How Parts of Your Messaging May Be Sabotaging Your Advocacy Success - Episode 37

You're listening to the nonprofit power podcast. In today's episode we reveal how parts of your messaging may be sabotaging your advocacy success. So stay tuned. If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Cath Patrick and I've helped dozens of progressive non profit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter. It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them Bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the nonprofit power podcast. Hey everybody. Kath Patrick here. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the nonprofit power podcast. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode. If I told you that up to 85% of your overall messaging, maybe undermining your goals for engaging key decision makers. You might be alarmed or you might be skeptical. But many non-profits are in this situation and don't realize it. The good news is there are some simple things you can do to identify and rework any counterproductive messaging and ensure that all of your messaging and communications are supporting your effort to engage decision makers and get them to take action on your behalf Hey there folks. Welcome to the nonprofit power podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I've been noticing something that's coming up on a regular basis lately and I really want to address it. Because I'm seeing a simple and common mistake that is literally sabotaging a lot of good work that nonprofit leaders are doing to advance their cause with decision-makers that they have targeted. When you've got a specific thing that you want to decision maker to do for you, whether it's around money or policy or both. You've got a strategy, right? And part of your strategy is messaging. Part of what you're doing is you're looking to make sure that that decision maker understands exactly what they need to, in order to be motivated to take specific action on behalf of the thing that you want to have happen. So there's a lot that goes into that. And we've talked about all of those components that go into that messaging in a lot of different episodes. But here's what I'm seeing happening. There's all this other messaging that's coming from non-profits all the time. We can call this general audience messaging. So It's all your PR .It's your annual reports. It's communications to individual donors. It's appearances on local television talk shows. It's interviews with traditional media. It's your social media presence. It's your website. It's all those things. You, your organization and you individually as a leader are communicating all the time about the work that your organization does, and how it's making a difference in the world. And that's great. But about 80 to 85% typically of that communication that's going out in the world is aimed at a more general audience. And only about maybe 15 to 20% of your messaging is designed specifically to influence a particular decision maker to take a particular action on your behalf. And here's the problem. So often, I hear from nonprofit leaders the frustration that they have: the decision-makers don't really get what you do. They don't understand the nuances of the problem that you solve, and the services that you provide and the unique outcomes, the unique role that you have. All of those important details that are essential for a decision-maker to properly value and therefore invest, either with their time and energy or resources or both, to invest in your solution. All of those pieces that you need a decision maker to get in order to take that action are not typically part of your general audience messaging. And so here's what's happening. Your decision-makers that you've targeted for specific strategic reasons are being exposed to your general audience messaging as well. They may see the local television interview. They may notice an article in the paper. They may see your social media posts. They may have been on your website. They may have been to an event that you sponsored. And they may be hearing from friends and colleagues and family who have consumed your general messaging. .Whether you intend it or not, whether you're aware of it or not, your target decision-makers are also being exposed to all of your general audience messaging. And here's where that can become a serious problem and can really undermine what you need them to know in order for them to take specific action. It is very common and I totally understand the instinct to do this. It is very common to do two things. One, to greatly simplify the work of the organization to make it easy and quick to understand. And when your audience is general that seems like a reasonable thing to do. Right. We want folks to get it real quick. We don't want to have to go into a lot of detail or bore them. Have them stop paying attention because it's getting too complicated. So we tend to distill things down. And we've all been told, right? We need an elevator pitch. We need something that in one or two sentences communicates what we do. And so what I see happen a lot. I've seen this in every single direct service nonprofit niche that there is. Folks who are in the housing space might say something like we help people get housing or we help shelter people or whatever their focus in that arena is. Somebody who's in a very complex nutrition space might say we feed this many people. Somebody who is in the healthcare space might say, we help people with chronic diseases get better, or improve their health. Somebody who's in the workforce development space might say, we help people find better jobs or careers. And that's not wrong. It's just so oversimplified that it actually reinforces a simplistic interpretation of what you do and the problem you solve. And it feeds the inclination to lump your work in with all the other organizations that are doing anything remotely similar. oh, there's another housing non-profit. There's another healthcare nonprofit. There's another food related nonprofit. There's another jobs related nonprofit. There's another education related non-profit okay. That's nice. That's great. Now I know where they fit. And that's not super useful to have in your general audiences head. But it is downright problematic if that's in your decision-makers heads. Because as we've talked about so often, they have to understand all of the nuances in order to place proper value on the work, on the outcomes. And in order to want to invest, in policy, in money or both, in ensuring that those services are able to continue and to expand their impact. So the other thing that's similar to the oversimplification is creating generalized messaging that is intended to work for everybody. But winds up being too general, too broad to give anybody a real sense of what's unique about what you do. And it goes to every piece of your messaging. I'm sure you're using clients' stories. I'm sure you're using success stories. I'm sure you're using data. I'm sure you're using all kinds of standard elements to help the world know about you and know what you do. But here's what I would like to suggest. That it will be very profitable for you to shift your thinking about your messaging in general. To the frame of mind that says, my decision makers are always listening. They are always receiving whatever message I put out into the world. So I need it to not contribute to any problems of overgeneralization