Does your organization have dedicated staff people for communications? Or even staff people who have, as part of their job description, some responsibilities for creating or managing external communications?
Unlike for-profit businesses of comparable size, nonprofits don’t typically hire people in communications jobs until the organization reaches a certain size: often somewhere around a $4 million operating budget or a staff well into the double digits.
In bigger organizations, communications people sometimes work in the development department (often reporting up to a “Director of Advancement” who’s typically a fundraiser). Maybe several staff people take on various communications responsibilities within various departments. With little or no coordination between them, this can often result in duplicated efforts, conflicting messages, or other “silo issues.”
At the end of a workshop Sarah Durham (Big Duck’s principal and founder) gave recently for the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network in San Francisco, a participant asked her what she thinks is the optimal staffing structure for communications. In particular, should development people should have oversight for communications, or communications over development?
We’ve been stewing on this question for years and we can’t say there’s one “right” way to do it. As with most things, it depends… on the vision, mission, and objectives of the organization, on the types of audiences they are aiming to reach, and other variables. (Hey, if the answers were easy we’d all have them, right?)
Questions around communications staffing have gotten even more complex in the past two years as it’s become increasingly difficult for nonprofits to avoid participating in social media. Communications of all types increasingly require ongoing feeding and watering to be sustained, so somebody (hopefully somebody responsive and mission-minded) needs to have a job description that includes it.
After 16 years of observing how nonprofits manage communications, we Ducks aren’t convinced that staffing structure is the real challenge. Instead, we think the more important question is what type of culture does your organization have around communication?
In a nonprofit that truly values good communications, you’ll find:
A mature, transparent culture around sharing information internally and externally. People know what their colleagues are working on and are clear about how their work relates, supports, and connects. In meetings, they offer updates about their work and leave thinking about what information should be shared internally and externally. They take the initiative to share rather than waiting to be told, and are trusted by leadership to share appropriately (rather than having to seek approval for everything they send out). A transparent exchange of information is encouraged, and people generally view their colleagues in other departments as allies.
A defined budget for communications. Instead of scrimping together a few shekels to update the website on the down low, organizations that value communications budget for it. They have line items in every budget for staffing, printing, and other external communications support they might need (e.g. consultants, developers, etc).
It’s also important to anticipate years that will require additional communications mojo (a major website overhaul, for example, or a new identity process) and budget for it proactively- perhaps seeking specific funds for the project.
If your nonprofit isn’t there yet, I’d suggest beginning a conversation about communications with the folks who manage the budget by looking at how your peers do it and considering an appropriate percentage of your annual operating budget (perhaps 5%). Remember that effective online, printed, and other communications increase your visibility and reputation and reinforce your credibility, which helps your donors, programs audiences, and advocates feel better about connecting with and supporting you. It’s a growth strategy- not navel-gazing.
Real, live human beings who are responsible for communications. Most nonprofits now realize they can’t afford to ignore social media, but few have staffed for it. Bigger national and international organizations like the Red Cross or the Humane Society of the United States not only have communications staff people, they even have (several) folks devoted exclusively to social media. If your budget is too small for a dedicated communications person on staff, at least try to build communications tasks and responsibilities into other job descriptions (maybe your fundraiser can handle it?).
A long view attitude. Instead of diving in to social media reactively or producing all sorts of materials with dubious ROI (return on investment), organizations with a healthy communications culture bite off what they can chew and focus on doing that well- not on doing everything. They keep an eye out for the latest trends, technologies, and tools that might affect their work, monitor how others in their area are communicating, and make refinements for the long haul, instead of working reactively. The “long view” is a concept outlined in detail in Brandraising. It’s about maintaining a look at the bigger picture, and not just working in the trenches constantly.
How much does your organization’s culture value the importance of communicating effectively with internal and external audiences? We’re interested in hearing how things work at your organization. Please leave your comments and ideas.
Tags: Brandraising, communication staff, long view
As a national search firm for the nonprofit sector, Commongood Careers is seeing more and more organizations separate out marketing/communications from development. This trend may reflect a deeper understanding on the need for nonprofits to define their brands, messaging, etc. and genuinely differentiate themselves in the marketplace. For organizations that still structure communications positions in their development departments, the positions include responsibilities that are both strategic (e.g. online fundraising strategies) as well as tactical (e.g. collateral production)
That’s interesting, Dana- thanks for sharing. I’m hopeful that as more and more organizations understand the value of brandraising and social media communications staff people will, increasingly, be in high demand.
