners, for example, are experts in all types of nonprofit communications. Explore our full range of services to learn more about what professional consultants can do to support your marketing, fundraising, and donor stewardship goals.

Audit Past Communications

Once you have team responsibilities ironed out, dive into your existing communications data to identify what you’re already doing well and which areas need improvement. 

Use your constituent relationship management (CRM) software to pull reports from past marketing and fundraising campaigns, paying special attention to metrics like:

  • Return on investment (ROI): The ROI of a specific fundraising appeal or marketing campaign helps you understand how cost-effective and ultimately successful it was at inspiring donations from its target audience.

  • Cost to acquire: If you have a high cost to acquire a single donor, it could mean you’re spending too much on communications that don’t resonate with your target audience.

  • Donor lifetime value (LTV): With effective, consistent communications, you can acquire and maintain donors who are highly valuable to your organization in the long run. A high average donor LTV indicates you’re communicating successfully with high-value donors.

Combine your insights from these analytics with any qualitative data you have from donors or staff members. For instance, donor survey responses may show that your email newsletter doesn’t grab donors’ attention or that supporters want to receive more personalized updates about their gifts.

Set Communications Goals

Based on your audit and your organization’s current priorities, set multiple goals for your communications strategy. Start with general goals, like increasing volunteer retention or boosting donor retention, then narrow down more specific objectives for each communication or campaign.

If your overarching goal is to acquire more donors, for instance, you would set additional, smaller goals that outline how you want to boost donor acquisition and by how much. This might look like, “Expand our prospect list by 200 potential donors and boost acquisition through direct mail by 30% over the next year.”

Establish Branding Guidelines

Next, create or revisit your nonprofit’s branding guidelines. Your organization should have a consistent brand that aligns with your mission and inspires trust in your nonprofit. Outline clear rules for using the following brand elements across your communications:

  • Your organization’s name

  • Logo and variations

  • Color palette 

  • Typography

  • Mission statement

  • Key messaging

If you determine that any of these elements are misaligned, remember that your brand isn’t set in stone—it’s okay to make adjustments. In fact, a recent Nonprofit Communications Trends Report shared that 39% of nonprofits made language changes to their branding guides in 2023, while 10% implemented full rebranding strategies. 

Define Your Target Audience

Your nonprofit will target a variety of different audiences over time, each with its own unique communication needs, preferences, and habits. Depending on your goals, your target audience may include program participants, prospective donors, current donors, and/or volunteers. To better define these audiences, use tools like your database and a donor pyramid to segment supporters into even smaller groups for more tailored communications.

Once you’ve defined a target audience for a specific communication or campaign, zero in on that audience’s:

Target graphic showing different audience characteristics to consider, also listed in the text below

  • Preferred channels: Check past engagement data to see which communication channels this audience responds best to.

  • Motivations: Explore the notes and giving histories within donor profiles to understand each audience’s common reasons for getting involved. 

  • Charitable interests: Analyze the types of campaigns, causes, and advocacy efforts this audience typically supports, then define their common interests.

  • Giving histories: Dive deeper into donors’ giving histories, identifying when, how, and how frequently your target audience donates.

  • Engagement habits: Look into the events these supporters attend, which social media posts they engage with, and what other ways they like to engage with your nonprofit.

Each of these details will help you craft more relevant, compelling nonprofit communications that drive results.

Choose Communication Channels

With your target audience(s) in mind, choose the channels that will best get your message across and help you reach your goals. 

We recommend using a multichannel strategy with direct mail as your foundation. Direct mail is highly personal, well-loved by donors, and the perfect vehicle for storytelling. Contrary to popular belief, direct mail is not an outdated or inefficient outreach strategy—when it’s done well. Our clients continue to see a high ROI from well-targeted direct mail campaigns, especially when it comes to urgent appeals and donor upgrade efforts.

