<aside> What’s this about? A communications strategy primarily determines how to reach your target audience.

What do I need to do? Flesh out the details of your marketing funnel and manage the funnel with a clear set of responsibilities.

Contents

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Further reading

Databases

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Key concepts

Communication strategy

A communications strategy, or “comms strategy,” primarily determines how to reach your target audience and have members take appropriate action.

This might include turning prospective beneficiaries or donors into actual beneficiaries or donors. But it’s also a great tool for recruitment and spreading the word about your mission.
You should base your communications strategy on your “marketing funnel”: the theoretical beneficiary or donor journey toward your service.
Once you’ve established your comms strategy, consider reaching out to User-Friendly for a free sense check.

The simplest version of a marketing funnel segregates your marketing activities into three stages: Acquisition > Conversion > Retention.

Young nonprofits should invest significant energy into acquisition — specifically, figuring out who to reach. This primarily means determining a broad target audience for acquisition (whether donors, applicants, beneficiaries, or other collaborators). It can also mean identifying individual prospects to cultivate.
Researching prospective donors may involve diving into specific individuals’ giving habits or exploring the interests and demographics of your target audience more generally.
Other variants of the funnel

Stage	Determine…	Example
Acquisition	Who to reach	Developers willing to work with AI.
Acquisition	Your message	“Build a meaningful career with AI”
Acquisition	How to reach them	LinkedIn and YouTube
Conversion	How to convert site visitors into potential customers	Landing page with application form
Conversion	How to engage with potential customers	Drip email campaign with career advice
Conversion	How to convert potential customers into real customers	Schedule a video call to present bootcamp
Retention	How to deliver a great onboarding experience	Custom onboarding based on customer’s aspirations
Retention	How to retain customers	Long-term mentorship and discussion groups
Retention	How to encourage customers to refer you to others	Ask for referrals after bootcamp

Make sure one someone in your organization is assigned to implement a multidimensional communications strategy.

Responsibilities can be vast. But many nonprofits (or young organizations of any sort) spread meager marketing resources thin because they believe they need to have all the things right away (e.g. an extensive website, a newsletter, webinars, etc.)
It’s important for you to be clear about who they need to reach and how you need to reach them. For example, if you’re targeting specific government champions or single-topic researchers, you might consider lunch and learns or other tactics that look to those groups (and leave investment in the general public, such as a detailed website, for later years).
Or, if your newsletter is really just for donors, customize it to them and don’t lose time making one for the general public (or vice versa).
Typical responsibilities

A newsletter is a regular email that goes out to your audience, sharing updates and keeping them engaged.

A newsletter has several purposes:
- Fundraising: Especially towards the end of the year, newsletter can be integral to fundraising appeals.
- Information and education: Share industry news, updates, and educational content relevant to your audience.
- Engagement: Build and maintain a relationship with your audience by providing valuable content. A newsletter can build loyalty and help cultivate new sponsorships and donors as it states your mission and communicates your progress.
- Promotion: Highlight new services or events.
- Brand awareness: Enhance brand visibility and reinforce your brand message.
As your audience grows, you might consider tailoring the content of your newsletter for specific audience segments. But, if you’re just starting out, that’s likely overkill.
You might also not need a newsletter. Establish your engagement goals and metrics first; you should be precise about who you want to reach.
What to include in a newsletter
How to write a newsletter
Distributing a newsletter
Deliverability and spam

The most common form of digital paid marketing is pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

As the name suggests, PPC ads only cost the advertiser money when an ad is clicked.
PPC ads are typically displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google or Amazon, or social media feeds like X or TikTok. Whether the advertiser’s ad is displayed on any given SERP or feed is determined by an auction (billions of auctions are run on Google alone each day). The auction takes into account: the advertiser’s bid for that spot; the relevance of the ad to that search/feed; and the quality of the ad (determined by the platform).
It’s rare for early-stage nonprofits to run paid ads. If you decide to do this, make sure:
- You’re clear about why this is a good investment (what will the return be, whether financial, “hearts & minds,” credibility, or otherwise).
- You have clear metrics before committing to spending.
- You’ve exhausted all of the free and much cheaper options before they went here.
- You’re able to measure the full cost of the ads (payments for ads, plus staff time designing/coordinating etc.) against the outcomes and make sure there is sufficient value.