Nonprofits need people to do things. That’s the only way we can achieve our mission of changing the world. And if you need someone to do something, you need a good call to action (or CTA). Calls to action are our instructions for what we want people to do.

And yet, nonprofits sometimes make what should be simple, clear instructions too complicated and vague.

Let’s use the 5 W’s and H to improve your calls to action.

Who

The who is always the person you ask to do the thing. Speak directly to them as an individual. So, if you need to use a pronoun, that pronoun is always YOU.

What

Be specific! Words like support, help, and a dozen other common nonprofit words are not good enough because they include too many possible actions.

Don’t be sheepish. If you seem embarrassed or guilty when asking, that’s a clear sign to your volunteers or donors that they might feel embarrassed or guilty themselves by following through. Remember, asking is about giving people an opportunity, not taking something away from them. We often mirror emotions in these situations, so if you want someone excited to volunteer or donate or register, you should show a little enthusiasm yourself.

When

One of the most essential elements of conversion copywriting (all the words around your call to action) is a sense of urgency. If we can do something later, most of us will because we are too busy now. So, a good call to action will also include urgency. Even adding the word now can help.  Donate Now is stronger than Donate.

Why

We always need the why. We especially need the Why when asked to do something new, different, or hard. Always be clear about your why in your conversion copywriting around your ask. Please (Insert Call to Action) so that (Result Will Follow). 

In some cases, you can even turn the call to action into the results you are seeking:

• Feed a family
• Rescue 10 kittens
• Find a cure

Where

In a presentation I saw by Dan Heath, co-author of Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, he said, “A jerk with a map is better than a saint without one.” 

In other words, with clear directions, even people who are otherwise labeled as selfish will give more than good-hearted people who aren’t told how to help.  When you obsess about the path, you greatly increase the odds that people will follow your call to action. That’s why it does matter how many clicks it takes to get to your donation page or register for your event.

Be sure to prioritize your call to action so people can see it and that path very clearly!

How

Dan Heath also said that most people think the change process goes like this: Analyze > Think > Change.

But it doesn’t. It’s much more like See > Feel > Change.  This is precisely why you should tell stories and set the context for what you are asking people to do. Help your supporters see the problem, feel empowered to help fix it, and then learn how to follow through quickly.

Here’s more advice you might like:

40 Nonprofit Call to Action Examples that Drive Engagement

Perfect Your Nonprofit Call to Action in 3 Steps

As we enter the fall season, many nonprofits are starting their annual planning processes. With that comes the need to set communications goals for the coming year. And with that comes the need to work with the programmatic teams in your organization and how you will collaborate. (Note that the annual goals we are discussing here are actually what we would call objectives in a larger communications strategy.)

Use the Three Stages of Engagement to Set Communications Goals

One helpful approach to discussing and setting communications goals with others is to structure the conversation using our definition of engagement.

Engagement has three stages: Awareness, Interaction, and Participation.

Think of participation as completing the call to action. So, what do your program folks need people to do? Do they need people to RSVP, sign up, volunteer, donate, attend or what?

But before they participate, people have to be aware and then they typically need some kind of interaction to warm up or prepare. 

Let’s look at awareness goals first. Are you growing your email list or getting more followers on social media? Is getting more traffic to your website through organic search or paid advertising important? These are all ways to build awareness that require investing time and money.

Next is interaction. Are people opening emails and clicking on the links? Are they liking or commenting on specific social media posts? Are people returning to your website or spending a reasonable amount of time on certain pages? These are all forms of interaction that have a higher level of engagement than just awareness.

At the interaction stage, you also present your calls to action for consideration and make the case for them.

Hopefully, those who have been made aware and are interacting with your content will follow through and become participants. 

As you create your plans for the coming year and try to set communications goals, consider using this framework in discussions with other teams. It should help them understand how your communications and marketing work can get them closer to their programmatic goals.

We love to see nonprofit communications teams grow! I always do a little dance in my chair when someone in our community says they’ve been approved to hire a new comms team member. But then the question becomes, what should that new communications hire do? How should we write that job description?

In other words, what’s the vision for how your nonprofit communications team should grow?

There’s no right or wrong answer, but there are a few ways to think about this.

Don’t Try to Clone Yourself

This is an easy mistake, especially if you’ve been working as a team of one for a while. You need another person like yourself!

But that’s a trap for you and the person you hire. They will never meet your expectations, and honestly, you probably won’t even be able to define those expectations well. It also robs you of the most significant benefits of growing your team: adding diverse skills and insights that will hopefully balance you out rather than trying to duplicate you.

Instead, Think of Additional Roles or Specialties

First, consider what you and any other team members already do well. Then, think about where you and any others hope to grow professionally. Then, consider what gaps that leaves in your team.

Next, consider whether these approaches make sense for your organization.

Hire By Communications Skills

Do you need someone who is good with words and can take on a lot of original writing and editing of work drafted by others? Is the amount of written work your organization produces overwhelming current staff?

Or do you need someone who is at home with visual communications, like photography, graphics, and video? We can all make do with tools like Canva, but it may be time to hire someone who really knows what they are doing and can produce much higher-quality design work faster than everyone else who has learned on the job.

Hire by Communications Channel Management

Do you need your new communications hire to understand email marketing from start to finish, for example? This person might need to know about email list building and segmentation, crafting good conversion copy for emails, and creating the right graphics, too. The same could be said for a media relations/PR position, which requires particular skills and relationships.