In addition to direct mail, most nonprofits use a multichannel strategy that includes one or more of the following channels:

  • Email

  • Social media

  • Phone calls

  • Videos

  • Banners and billboards

  • Print advertisements

  • Digital advertisements

  • Text messages

Integrating multiple channels in your communications strategy helps you broaden your reach and create more touchpoints with audience members, leading to better results. For instance, combining direct mail and email can lead to six times bigger purchases than using email marketing alone.

Analyze Your Results

After putting your new nonprofit communications plan into practice, return to the metrics you used to audit past communications at the beginning of the planning process. Compare the results of your latest communications to both your goals and past results to see if they’ve improved.

Remember that analyzing your results shouldn’t be a one-time task that gets checked off your list. Rather, it should be a continuous process—analyze your results on a regular cadence to measure progress toward your long-term goals and continue making improvements to your communications.

3 Ways to Enhance Your Nonprofit Communications Strategy

Looking for more tips on how to make your communications stand out? Consider the following tried-and-true best practices.

1. Work with a Consultant

Nonprofit fundraising consultants and marketing agencies have a wealth of knowledge about what works in nonprofit communications and how to create standout messages that get results. The best consultants won’t just follow industry best practices, either—they’ll dive deep into your data, get to know your organization’s unique voice, and develop campaigns that truly speak to your nonprofit’s audience.

For instance, the consultants at Meyer Partners will work with your team to:

  • Analyze your donor data and determine the best communications strategies for your nonprofit’s audience.

  • Create compelling, story-driven fundraising campaigns that maximize multiple channels like direct mail and email.

  • Develop ongoing donor communications and stewardship plans based on your data and our predictive models.

  • Take stock of campaign results and analyze opportunities for improvement.

We’ve worked with nonprofits across cause areas to help them tell their stories and achieve more for their missions. With our help, our clients have increased their number of active donors by 85%, cut their cost to acquire by 60%, and raised triple their revenue goals. 

To see results like these from your nonprofit communications, talk to one of our team members and learn what we can do for you.

2. Establish Clear Internal Processes for Communications

Remember that nonprofit communications aren’t always external (i.e., communicating with donors, volunteers, or the public). Good communication starts inside your organization, and improving your internal processes can make a major difference in the success of your outreach.

Take stock of your current internal communication guidelines, and see if they serve your team well. Do all team members feel like they’re in the loop? Do fundraising announcements go out to the public without the marketing team’s knowledge? Does your team structure increase or decrease your organization’s efficiency?

Make adjustments based on team feedback and historical results, or create new guidelines to provide more structure. For example, you might create a specific workflow or approval process that staff should follow before publishing content on your website. Or, you could streamline internal communications as a whole by adopting a system like Slack to facilitate messaging and break down silos between teams. 

3. Refine Your Storytelling Skills

As we discussed earlier, effective storytelling is essential to getting your messages across in a way that resonates with donors and appeals to their motivations for giving. If you see decreasing conversion rates or a lower ROI than expected when you implement your nonprofit communications strategy, you may need to refine your skills to tell more compelling stories.

Start by getting familiar with the three R’s of nonprofit storytelling:

The three R’s of nonprofit storytelling, described in the text below

  • Resonance: The stories you tell must resonate with your audience by appealing to their emotions. Improve your stories’ resonance by telling genuine stakeholder stories and incorporating more humanizing details.

  • Relevance: To make your communications more relevant to donors, clearly define the donor’s place in the story and use donor-centric language that reminds them how integral they are to your mission.

  • Respect: Every story you tell must respect both the person whose experiences you’re writing about and your audience. Stick to the facts to tell your stories honestly, and avoid using scare tactics or trying to evoke negative emotions in the reader.

If you’re not sure how to implement these storytelling practices, a nonprofit marketing or communications consultant can help here, too. They’ll work with you to identify the best stories to tell about your nonprofit and convey them honestly.

Wrapping Up

You’ll need to continuously return to your nonprofit communications strategy as your organization’s priorities shift and you learn more about what resonates with your audience. However, these tips and best practices will provide you with a strong foundation to build on.

To learn more about nonprofit communications, check out our additional resources:

Guest User