Communications for conservation: How to do it well

"As a leader, it is important to do work that has an impact. It is equally important to ensure that your impact is being communicated as you would like others to know. This requires investing time and resources in your communications efforts, as it is at the core of an organization's success."
-Dickson Kaelo, CEO, Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association

Many conservation organizations struggle to prioritize communications for various reasons, such as funding concerns or bandwidth challenges. However, more and more it has become apparent that effective communications is imperative for a conservation organization to be successful.

But while the thinking around communications might be changing, the actual doing remains a challenge as organizations often struggle with where to begin.  We get it, communications can be overwhelming: from websites to social media to videos and annual reports. But just like with all your other organizational work, communications activities should be strategic, mission-driven, and focused. 

Over the years, our experience working with various partners has demonstrated that any conservation organization - large or small  - can apply some basic guiding principles to find communications success.

Set your communications goals: what do you need communications to help you achieve?

Identifying and articulating clear goals for your communications efforts will help ensure you stay on track and focused. Time and time again, we've seen organizations fall into a major communications trap: trying to do it all and ultimately not doing anything all that well or effectively. Instead, before you plan communications activities, step back and set your goals and objectives. Start with your organizational strategy and go from there.

Align your communications activities to your organizational strategy

As you work towards setting your communications goals, ensuring that these goals are aligned with your overall strategy remains critical. 

Often, teams approach communications as a stand-alone line of work, yet it must be integrated with and supportive of other programmes within your organization for it to be successful. This makes it easier to see the direct link that communications plays in supporting your general work and also makes it possible for you to measure the impact that your efforts continue to have. 

Make communications a leadership priority and invest in a team

“Organizations search for communications staff with an impossible-to-find set of skills and talents. These “unicorn” communicators are expected to facilitate the flow of communications internally and effectively market the entire organization single-handedly. They are asked to write, design, and coordinate every aspect of communications - and even (perhaps) manage a program of two.”

-Sarah Durham, The Nonprofit Communications Engine

Sounds familiar!? It certainly does to us!

There are two main hurdles that organizations face when it comes to communications. Firstly, leadership’s failure to prioritize it as a core piece of work, consequently allocating insufficient resources towards it. Secondly, there’s a challenge with the actual implementation of communications work, such as attracting and building the right communications team and creating realistic expectations.

Where resources might make it impossible to hire a large team, ensuring that your single Communications Officer has clear, achievable goals, receives the proper support from the group - especially from the top - will set them on a path to success. If you can’t even invest in one designated lead, then at least try to allocate some team members’ time to communications, including leadership’s time. And, start adding this to all your budget proposals now!

Establish a target audience (don't try to reach everyone)

Often, when we ask partners who they want to reach, a typical response is, “the general public.” Basically, everyone. We understand this desire because your work is important, and everyone should care about it. Unfortunately, that’s not realistic and trying to reach everyone will likely result in you reaching no one.

Who matters to you? Who do you need to reach, engage with, and/or influence to achieve your communications goals and objectives? The group of individuals you need to reach is known as your audience. To be truly effective at reaching your audience, you’ll want to understand them: who they are, what they’re like, how to get their attention best. Use this simple set of questions to get to know your audience:

Exercise: Get to know your audience

• Who are they? - Can you describe this ‘audience’ as if they were a person? What are they like?

• What do they care about? - What things excite them? What matters to them?

• What do you want them to know? - What information do you want them to know? What messages are you trying to get across to them?

• How do they get their information? - In what ways do they like to communicate or receive their information? (e.g. news, social media, websites, videos, meetings, going to church, talking to neighbors, etc.)

• Who do they listen to? - Are there any individuals they might be more likely to listen to? (e.g. other donors, a religious leader, a politician, a scientist, your organization’s CEO etc.)

What messages will work? Your message matters

Remember you need to convince people why what you are saying matters. 

Be compelling - Use real people, tell their story. Tell the story of your organization. Use engaging, powerful images and videos. Be emotive – don’t think about telling people to do things, think about ways that will make them feel, that will make them want to do something. Use numbers and data to show your impact. 

Be clear - Avoid jargon, you don’t have to use complex grammar to sound knowledgeable. Use plain English, and common, everyday words.

"If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein

Don’t over-explain - This is a trap many of us fall into. You want to be scientific. You don’t want to generalize, and want to be as convincing as possible. But save the details for later on and get people interested first. Always be accurate, but find ways to simplify and summarize. The general audience does not often need full complex reports - what matters to them is the transformation that your organization is achieving in implementing its mission.

And finally, don’t let money get in the way

As mentioned above, your organization should be investing in communications (and, if you didn’t read this above, or even if you did, start including communications costs into your proposed budgets!). Communications can feel overwhelming because of the costs. Fortunately, there there are many communications tools that are actually free - and easy to use (we know, we’ve used them all)!

Canva

Canva provides you with excellent design templates to take your products to the next level such as reports, social media posts, presentations, brochures, and more. Best of all, you don't need any design skills to use it! 

Hootsuite 

Are you struggling with maintaining a schedule of when to post your social media content? Hootsuite helps you with this - it provides a platform to help you schedule your posts across all your social networks in just a few clicks, saving you time and ensuring that your pages are regularly and consistently updated.

Grammarly 

Grammarly is a grammar checker and proofreading tool that improves your overall writing. The premium version goes beyond the basics, helping with sentence structure and more, ensuring that your writing is clear, professional and persuasive. 

Mailchimp 

Send out beautifully designed newsletters using Mailchimp. You also get powerful data analysis that lets you review how well your emails are doing and whether they resonate with your audience.

Unsplash

Great photos make all the difference when it comes to creating compelling communications products. Yet, many organizations don't always have the resources to hire top photographers for high-quality photos. Unsplash is a source of freely usable images, including beautiful wildlife and landscape pictures. 

Read the full newsletter here: Maliasili Reader Issue 31

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