Developing nonprofit key messages helps stakeholders within your organization communicate about your nonprofit’s mission, work and goals. Consistency with your key messages leads to resonance and resonance leads to increased brand equity.
Your nonprofit key messages include foundational messaging elements, like your mission, vision and values. They also include overarching messages you need your stakeholders to hear and understand about your organization. Your overarching nonprofit key messages are used with all audiences in settings where a range of different stakeholders might see them, such as your website. They answer the who, what, when, where, why, etc. about your organization. These messages can also be adapted for each one of your nonprofit’s stakeholder groups.
Your foundational and overarching messaging should be evaluated on an annual basis to ensure they are still reflective of your organization’s work and the broader ecosystem.
Your organization should also have systems-level messaging that puts your work in the context of broader systemic challenges and issues your organization exists to address. They are not about your organization, but rather about the bigger picture you’re part of, and the challenges you’re working to overcome in partnership with other organizations and entities.
Those who rely on your key messaging mosts (your super communicators) – your nonprofit’s marketing, communication, fundraising and leadership teams – will likely evolve your systems-level on a more consistent basis. However, there are other internal stakeholders, like the broader staff, board and volunteers who need to be brought along.
In this post, we’ll explore some tools you can use to keep your messaging effective, up to date and relevant, and also cover what you need to do to ensure your internal stakeholders stay on message.
Test and refine your nonprofit key messages for effectiveness
Your nonprofit’s super communicators should be testing messaging with stakeholders and receiving feedback on an ongoing basis. There are many ways you can do this, but a few that are within reach include:
- A/B testing your messaging. Do this by creating two variations of your nonprofit key messages and distributing them to different segments of your stakeholders. Many email tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact allow you to easily do this. Be careful not to A/B test more than one message at a time. With this, you can measure the response rates, engagement metrics and conversion rates for each variation.
- Tracking fundraising results in response to emails, direct mail, online ads, etc. to determine which messages elicit the strongest conversion rates.
- Hosting listening sessions to directly ask stakeholders for feedback on your messaging.
- Using tools, like Sprout Social, to conduct social listening.
- Conducting a media audit for your organization to see how your nonprofit key messages are portrayed by the media.
- Reviewing your website analytics to track visitor behavior on your website.
- Monitoring metrics such as time spent on key messaging pages, bounce rates, and click-through rates on calls to action related to your messaging.
By analyzing these metrics, you can gain insights into the level of engagement and resonance your messaging generates.
Iterative testing and refinement will help you strengthen your key messages and make them more impactful. As you learn about what is working (and what is not), you can update the key messages accordingly.
Evolve your key messages to reflect real-world circumstances
Keep a pulse on the evolving needs of your stakeholders and the changing landscape of your nonprofit subsector, and make updates to your nonprofit key messages accordingly. For example, if your nonprofit supports people experiencing homelessness in New York, and shelters across the city are impacted by the migrant crisis, your systems-level key messages should be updated to address and reflect the current state – this way they remain relevant and compelling and can create a sense of urgency about supporting your cause.
Develop brand guidelines that include your nonprofit key messages
To bring internal stakeholders along with messaging updates, any substantive changes you make to your key messages should be reflected in your nonprofit’s brand guidelines or a brand book. Brand guidelines serve as a source of truth for all of the stakeholders within your organization. Your brand guidelines contain your nonprofit’s current key messages, along with elements like your brand tone, voice, visual identity system, image guidelines and more. This is the document everyone within your nonprofit can reference when creating communications.
Conduct messaging training on an annual basis
While nonprofit super communicators will update messaging on a real-time basis, based on message testing, evolving organizational needs and the changing landscape, you don’t necessarily need to make everyone aware of changes each time you make them. Instead, update your brand guidelines as needed and then dedicate time on an annual basis to train other departments, board members, and if necessary, volunteers. Ensure they understand your nonprofit key messages and the desired impact.
The key messaging trainings should review:
- What nonprofit key messages are and why they are important
- The process your organization uses to evaluate and evolve key messages
- An overview of your nonprofit’s foundational, overarching and systems-level key messages
- Group exercises to practice putting key messages to use (simulating a cocktail party, media interviews, donor conversations, etc.)
Implementing and evolving nonprofit key messages requires a thoughtful and proactive approach. By testing and refining, staying responsive and agile and providing training and internal communications, nonprofits can enhance their communication impact and drive meaningful change.
