This week, weโre thrilled to welcome Catherine Alonzo to Ask a Responsive Fundraiser. Catherine is a business leader, consultant, podcast host, and public speaker who works with individuals and organizations to create kinder, more equitable communities. She is the CEO and founding partner of Javelina, a leading branding and marketing agency that helps organizations develop and elevate their powerful stories.
Be sure to check out past editions of Ask a Responsive Fundraiser and leave us a comment on LinkedIn so we can answer your questions!
Dear Responsive Fundraiser: Despite our strategy staying the same, we’re seeing less and less engagement on our email and social posts. How can we stand out and capture donor attention when so many organizations are competing for the same funding?
Catherine Alonzo: This can be so frustrating when you’re chugging along, things are happening nicely, you know, a very similar pattern, and then you start to see your results sliding. And it’s really easy to kind of panic and start trying all kinds of things, and trying one thing one week, and if it doesn’t work you try another thing another week.
The most important thing is to prevent yourself from panicking. Take a step back, look at your communications, and then adjust really slowly. Perhaps try a new set of tactics or a new message, but try it for two or three weeks before you evaluate whether it will impact your engagement.
You want to look for one thing: Are you communicating why your organization is important? It is really, really easy. A lot of us do this to describe what we do on a day-to-day basis without talking about why. Why is this work important? For those of us who do the work on a day-to-day basis, the why is kind of obvious.
And for a lot of us, it really is such a calling. Itโs such an honor to be able to do this work. But remember that the people that are interacting with your content on the other side they’re not looking at it against all other different kinds of nonprofit organizations. They’re looking at it alongside a corporate brand communicating to them or their kids and friends who have posted pictures.
You really need to be able to jump out at them and grab their attention. And the best way to do that is by communicating why the work matters. And then the other thing, if you take one thing from this answer, it would be this next thing. This is the most important tweak.
Every single social media post that you write should be tailored toward a specific target audience. And for a lot of people, that feels really counterintuitive. So, on social, we’re going to do pretty general messages.
But no, what you want to be doing when you’re writing a social post is thinking, โWho is this for? Why are they going to look at this? And what is going to create value for them?โ And then write to those specifications. Youโll find over time that when youโre writing specific posts for specific people, youโll start to see your engagement go up.
It’s OK to have some of your posts on your social media channels targeted at volunteers and others targeted at donors, different kinds of donors, institutional versus individual.
When you’re writing very general posts, you will find engagement will drop because people just aren’t seeing them resonate on a personal level.
Dear Responsive Fundraiser: We’re making a big impact on the people we serve, but we’re struggling to show that impact to our donors. How do we develop a consistent, cohesive story across all platforms to help build trust and engagement?
CA: This is another thing that can be really frustrating because you’re doing fantastic work, and the results should show for themselves. And I find that a lot of people in the nonprofit sector almost use as a mantra, โI’m not going to worry about marketingโthe work speaks for itself,โ only to discover that it doesn’t always because there’s a lot of competition out there.
Often, we just need to help people be able to find our project, our initiative, and our successes. So what you want to think about here is, first of all, what is the central narrative youโre telling about your success? Is it that we are helping people connect to employment through the services that we offer? Is it that we are introducing an innovative solution to an existing problem? Is it that we are bringing together lots of different organizations within the sector to address a challenge? What is it that you are demonstrating success of?
This is something that might feel really obvious to you, but it is not obvious to your audience. Itโs critical for everybody on your team to be on the same page about what the central narrative is and how youโre telling it. You want to have clarity with your team and shared understanding and have it written down.
In a couple of sentences, what is the story? Then, tell the story in numerous ways. You want to tell that story in numbers, data, graphs, charts, and infographics. Be able to demonstrate the statistics that back up the story that you’re telling. Tell the story in pictures. If you want to invest in high-quality organic photography, you can do so if itโs relevant.
And then lastly, stories. Put a human face on your successesโtestimonials, case studies, and examples. You want to make sure that you are collecting people’s stories in an ethical way, where they are comfortable and youโre not telling people stories for them, but really providing them an audience for them to tell their own story.
Consistently share that content, the numbers, the stories, and the pictures in different combinations depending on what your format is. So, the social media format is going to be different than an annual report and a website. But as long as you have those three things and you make sure that those three things, however they’re combined, is a reflection of that central narrative, then you will be telling a consistent, cohesive story across platforms.
Dear Responsive Fundraiser: We’re experiencing some tension among our team as we approach rebranding our organization. What’s the best way to navigate internal resistance when implementing significant brand or messaging changes?
CA: I absolutely love this question because one of the main things we do at my company, Javelina, is rebrand for organizations working in social change. There’s always some kind of resistance or challenge at the beginning. It looks different, and it comes from different places, but I think this is a really common experience.
There are a few things you want to do here: First, you want to ensure that you are communicating to everybody in your organization and in your wider community why you are rebranding. You want to have very, very clear information on that. What problem is this solving? Why is this a worthwhile place to put time, energy, and resources?
Most organizations have some kind of brand equity in their existing name and their existing brand presence. You need to be able to justify why is it that we are walking away from that and really investing in something new. Second, you want to create a working group of individuals that leads the day-to-day ins and outs of the rebranding process from beginning to end.
You want a consistent decision-making body. It should be no more than five to six people, and it should include key staff and at least one board member. Preferably, it’ll include your CEO or executive director and the person responsible for overseeing the brand’s daily operations, whether that’s your marketing director or your development director.
Youโll also want to seek input from a wider group. It might be a survey of your entire organization or a survey of the people you serve. You might do focus groups or listening sessions.
And you also want to make sure that you are doing that exact same thing for your board of directors. The board member who is on your core working group is your liaison between the board and the people who are overseeing the rebranding. Make sure that they are equipped to do that.
And then the last thing that you want to do is as you are doing a rollout, make sure youโre considering your internal audience. How are you communicating this to your team alongside or before you are communicating it to the wider community? Your team and your staff often get forgotten and end up feeling like an oversight.
There will be bumps, but it’s the intentionality that matters. And those bumps along the way will really be translated into learnings that ultimately will make your new brand as strong and as best as it can be.
(Editorโs note: Catherineโs answers were edited for length and clarity. Watch the video to see her full answers.)
