Pulse: Communication Is King
Find ways to get to know your target audiences and stay in close touch. I recently developed a communications strategy for a Virginia-based organization. They were suffering from significant decreases in donations at all levels and didn't know what steps to take to fix the problem.
The communications experts felt they had to move away from old-style fundraising (mostly being in touch to ask for money) and needed greater investment and leadership support to raise what was needed. In addition, the vocal board and lay leadership had strong but divergent opinions on next steps.
Rather than fighting it out, we started with some basic and inexpensive audience research. Through an online survey to a representative group of recent donors, we learned what motivated them to give and what they say when they talk about the organization.
We also recruited for an ongoing communications advisory group and got an incredible response (80 percent). So there's a group of key individuals poised to evaluate a draft fundraising letter or campaign logo. That's golden.
The survey was followed by phone interviews with a selected group of respondents to dig in to their perspectives and concerns. We built even clearer understanding of the points and language to integrate into fundraising messages and best channels for outreach. Most exciting was hearing back from several interviewees how they want to help beyond just giving, with the greatest level of interest in being trained to be effective organizational messengers. That's a relationship success story!
✱ Make your first step a reachable victory. Start with your tagline, as less is more in terms of messaging. It's always harder to write something shorter than longer, and your tagline is as short as it gets. It is the absolute essence of your organization's messaging.
