Communication is a powerful way for nonprofits to amplify their impact and make a real difference in the world. A solid nonprofit communication strategy is about more than getting noticed — it's also about building trust and strong relationships and connecting with the people who matter.
What is Nonprofit Communication?
Nonprofit communication is how a nonprofit talks to and shares information with its audience to spread the word about its purpose, mission, and values. Nonprofits use newsletters, press releases, social media posts, email campaigns, and in-person events to raise awareness and get public support, volunteers, or donations.
Importance of a Nonprofit Communication Strategy
Crafting an effective nonprofit communication strategy helps nonprofits convey their mission and values and establish strong connections with supporters, volunteers, and donors. Your communication strategy plays a substantial role in achieving goals while streamlining fundraising endeavors.
Nonprofit Communications Foster Connection
Communication is more than just sharing facts and figures, it's about making real connections. Clear nonprofit communications that tell compelling stories bring your organization and your audience closer together, creating a special bond where everyone shares the same passion for a common cause.
Nonprofit Communications Help You Achieve Your Goals
Nonprofit messages tailor-made for the digital world help you drum up support for your organization and reach your goals. Your message isn’t just about what you're doing; it's about why it matters. Your message is a secret weapon to help you reach your sustainability goals.
Nonprofit Communications Streamline Your Fundraising Efforts
Nonprofit communication for fundraising is the GPS that guides potential donors toward action. Sharing a progress report with your donors can inspire them to donate more — and rally their friends to join the cause. Communication that shows real results and heartwarming success stories is a winning formula that keeps donors excited to be part of your incredible journey for change.
Developing Your Nonprofit Communication Strategy: 5 Steps
Crafting your nonprofit communication plan doesn't have to be an overwhelming task. These five steps will ignite transformative conversations about the problems your organization strives to solve.
1. Determine What Nonprofit Communications You Need
Your specific nonprofit communication strategy might change depending on your organization and what it's about, but most organizations need:
- Donation request emails
- Thank you letters
- Certificates
- Grant applications
- Marketing and promo materials
- Newsletters or blogs
- Internal communications
2. Determine Your Nonprofit Communication Goals & Channels
What do you want your nonprofit's communication to achieve? Do you want more donor engagement, or to spread the word about a new program? Whatever it is, set SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound — that match up with your bigger organizational objectives and identify the nonprofit communication channels that work best for your audience.
3. Build a Scalable Nonprofit Communication and Outreach Plan
A scalable plan maximizes impact, engages stakeholders, effectively conveys your mission, and scales with your growth. Nonprofit digital transformation is pivotal in allowing nonprofits to reach a wider audience and nurture relationships. Leverage your customer relationship management (CRM) system, document automation, personalization, and persona targeting to build a communication plan that can support your growth and success.
4. Automate Communications Wherever Possible
Emails, newsletters, and donor requests become monotonous without an automated solution. Document automation saves valuable time and resources by streamlining repetitive tasks like generating donor acknowledgment letters, event invitations, and donor request emails. Automation allows staff to focus on higher-impact activities while ensuring consistency and accuracy in messaging, so the nonprofit can reach a wider audience and foster stronger relationships with supporters.
5. Build Reporting to Track Results
Don't forget to keep an eye on how things are going! Use the tools in your document automation software and CRM to track your progress and evaluate program effectiveness. Create easy-to-understand, shareable reports for your stakeholders to provide transparency and build trust.
Boost Your Nonprofit Communication Strategy with Document Automation
Nonprofit digital transformation can seriously level up your organization’s efficiency and impact. Recently, Boys & Girls Clubs of America adopted document automation in their network of over 1,100 nonprofits to streamline membership management and embrace organization-wide document efficiency.
In the past, users had to export Salesforce reports, build documents in Microsoft Word, perform mail merges, and then print or upload them back to Salesforce. The process was time-consuming and laborious.
Boys & Girls Clubs of America solved these problems by adopting and integrating S-Docs with Salesforce. With S-Docs, it can now quickly generate custom documents from Salesforce data and create and share templates throughout the organization. Employees save time generating custom documents like thank-you letters to donors, licensed childcare forms, membership applications, and cards so they can spend more time on what matters: the kids.
Effective Nonprofit Digital Transformation with S-Docs
The way to up your nonprofit communication game is with S-Docs document automation. S-Docs seamlessly integrates with Salesforce to automate all kinds of documents, from grant proposals to emails to thank-you letters for donors, taking over the tedious paperwork tasks that eat up your time.
Powerful and secure, S-Docs keeps your data safe while it works hand-in-hand with Salesforce, saving you time by pulling all the information you need for documents in a flash.
Are you ready to find out more? Request a demo today. We look forward to hearing from you!
