Three Levels to Communications Work

There are essentially three levels to your nonprofits communications work. In fact, when Capital Hope works with nonprofits, we consciously organize our questions around these three categories. Our 34-point intake diagnostic is designed to help clarify how a given organization is doing in these three levels. 

So what are they?

Branding & Identity, Strategy, and Content Creation.

Branding & Identity

Branding & Identity is a big category. When people think of this, they usually think of the visual elements of a brand, such as icons, logos and typefaces. That’s part of it, certainly. The bigger part of branding & identity, though, is just figuring out who you are. 

Someone once said, “sometimes figuring out who you are is like being inside a pill bottle and trying to read the label. You really just need someone to come help you see yourself.” That’s what Branding work is: figuring out who you are. 

Strategy

These are questions we’ve discussed elsewhere. But basically, this is figuring out what your organization wants to say to various groups of people (or audiences), and then figuring out how to do that. The idea is simple, doing it is less so.

Content Creation

Once you have a strategy and a clear identity, it’s finally time to create the content. Now, at this level, we’re taking photos, creating social media posts or videos, writing email campaigns, and the like. 

The work of communicating for a nonprofit is overwhelming. Thinking in terms of these three levels is, hopefully, clarifying. Please also recognize that, if you haven’t sorted out the first two levels, creating content will be almost impossible to do well. 

If we can help your nonprofit think through these three levels, and your nonprofits communications, we’d love to chat! Schedule a meeting with us, and let’s talk about ways we might help.