Where Nonprofit Communication Misses the Mark
Where nonprofit communication misses the mark...
Here’s the scenario: Every July your nonprofit runs summer programming for children aged 8-14. It’s early June, and you just realized that you need five more adult volunteers. To remedy this, you send an email out to everyone who signed up for your newsletter: URGENT NEED FOR VOLUNTEERS. You also post a flyer on Facebook with the same message.
Upon a quick scroll through your organization’s Facebook profile, you realize a few weeks ago you posted a similar message, but this one said there was an urgent need for bottle caps and cardboard boxes for the summer program.
The truth is if everything your nonprofit communicates is urgent, then no one will respond swiftly when urgency is truly needed.
Many nonprofits write with a sense of urgency – dire need for supplies, more funds needed. The problem is that when everything is communicated with urgency, you are training your audience to NOT listen to you. This means when you actually need donations or volunteer sign-ups, fewer people will be inclined to respond.
Ouch.
It’s a lot like the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Eventually, people stopped coming to his aid because he kept sounding a false alarm. While there are certainly times when urgency is needed, every message you send to your community should not be.
And the uncomfortable truth? Most things become “urgent” because there was a failure to plan or misalignment of priorities.
So, how do you determine if you should communicate with urgency or not? Answer the following questions with your team:
What is our definition of urgency?
How long have we known about what needs to be communicated? Has a plan been developed to share it with our community?
Is there an imminent threat to our organization if X is not communicated today?
After forming your answers, create a document for them to live in. This document should be shared with everyone on staff at your nonprofit. It will act as a guide for all organizational communication, allowing you to become more efficient with your messaging.
