Think of the last time you were trying to explain to a friend or family member what your nonprofit does. Now, think of a time you had this same conversation, but at an event with potential donors or supporters. Did you struggle to describe your organization in a clear, compelling way for each group? Or, were your descriptions exactly the same (when speaking to very different audiences)? Would your co-workers have used language or descriptions very different from yours?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, it may be a sign that your nonprofit needs an effective set of key messages.
Building a key message framework and socializing it across your organization can help every member of your nonprofit’s team and board feel confident that they’re positioning your nonprofit in the best light possible no matter who they’re talking to — from donors and supporters, to the media, to those who use your organization’s programs and services.
Read on to learn more about what key messages are, why they are critical for your nonprofit, and how to effectively write the four types of key messages every nonprofit needs.
What are key messages?
Key messages are the main points you need your stakeholders to hear, understand and remember about your organization. They create meaning behind the work you do, the issues you want to discuss and the actions you want people to take as you work to advance your mission.
Effective key messages are:
- Succinct
- Focused on the basics of your organization (who you are, what you do, where you make an impact, how and why you do what you do)
- Segmented by stakeholder group
- Used primarily internally, but form the basis for external communication
Key messages should guide your communications, but you shouldn’t necessarily use them verbatim in all your communications and marketing materials.
Why are key messages so important for nonprofit organizations?
Key messages encourage consistency, which leads to resonance. The more consistent your staff and board are in how they communicate about your organization, the more easily people will come to understand and want to get involved with your organization, whether as donors and supporters, or program participants.
Operating without key messages can cause confusion among both your team and external stakeholders. When your staff, leadership and board members have no key messages to refer to, everyone may tell their own version of your nonprofit’s story. These stories are often inaccurate, and they’re always inconsistent. As a result, the bigger picture of what you do and why gets missed.
Key messages are also a helpful tool for putting your nonprofit’s work into the context of the systemic challenges and problems you exist to address. And, if you bring strength-based best practices into your key messages, they’ll go a long way toward centering the people and communities you serve in your communication.
Not only is it important to share key messages with your team, leadership and board members, but keeping them in the loop during the process of creating and interpreting your key messages also allows for Brand Democracy. Brand Democracy, as described in “The Brand IDEA: Managing Nonprofit Brands with Integrity, Democracy, and Affinity,” means an organization trusts its members, staff, participants and volunteers to communicate their own understanding of the organization’s core identity. A participatory process for developing key messages makes Brand Democracy possible.
How to write effective key messages for your nonprofit
Before you begin writing key messages, it’s important to understand the four types of key messages every nonprofit needs. While messaging frameworks may need to vary organization to organization, we believe every framework should include these four types of messages, at minimum:
Foundational Messaging Elements
Foundational messaging elements include your organization’s mission, vision, values, and other similar strategic statements. These statements are typically best developed during the strategic planning process because they’re more than just messaging – they’re your organization’s strategic guideposts. But they should still make it into your messaging framework so that they’re kept top of mind and can be carried into your other messages.
Master Key Messages
Master Key messages are the “top level” points you need your stakeholders to hear and understand about your organization. They should be able to be used with all your audiences in settings where a range of different stakeholders might see them, such as on your website. We typically structure master key messages around the following five questions:
- WHAT: What does your organization do?
- WHO: What group(s) or communities does your organization work with?
- WHERE: Where is your work focused?
- HOW: How does your organization deliver its programs and services?
- WHY: Why do you do what you do? What’s the intended impact?
Systems-Level Key Messages
Systems-level key messages put your organization’s work in the context of the broader systemic challenges and issues your organization exists to address. They’re not about your organization, but rather about the bigger picture you’re part of, and the broad challenges you’re working to overcome in partnership with other organizations and entities. They can often be helpful in educating stakeholders who have limited understanding of the issue areas you’re focused on. We typically develop three lines of systems-level messaging:
- CHALLENGE: The challenge message describes the big picture problem you exist to address (ex: food insecurity, education inequity, climate change, etc.)
- CAUSE: The cause message touches on why the problem exists, or its root causes (ex: economic conditions, institutional racism, harmful public policy)
- CURE: The cure message articulates what you see as the solution to the challenge. It’s not a solution your organization could ever reach alone. It will typically require your organization working in partnership with other nonprofits, policymakers, community organizers and more.
Key Messages Segmented by Stakeholder
Key messages segmented by stakeholder are exactly what they sound like. They are simply a tailored version of each master and system-level key message, each written to resonate with a specific group of stakeholders. To develop them, you need to have a good sense of what each of the stakeholder groups you need to communicate with cares about, as well as their language preferences (which you can glean through research and stakeholder profile development).
It often helps to use a matrix like the one below (or a good old spreadsheet) when developing your key messages segmented by stakeholder.
How to Develop Nonprofit Key Messages
Messaging development is part art and part science. Every communicator will handle it a bit differently, and ultimately, there is no wrong way to develop your key messages, as long as they center the people you serve. That said, there are a few best practices we’ve found effective.
- Begin with an organization assessment where you take a look at a wide range recent communication pieces your nonprofit has put out, from annual reports to social media posts. This could also include listening to recent speeches or media engagements where your CEO and others have spoken about your organization. An organization assessment will often reveal areas where you already have effective messages to work with, as well as many areas of inconsistency and opportunities for improvement.
- Conduct an ecosystem assessment where you take a look at the communications and messaging of several other comparator organizations doing work similar to yours. Where is your existing messaging similar to or different from theirs? Where are their opportunities to learn from, and/or differentiate from them as you develop your new messaging?
- Conduct stakeholder research, such as a survey or focus groups, to determine how your stakeholders currently articulate things like what your organization does and why. Look for opportunities to meet them where they are, as well as opportunities to clarify confusion. Stakeholder research should also be part of your process for developing stakeholder profiles, which can inform key messages segmented by stakeholder.
- Bring together a diverse group of nonprofit stakeholders for a messaging workshop. In line with our Shared Power Strategy philosophy, you’ll want this group to include staff, board members, donors, volunteers, and most importantly, the people you serve. Ask them questions to directly inform your messaging (ex: how would you describe what we do or the challenges we exist to address?) Then, synthesize their responses into your master key messages, and put those messages back in front of them for reactions.
- Recognize that your organization’s key messages will need to evolve. While it’s important to get them right, especially in the eyes of your program participants, the ever-changing nature of nonprofit work means your nonprofit’s messages will need to continue to evolve as well. Once you’ve solidified them, train your staff, board and other communicators in how to use them, but allow them flexibility and the opportunity to personalize the way they talk about your organization based on their own experiences.
Want more?
If your nonprofit already has key messages, but you’re considering revisiting them, this post can help. Or, if you’re aiming to make your messaging more strength-based, as every organization should, check out our 101 Guide to Strength-Based Communication.