or over-simplification. Rather, I need it to contribute to deeper understanding, clarity about the nuance, clarity about the unique value of the impact. And you can do that without making all of your messaging be so heavy on data or on details that it becomes undigestible. So we're going to talk about how we do that. But the most important thing that I want you to understand is that your decision makers are always listening, always watching. They're out there. That doesn't mean they're focused on you all the time. Not at all. But they're people in the community like everybody else, and they are taking in your messaging. Whether it's registering with them or not. It may not be, it probably isn't. But it's still there. It's part of the information ecosystem out there that is creating perceptions. And the other thing to be aware of is that general public perception of your work also has a bearing on your decision makers perception, particularly if they are in a public role of any kind. Certainly if they're an elected official, but also if they're in any form of government. If they're a city or a county agency person, a state agency person, They're sensitive to public opinion. They're sensitive to where the mood is on the thing that you work on. And if there's a sense that it is urgent and important, that permeates. If there's a sense that it is just part of the wallpaper and not that urgent, not that important, that permeates as well. And so part of your goal is to create an overall higher level public understanding of the work that you do and its value in the world and its impact in the world. And specifically the value and impact in the community. Whether that's a very local community or a statewide community, whatever level you're operating at. .Let's talk about how this problem manifests itself. Because I think it will help you to hear some examples to see how easy it is to fall into this habit. I've watched a number of nonprofit leaders recently do local television appearances, where they were going to publicize an event or a fundraiser or something that was going on. Or perhaps a local TV talk show just had them on to share about their group. you know, tell us what you do. And what I noticed was, going into these conversations clearly not having done any specific strategic preparation. And I get it. First of all that's feels like work, but also there's a sense of, well, I'm going to talk about our program. I don't need to prepare to talk about that. I talk about our program all the time. This is easy. I'll go have a conversation. We'll gin up some interest and that'll be great. And we'll promote the event that we're having or whatever it is. And so they go and the initial conversation is about the event or the thing that prompted the interview. And then the interviewer will get into, okay, so tell us more about what your program does. Tell us more about who you help and how you help them. Those kinds of questions. And what I saw one after another was complete general audience messaging. It was simplified, general, And contained very little that spoke to what unique piece of the problem the organization solves. What specific high value impact the organization is able to get by virtue of whatever is unique about their approach to solving the problem. These are the three most important points of unique value that want to be highlighted. And what I noticed over and over again was that those were not being focused on by the organization's representative. And same with social media posts. Same with what's on your website. Same with what's in your annual report. What I notice again and again is lack of focus on those unique points of value. Because you're trying to appeal to the broadest possible audience. And you're also trying not to have to do a ton of work every time we go out to do this. But I think most of the time, the issue is primarily that we're not realizing that about 80 to 85% of your total messaging from your nonprofit is probably aimed at a general audience and maybe 15 to 20% is aimed at specific decision makers that you want specific action from. And so we tend to put that latter smaller percentage category in a special place in our mind. And we said, okay, we're going to be focused and really strategic about that messaging. And then with the other stuff, we're like, yeah, well, you know, this is kind of what we do is who we are. .Not realizing that decision-makers are absorbing that general audience message far more than we realize. And it's contributing to that lack of understanding of the key details that we need them to have in their head. So one really easy solution to this is to upgrade your general audience messaging. So that it is communicating core pieces of your unique value to everybody. And there's no downside to the general public having a more nuanced understanding of the problem you solve and how you solve it and what your unique value is. There's only upside to that. But the downside to failing to do that is that you have 80 to 85% of the messaging out there in the world reinforcing decision-makers fuzzy, unclear, nonspecific perception of what you do. And then you're fighting against that with your 15 to 20% messaging that's super tailored and focused. So let's talk about two or three things you can do that will shift your general audience messaging. To help you not create problems, not sabotage your decision maker messaging. And elevate the public understanding as well. The simplest way to think about this is to take four core elements of your strategic messaging to decision-makers, and incorporate those into all of your messaging. Every last piece of it. Your essential core messaging should always contain the degree of clarity about the following four things that you want decision makers to have. So it's what your organization does. And you want to explain it in such a way that whoever is hearing it or seeing it could explain it back to you and get it right. The specific problem or problems that you solve. And if you solve a piece of a larger problem, which is often the case. With the most sophisticated service solutions out there, very often you're tackling one piece of a larger problem. So you want to identify the broad problem. But then you talk about, okay, so here's a key piece that is particularly challenging or unique and that this is the part we focus on. And then you talk about what's unique about your solution. What's different. And then you talk about the impact of your unique solution. And how it creates exceptional outcomes. That would all be in your messaging to decision makers. But it very often is not in your general audience messaging. So let's get it into all your general audience messaging. But you're going to frame it a little bit differently. Because when you tailor something for a specific decision-maker, you're really tailoring it. To what you know about them, what you know they care about, all of that. And so obviously you can't do that with a general audience because you're talking to people with a lot of different sets of concerns. So the easiest way to think about how to frame that is to think about, how does this affect the individual who has the problem. How does it affect them and their family? And how does it affect the community? And if you talk about each of the four core messaging elements, what you do, the specific problems you solve, or the pieces of problems. What's unique about your solution. And the impact