Stop Fixing Your Communications. Start Fixing Your Strategy.
July 23, 2026
Many foundations and nonprofits have passionate teams who generate meaningful impact. Yet they fail to break through because they struggle to explain what they do, who they serve, and why their work matters.
Often, this is diagnosed as a communication problem. But the root cause usually sits further upstream.
The communications aren't muddy because the writing is weak. They're muddy because of an organizational strategy that focuses on doing too many things for too many audiences.
In recent interviews with community foundation executives and communications leaders, we found a near-universal challenge. They believe everything is important — which means, in practice, nothing is.
The result is an organization that may show up in all the right places but isn’t memorable in any of them.
The cure is creating clarity. Below are five principles for getting there.
If you're a communications leader, this advice offers an action plan. If you lead a social good organization, encouraging this approach can transform the way you communicate — and operate.
1. Eliminate before you add
Organizations that grow quickly don’t add. They subtract.
They focus on what’s important and find ways to cut out the noise.
Organizations that struggle keep adding — more channels, more campaigns, more audience segments.
If you want to grow your organization, you have to simplify.
You can start that process by answering a simple yet challenging question: What is the one communications function that, done exceptionally well, would change everything else for your organization?
Should you prioritize donor engagement? Professional advisor cultivation? Advocacy on a key issue? Volunteer activation?
Choose the action you want to drive and the audience you need to reach in order to get there. Everything else is secondary. That doesn't mean you stop doing the rest — it means you stop weighing everything equally, and you resource accordingly.
2. Communicate your identity, not just activities
Most organizations are fluent in what they do and silent about who they are.
"We host quarterly educational events" is an activity. "We are the community’s hub for lifelong learning" is an identity.
Activities inform your current audience, but identity recruits your future one. They are the supporting evidence behind your identity, not the main message.
Identity is what attracts donors, partners, media, and talent — often before they've engaged with a single program.
Look at your homepage, your annual report, your elevator pitch. Are you only describing a list of things you do? Or are you telling people who you are?
3. Pick three messages and repeat them relentlessly
If we audited everything your organization published over the past year, could we identify your top three messages? Could your board? Could you?
For most organizations, the answer is no — because there aren't three messages. There are 30.
Discipline here is uncomfortable but transformative. Identify the three messages that matter most this year, and make sure everything you publish reinforces at least one of them.
The words you use may vary. You should sound authentic and not scripted. But the message should be loud, clear, and consistent.
The repetition will feel excessive from inside your communications team. From the outside — and even to other departments within your organization — where your audiences catch only fragments of what you say, it will feel coherent.
4. Shift from scribe to strategist
Most social good communications are retrospective. They explain what happened, where, when, why, and who was involved.
But you’re not writing a newspaper report chronicling what you’ve done. You’re building the case for support or action, and a “just the facts” approach doesn’t inspire many people to want to join your cause.
Scaling organizations ask three questions at the start of any project:
What action do we want people to take?
What belief are we trying to change?
What future are we inviting our community into?
When you answer those questions, you have clarity on how to frame every story, every message, and every call to action.
It positions you to lead with a clear vision, identify the challenges that stand in the way of your vision, offer a path forward to conquer those challenges, and invite your audience to join you on the journey.
Yes, the facts matter. But they should be presented in service to where you want to go, not just where you have been.
When you do this, you shift from scribe to strategist. And this shift helps your whole organization get clearer about where it's going.
5. Frame stats with compelling stories
Data informs. Stories mobilize.
"We awarded $500,000 in grants last year" is supporting evidence. "A researcher's breakthrough is now reaching 10,000 patients because local donors invested early" is a scaling asset — a story that goes beneath the number and travels from person to person, carrying your strategy with it.
If your communications simply regurgitate numbers, activities, and announcements, you're informing your audience. You're not moving them.
Connect those numbers with human stories that add an emotional, inspirational, or aspirational jolt to your three messages, and let those narratives do the heavy lifting.
Clarity is leadership work
None of these five principles can be executed by the communications team alone.
It requires CEO, board, and leadership alignment on what matters most. And you must all consistently assess what’s working and what isn’t.
Clarity is not a communications deliverable — it's a leadership discipline that communications makes visible, dynamic, and, ultimately, transformative.
This is work we care deeply about, and it's the thinking behind The Audience Lab, a new hands-on program we're launching this summer to help organizations focus their audiences, messages, and budgets ahead of fall planning season.
Whether you tackle this with us or around your own conference table, do it soon. Because your community doesn't need you to say more. It needs you to say less with more clarity.