As a former long-time nonprofit communications director, I would love to see the day when communications is separated from development, especially if the person in charge of the department is a fundraiser. Someone who is in charge of, and usually more accountable for, raising money is not keen on spending it. It becomes a vicious circle: development efforts need awareness, which requires communications efforts, which require a decent budget, which requires funds, which requires development. If the two areas are separate, each with its own advocate, at least communications has a chance at getting what it needs to be successful for the organization.
sarah – as someone thinking A LOT about communications of every sort these days, this is an incredibly helpful guide. thank you!
Cindy, as a fundraiser, this surprises me: the value of good communications in strengthening my work has always been clear, and I worry when it is under-resourced. I have never worked in an organization that takes the Institutional Advancement approach, but I could see a different danger in having one of us in charge of your department: demands on development could put more pressure on communications, creating a situation where you are both overstretched, and also too reactive to fundraising needs, and less able to serve as a substantive complement to programmatic work.
Thanks for commenting. I think Devon\’s point underscores, to some extent, how the culture around communications in your org might be even more important than the staffing structure- would you agree, Devon?
Great post, Sarah. In organizations where communications & social media staff report to a development person, have you found that tensions exist when thinking about audience/tone/message? It seems the primary role of development is to cultivate/fundraise from existing donors and maybe a small pool of new donors. Conversely, the primary role of social media at a nonprofit is usually to provide an introduction to a larger/wider audience. Tricky thinking about how their goals align.
Great point, Julia. Again, I’d say it’s a matter of culture. In “The Networked Nonprofit” Beth Kanter and Allison Fine talk about social media-oriented orgs as ‘inside out’ cultures: focused on transparency, sharing, dialogue, exchange. If that culture permeates, I’m not sure it matters who works for who. But in a more closed-door or siloed culture the issue you flag could be a big problem. It could also be the case that a development ‘boss’ might not be as engaged with the value of raising the org’s profile with other (non-donor) audiences, like policymakers, activists, or volunteers, for instance. Luckily, I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of orgs where this has been truly problematic recently- but most orgs are still figuring our social media.
The org I’m involved with as a volunteer has a separate communications and fund raising departments and social media lives with communications. That seems the proper place to me in a perfect world.
In the much larger org where I work, however, there is a communications person but that person doesn’t see the value in social media. Social media message (and soon the website) is part of the responsibilities of the IT department because we believe it’s important and we are willing to put in the time. We don’t have a separate fund-raising department, so there was no turf battle there.
It’s like many other things in the non-profit world, someone who shows enthusiasm and aptitude for an activity often gets to take it on!
I work for a larger non-profit that is working to develop and expand it’s external communication and engagement strategies.
We actually have a designated fundraising (resource development) staff, a marketing group, and I have been brought on to lead a revamped focus on engagement (online and off). Niether of these three “comms departments” are officially involved in the work of the other, other than informally keeping each other aware of our work. We each are directly supervised by the CEO.
Without getting too deep into the makeup and perceived purpose of each of these, I’m curious if you feel this is too much specialization?
Thank you for your response.
Danny, my gut is that there’s a lot of gray area in the structure you’ve got.
In particular, what’s the difference between ‘marketing’ and ‘engagement’? It may be the definitions of these words ( I’ve found there are widely different understandings of words like marketing, communications, and even advancement in many orgs).
If I were you, I’d suggest formalizing how you three depts collaborate if you can. Perhaps you can schedule a monthly (or even weekly?) meeting to update and share information? You might even opt to share budgets/staff/resources on specific projects and offer to review each other’s work where useful.
Your CEO might even appreciate the initiative you’re taking collectively to make her/his life easier by weaving some of the threads together.
I work for a policy change (as contrasted to service provision) organization that has strong ties to a family foundation. We are just getting started in other development work. Rightly or wrongly, we don’t perceive a great need for public support as we work on policy change, so we don’t focus on mass communications. We seem to get meetings with most of the donors and policymakers we think we need to target, but have great difficulty creating change. What kind of communications staff would you think would do most for this kind of org? Or what kind of questions would help answer this question? Sometimes it seems that all we need is presentation coaching, as it’s not clear what research would help us. Any thoughts?
Jimmy, I think your staffing needs might depend a lot on the type of policy change you’re trying to create. It’ll be interesting to see if any other advocacy orgs respond here…
I’d be happy to talk about it if you’d like to set up some time. I’m Sarah (at) Bigducknyc (dot) com if you’d like to email me and we can connect directly.