Hi friends 👋🏻

A line from a podcast caught my attention last week:

I've seen this first hand on website projects, and on other communications projects too.

I want to unpack this a bit here, and explore what this means in the nonprofit organization context.

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When a comms project causes an existential crisis

The podcast conversation was targeted at solo consultants (like me). Jonathan Stark and his guest Jessica Lackey were talking about how often you can get away with a poorly-defined value proposition, target audience, and offering ... UNTIL someone focused on communications asks you some seemingly basic questions.

If you work in communications or marketing, I bet you feel this pain, whether you work in-house or as a consultant.

Think about all the times you have been brought into a project that's about to launch by the development team, or your executive director.

You know that in order for the project to be successful, you will need to clearly communicate the what, why, and how to a specific target audience.

Yet when you ask these questions, the answers aren't there!

• Help me understand who you're trying to reach?
• Why should they care?
• What, exactly, specifically, are we doing?
• If we're successful, what will the outcome be?
• How do we know our work (x) will lead to outcome (y)?

Often that internal client (program team member, or development director) isn't expecting to be asked these questions. They already have a Google Doc with too much text in it (or the opposite ... two sentences of description and nothing more) and they just need a flyer or a new landing page by the end of the week.

Being asked these questions can cause an existential crisis. I've seen it first hand. That moment when a team member realizes they're not quite sure how a program or event they've planned fits into the organization's big picture.

The under-recognized value of communications professionals!

For a nonprofit organization, having a clear, tightly-defined mission, vision, and theory of change that everyone looks at regularly is the key to avoiding this kind of existential crisis.

Making sure you have these building blocks in place isn't just a task for executive leadership or your Board.

Communications professionals have a lot to offer here too.

A clear, tightly-defined mission mission, vision, and theory of change is something everyone in your target audience can easily understand.

It states:

• the problem your organization exists to solve
• what the world would look like if you're successful
• what work you do and why you believe (or ideally, know) that will create the necessary change

This framing should be tested with people in your target audience. If people tell you it's too technical, or too vague, listen and adjust accordingly.

Within your organization, create a culture where every new initiative gets checked against this framework before getting the green light.

Does it clearly fit within the mission, vision, and theory of change framework your organization has defined?

If it does, it will be easy to talk about, and your communications people (whether in-house or a consultant) will already know how to position the work.

In summary: avoid the existential crisis by ...

• tightening up your theory of change
• checking all projects against it, and
• bringing your comms people into the discussion about new projects at the start!

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