How to Reach the Audiences You Know — And the Ones You Don't
June 18, 2026
A joke among old newspaper reporters was that they had an audience of one — the grizzled city editor awaiting their copy. If a draft passed muster with him, the reporter could go home. If not, it would be a long night.
Today’s foundations and nonprofits have the opposite problem. They can craft compelling stories and thoughtful communications strategies but still miss much of their audience.
The problem is they’re not speaking to an audience of one. They’re trying to reach an increasingly complex crowd, with different motivations, habits, and expectations.
Community foundation communicators know their core donors. They know their boards. They know their nonprofit partners.
That’s not a surprise. When we created a survey to gauge how well our community foundation partners know their audiences, we were confident they best understood those groups.
We had another hunch, and the communicators who responded to our survey confirmed it. Prospective donors, emerging donors, and professional advisors are largely a mystery to them.
That’s a problem because the first two groups represent future growth, and the latter often influences where donor funds are managed.
But the problem runs deeper.
The generational challenge
High on the list of challenges in reaching audiences is understanding generational differences, according to survey respondents. Community foundation communicators understand Baby Boomers. They’re learning more about Gen Xers and Millennials. But when asked how well they know Gen Z, their collective response was a 1.47 out of 5.
Think about that. Older Gen Zers aren’t kids. They’re in their mid to late 20s, starting families, and building their careers and wealth. Yet they share little in common with their grandparents, who began their days with the newspaper and ended it with Walter Cronkite’s evening report. Many Gen Zers have never held a newspaper in their hands.
If community foundations don’t understand Gen Z, you can bet Gen Z doesn’t understand community foundations.
Our predecessors didn’t have this level of complexity. People live longer now. They work longer.
America has never in its 250-year history had five generations in the workforce. In philanthropy, there can be three generations of donors within families, each with different lived experiences, levels of trust in institutions, and ideas about giving.
Complicating matters, there’s a long list of channels to reach these different audiences. Social media alone is splintered into an ever-growing list of platforms, each with unique rules of engagement and varying types and ages of users.
You can see how quickly mapping out an audience ecosystem can turn into a traffic jam, especially for time- and resource-strapped nonprofit comms teams.
Which brings us to another point emphasized by survey respondents: The single biggest barrier to understanding their audiences is limited capacity. They know they need to expand their reach. They just don’t have the time or resources to do it effectively.
Mapping your audience ecosystem
That’s not to say they’re not trying. Most (87.5%) are active on social media, but much more so on Facebook and LinkedIn than on Instagram, where Gen Z’s digital natives spend a lot of their time.
They also report that their most effective communications channels are e-newsletters, websites, and in-person events. Quarterly magazines rank last. Yet when we asked what tools they use to develop stronger audience understanding and connections, they ranked storytelling strategies near the top.
There’s a disconnect there. Magazines are designed to share impact stories. The key is how those magazines are presented.
Drop off copies of the print magazine with handwritten notes for 60-something professional advisors, but send their 30-something peers LinkedIn messages with your latest post featuring a digital version of a story in the magazine.
It’s not about telling different stories. It’s about adapting one story for different audiences. Maybe you have a video from a feature story interview that you can share on YouTube. You could include a QR code to that video in a pamphlet you hand out at a community event. You could use parts of the print feature in a blog post and on Facebook.
Sure, mapping out that six-for-one strategy adds to your already too-long list of responsibilities, but the return is clear. You’re building roads to those audiences and preventing future traffic jams.
How to get there
Repurposing content is far from revolutionary. But it works best when you add a new layer of strategic thinking to your process.
Before you nail down the angle of a story, before the first interview, before you dive into the writing, take a moment to brainstorm how the story can play across different audiences, formats, and channels. It might mean doing a Zoom interview instead of a phone call or choosing a more video-friendly setting for a sit-down interview. Maybe you just need to ask a few more questions. Adding that up-front planning stage can go a long way toward adapting your work for different audiences.
None of this is to say that all audiences are created equal. They’re not. You need to know who your No. 1 audience is, how they spend their time, what motivates them. The biggest portion of your budget needs to be devoted to reaching that audience. But don’t stop there. Even if you know who's giving today, it’s important to figure out who will be giving tomorrow.
We built an Audience Lab Worksheet to help communicators make these strategic decisions: How much you should invest in each audience, channel, and generation? The worksheet can also help you uncover answers hidden in your data.
For instance, if you learn that you have virtually no presence among Millennials but they’re your fastest-growing giving segment, you can allocate more resources to fill that gap. If the ROI on your direct mailing to Boomers is leveling out, maybe shift a portion of that budget to email strategies. If your data reveals that building a video presence would help you reach more of those mysterious Gen Zers/future donors, you know what to do.
Step one is learning who they are. Those who responded to our survey admitted they rarely use surveys themselves to learn about their audiences. They were at the bottom of the list of tools they employ, along with audience personas.
That's striking. Community foundations know they need a better understanding of their audiences, yet they’re not using the tools designed to provide that understanding.
The challenge isn't creating more content. It’s coming up with a plan to talk to more than just an audience of one.
