From donors to volunteers to advocates, your nonprofit has many stakeholders to accommodate. With expert advice, your team can navigate how to communicate with all these diverse groups, ensuring they are satisfied with your mission progress and know how to continue supporting you.
Communication may seem like a simple concept, but for many nonprofits, all outreach can easily turn into donation appeals. While this type of communication is crucial for keeping your nonprofit funded, spreading awareness, facilitating relationships, and maintaining transparency should also be key aspects of your messaging strategy.
To help your nonprofit improve communication with stakeholders and keep them informed, this guide will address precisely who you should stay in touch with and how you can make the best impression possible.
Which stakeholders should you be in contact with?
Running a nonprofit is an inherently collaborative venture, so your organization likely has to juggle communication with several unique groups. A few common nonprofit stakeholders include:
- Donors: Donors provide the revenue your nonprofit needs to fuel its mission, so they must be informed about the latest developments at your organization. However, donors are a varied group, ranging from mid-level and major donors to first time supporters.
- Volunteers: Just like donors, volunteers are a diverse group, ranging from casual supporters who donate a couple of hours of their time a year to board members who make major decisions about your nonprofit’s future.
- Activists: For nonprofits that run advocacy campaigns, activists require unique information about upcoming events, awareness campaigns, and relevant legislation so they can help your organization make an impact.
- Beneficiaries: Those who receive help from your nonprofit will likely want to be looped into updates about your projects, especially if planned changes will impact them directly.
- Community members: Your nonprofit should be an active part of its community. Provide updates about events, fundraisers, and programming that impact locals.
- Sponsors: Corporations can provide invaluable support, and in exchange, your nonprofit should keep businesses sponsoring you up-to-date on developments related to their support.
Which groups you cater to depends on your nonprofit, and your level of communication will depend on their preferences and expectations. For instance, you might inform your major donors about developments through personalized emails and face-to-face meetings, whereas your donor base might receive more general updates from your newsletter.
What are some best practices for maintaining transparency?
Clearly communicate your mission.
Your nonprofit's goals should always be clear to your stakeholders. This applies to all projects, campaigns, and fundraisers. Additionally, stakeholders should easily understand how individual efforts, such as a crowdfunding campaign or an advocacy initiative, relate to your overarching mission.
To keep your communications focused, Allegiance Group’s guide to nonprofit marketing plans emphasizes the importance of creating a guiding document that aligns each action you take back with your goals. Specifically, Allegiance Group shares that: “Larger, multichannel campaigns can feel overwhelming, and it’s easy to stray from your initial goals. [Nonprofit marketing plans], which summarize research about your target audience and center around your top objectives, can serve as an excellent source of truth throughout the campaigns.”
With a solid nonprofit marketing plan, you can ensure that no matter what audience you are speaking to, your mission is articulated clearly and consistently.
Provide regular financial reports.
Nonprofits should strive to be as transparent about their finances as possible. This boosts stakeholder confidence that you are using funds appropriately to fund your mission. Donors will know their contributions are going to your cause, while grantmakers can determine whether their funding was properly allocated.
To maintain financial transparency, consider:
- Generating routine reports. Use software like a nonprofit CRM to generate reports related to your nonprofit’s revenue. For instance, you might use your CRM to predict donation revenue for the coming quarter, allowing you to plan expenses based on expected income.
- Working with an accounting firm. If you need help managing your finances, consider working with an accounting firm specializing in nonprofits. These consultants are aware of the unique challenges nonprofits face, such as maintaining multiple accounts for restricted and unrestricted funds.
- Conducting routine audits. While audits have a negative reputation, in truth, proving that your nonprofit can pass an audit will only raise stakeholder confidence. Conversely, audits are an opportunity to find mistakes and create plans to rectify them so you can maintain better financial transparency.
Ultimately, your nonprofit must make at least one financial document public: Form 990. Be sure to file this on time every year to maintain your nonprofit status and invite stakeholders to review it so they can verify your nonprofit’s financial standing.
Share detailed impact metrics.
Stakeholders support your nonprofit because of its impact. Share data about your programs to keep them informed about the difference your organization makes.
Your impact metrics are directly related to your mission, and they could include the number of families fed, pets adopted, pounds of trash cleaned up, or awareness rallies held. Tracking these numbers not only maintains transparency but is also a smart marketing strategy.
In outreach materials, showcase your data strategically to persuade new stakeholders, from donors to sponsors, to consider supporting your nonprofit.
Communicate regularly.
Keep the line of communication open by maintaining a regular messaging cadence and responding promptly to high-value stakeholders who require personal responses. By keeping in touch, you can build relationships with key investors, such as:
- Sponsors: Corporate sponsors can offer multiple types of support, from sponsoring events to developing workplace giving programs to providing match grants. Don’t let these relationships dry up after a sponsorship concludes to ensure you can gain their support again.
- Donors: Create a regular newsletter to let donors, volunteers, and activists know about your nonprofit’s recent accomplishments. This might be a weekly, monthly, or quarterly newsletter depending on your audience’s preference and your nonprofit’s capacity to maintain a consistent schedule.
- Grantmakers: Many grantmakers prefer to fund nonprofits they are familiar with, as they can trust these organizations to put their awards to good use. By maintaining positive correspondence with former grantmakers, you can increase the odds your nonprofit will be looked at favorably the next time you submit a grant proposal.
Be conscious of how often you message stakeholders, as there is such a thing as overcommunicating. Double the Donation’s guide to donor stewardship recommends surveying supporters to get direct feedback on your messaging strategy. Ask questions like:
- Do you receive messages from our nonprofit too frequently, not frequently enough, or the right amount?
- Do the messages you receive from our nonprofit align with your interests?
- What types of content would you like to see from our nonprofit?
- Is there anything else our organization can do to improve our correspondence with you?
For high-value stakeholders, surveys are not the best choice for collecting feedback. Instead, politely check in with major donors or set up communication guidelines with sponsors to ensure everyone is happy with your outreach approach.
Your stakeholders, from donors to sponsors to advocates, make your nonprofit a success. Ensure they understand what your organization is trying to achieve and the role they can play in it by keeping them informed. Establish a consistent, detailed, and focused messaging strategy to ensure your nonprofit comes off as both personable and professional.