of your unique solution and the exceptional outcomes that it generates. And you talk about that in terms of the people with the problem and their families. And the community. You begin by explaining how the problem manifests for the person who has it. What does it mean in their life when they they have this problem that isn't addressed. What's happening? What are they able to do? What are they not able to do? How does that affect them? How does that affect their kids? How does that affect their spouse, their partner? How does that affect their ability to work? How does that affect their ability to be a fully involved member of the community? And you just describe that. This is where story is your friend. You are painting a picture. Let me tell you about a typical client that we work with. Here's a person who has this problem. This is what they're experiencing. This is what their days are like. These are the knock-on problems that it creates in their life. This has so many ripple effects that it's super important that this get addressed. .And then you describe what's unique about the problem. Here's why this problem has been so difficult to solve. Here's why this person hasn't been able to solve it on their own. And you're doing all of this by painting a picture. It's not a dry recitation. You're painting a picture. And then you say, and so here's the solution that we have. This is what we do to help them have a better life. Here's how we help them solve this problem. For good. Or for the longterm.. We address this piece of the problem this way. We address this piece of the problem this other way. And what's unique about what we do is that we treat each person as an individual. We create a tailored plan, because so many aspects of this problem manifest itself in different ways with different people. And each person's path to thriving is going to look a little different. So we take the time to work with them, to figure out what that path is going to look like. And then we apply our solution, whatever it is. And that is what allows us to facilitate these extraordinary transformations. So think about this person who started with these sets of things that they weren't able to do, the problems in their life that were being caused by the core problem, and all of the difficulty they were having. Once they get our services, this is what their life looks like. Now they're able to do this thing they couldn't do before. Now they're able to do this thing for their family that they couldn't do before. Now they're able to do this thing for the community that they weren't able to do before. It's a complete transformation. It's not only valuable to the people we help directly, but it has so many benefits to the community broadly, because now these folks are able to be fully involved in the community. So for a lot of the folks that we serve, we are able to help them not only solve the problem they came to us with. But it improves their lives on all these other levels. And that allows them to do these additional things. It allows them to care for their kids more consistently. It allows them to be able to work full-time instead of only, occasional part-time jobs because their health challenge or whatever other issues were getting in the way of that. So you're able to talk about how it has a ripple effect. You can do all of that in a way that is very people centered. And then data are only sprinkled in very carefully for extra emphasis. So you might describe that whole scenario and how it starts and how it ends when they've been through your services. And to be able to say, And, you know, that would be amazing enough if we were only able to help a handful of people a year, because that would be that many lives that were changed. But the fact is that one in every four families in our community is affected by this problem in some way. One in four. We often don't know what our neighbors are going through, but the reality is one in four of the people on your block, of the families in your building, are struggling with this problem. And so we know the need is enormous and we're able to reach a lot of them. But we need to reach a lot more. Because when the problem is this impactful, it really matters that we have a solution that isn't just temporary, but that really fixes the problem. And that's what we're all about. We want people to be able to thrive. And be fully involved in their families and their communities. And we make that possible through the work that we do. That's a people-centered way to talk about all of the unique pieces of what you do. What problem you solve and how you solve it and how you solve it effectively. It takes a little work to think strategically through all those elements of messaging. But once you create the core elements of your general audience messaging that are people centered, and that includes some good stories. You can then pull from that at any time you need to create general audience messaging. Whether you're giving a talk or you're being interviewed or you're making a video, whatever you're doing. Or if it's something that you sit down and write, that's going to be read by someone somewhere. Social media posts, something on the website, what's going in your annual report. All of that. Use all of those general messaging opportunities to reinforce what you need your critical decision makers to know. So that you are bringing them closer to wanting to invest in taking action for your program. To increase resources to shift policy, whatever is that you need from them. But they are already being moved along by your general messaging that they are inevitably being exposed to. Never forget that any piece of general audience messaging could land in a decision-makers lap at any time. And is likely to. And if only 15 to 20% of your messaging is strategically aimed at shaping decision-makers perspectives and opinions and how they think about your program. And 80 to 85% of it is not geared for that. It's not surprising that most decision makers struggle to understand what your program does because they are absorbing all that other messaging. So it's time to get rid of general messaging that does not support our objectives with decision-makers. I Shift it around. And always be thinking of what do I need decision makers to understand in order to see the value and invest accordingly. And then create your core messaging elements from that. And build it into absolutely every piece of messaging that leaves your organization. When you do that. You're going to see a substantial uptick in decision-maker comprehension of what you do. It won't be overnight, because understand that you're going to be overcoming a long history of general audience messaging that didn't do that. But now, today is the day to start. And as you incorporate that everywhere, you will start to see shifts. And over time you will find that you have much less work to do to help a decision maker understand those core things about what you do and what you solve and the value. .It'll be much faster to get to the and here's the help we need from you. Here's the thing we want to get done. Here's how we want to work together with you to make that happen. And you won't have to be spending endless conversations, trying to get them to even get the basics. So invest upfront with your general audience messaging and reap the rewards when you're working with your decision makers. Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.