Raise Your Voice

Can you even estimate how many brand messages you hear each day? It’s probably in the hundreds, if not thousands and, for a resource-strapped nonprofit, making your voice heard in this cacophony can be nearly impossible.

Your only hope is effective communication, and that means speaking with a single, clear voice. That’s because the best communication is clear communication. But what is clarity exactly?

It’s when every part of your organization echoes the same message. For instance, if you work for Greenpeace, your message is “environmental care” and this has to be central to everything else you say. That means your campaign against nuclear power needs to connect to environmental care in just the same way as your work against political corruption.

But it’s also essential to focus on the critical things you want to get across about your organization: your purpose – why you exist, your mission – what difference you’ll make, and your goals.

For example, Greenpeace’s message should emphasize their mission to end practices that are detrimental to the environment and to communicate their ultimate goal of a cleaner, safer, more peaceful world. Messages like this give people a good sense of what an organization does and how helping Greenpeace will help the world.

However, it’s not just your publicity and advertising that need to speak with clarity, all your staff from the chief executive to your volunteers need to speak the same message too. So, ensure that everyone who speaks for your organization can clearly state the mission in just one sentence.

If you don’t, a tide of conflicting messages will erode the clarity of your message.

And remember, clarity doesn’t just mean being reasonable, informative and speaking your mind. Clarity is also about inspiration and speaking to people’s emotions.

While inspiration and clarity may begin with your organization’s board, it shouldn’t stop there. Because once your board is committed, you can use them to gain commitments from every staffer down the ladder and eventually to reach your audience.