Hire by Roles on Projects

In other cases, you may be looking for someone to fill a role within a project management framework like MOCHA, RACI, or CALM. You may need more helpers or contributors to many different projects (more of a utility player), or you may need people who can lead projects and make final judgment calls.

Hire by Internal Service Lines

I’m not a huge fan of this approach because I think it often leads to too much fragmentation of the communications and marketing strategy. Still, you could also hire team members who work for the comms team but are essentially embedded within programmatic teams, too. So, if you serve both children and elders, you might have a team member who focuses on comms related to children’s programs and another who focuses on comms for programs serving elders.

Hire to Fill Gaps in the Marketing Strategy

Yet another approach would be to look at where your team is missing someone who understands and can implement work on a core part of your marketing strategy. For example, do you need people whose job is to focus on the people you are communicating with, such as market researchers, data managers, or “business” development folks? Do you need a brand manager? Or a content strategist who drives messaging decisions?

You can’t expect someone to do all the things. I hope this post helps you sort through your options!

Want more? Big Duck has helped many nonprofits grow their communications teams and shares advice on their blog. 

It’s a top goal for people who sign up for the Communications Director Mentoring Program and probably for most nonprofit communicators: How do I make time to be more strategic? How do I make time to plan? What they are really asking is, how do I make time to think? 

Thinking, problem-solving, and strategizing are called deep work. They go hand in hand with finding more peace at work.

Here’s my suggested approach to making time to think: Consider how you’ll do that annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily. What you do at each of these intervals will be different, but they will all get you closer to feeling like you do, in fact, have time to think, plan, and problem-solve regularly.

This is not unlike our suggested agendas for weekly, monthly, and quarterly editorial meetings.

Annual Time to Think

Most organizations reserve time once a year for annual work planning. Unfortunately, it’s often a challenge for the communications team to develop their work plans until they know what the programmatic staff are doing. So, it may be that your annual time to think needs to come after everyone else’s on the calendar.

But regardless of when it happens, this is a great time to think deeply about the strategic role of communications within your organization. Where is marketing support required for mission success? Where is it simply nice to have? What are the big communications objectives you are trying to reach? What’s the why of your work for the coming year?

Try to set aside several days for annual thinking.

Quarterly Time to Think

Once a quarter, give yourself time to consider the big picture. What have you accomplished in the previous 90 days, and what are the top priorities for the next 90 days? What trends are you seeing at work? Should these trends be supported or prevented from continuing? This is really about recentering yourself on your work and making sure your energy is going into the right places.

Try to set aside a full morning or afternoon for your quarterly thinking time. If you need to include others in these conversations, you might need a whole day.

Monthly Time to Think

Once a month, look at your editorial calendar and your to-do list for the next 4-6 weeks. Can you put your priorities in order, one, two, three, etc.? This is a great time to think about what you need to be successful. Do you need to meet with certain people? Do you need to set or reaffirm deadlines with others? Clarify any processes for how the work will get done?

Do you need to block off bigger chunks of time for deep work on specific projects, especially those requiring more creativity? Blocking those out now is also a good idea.

Give yourself an hour or two per month to do this work.

Weekly Time to Think

Some people like to do this at the end of the week (Friday), and others prefer the beginning of the week (Monday). But give yourself 15-30 minutes each week to set your course for the next several days. This is where you can adjust your monthly priorities based on what’s actually happening in your organization.

Daily Time to Think

Finally, give yourself at least five minutes at the start of your day to set your intentions. You might also check in with yourself mid-day to see if you need a course correction. At the end of the day, simply review where you are.

Reserving Time to Think

Calendar or time blocking is one way to approach this. You literally block the times on your calendar at each of these intervals and do your best to keep that time sacred on your calendar. You do not let yourself or others schedule over that thinking time.

Calendar blocking is a great start, especially for blocks longer than an hour or two. But it has limitations.

Stuff comes up. People need you. The time you need doesn’t magically match up with the time you blocked. You may find yourself too tired or distracted during the time you reserved actually to accomplish any deep work.

Instead of blocking minutes or hours, some people work better by half-day or day-long blocking, where each larger chunk of time has a theme. That theme could be thinking time. You don’t have to spend the whole afternoon or day on it, but you could, if you got on a roll.

Another approach is to treat “time to think” as a high-priority activity on your to-list. It’s less about reserving a specific time block and more about saying to yourself, I must do this, and it must be done this week. Don’t treat it like an afterthought that you will get to when you can. Force it to the top of the to-do list.

Also consider the tools you use for your thinking time. I personally find that this work is best done with a paper notebook and pen. All of the rest of my work, including writing this blog post, is done online with my hands on a keyboard. I use paper to reinforce that I am not just doing the same old tasks but actually setting a different kind of time aside for thinking.

Similarly, you may decide the place is important. Maybe you do your best thinking alone while walking. Instead of thinking of it as time-blocking, you need to consider physically placing yourself in the right spot at the right times.

No matter how you go about it, you have to create habits that give you the space and time to think. Being consistent is more important than how long you block on your calendar.

It’s getting pretty exciting on the U.S. national election front, regardless of how much you love or hate the candidates. Have you started to think about your election year messaging?

According to our 2024 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, only 17% of nonprofits expect the elections to have at least a moderate influence on their messaging. Less than a third (29%) said they expect the elections to interfere at least moderately with their ability to communicate effectively.  Communications teams with fundraising responsibilities were somewhat more concerned.

Honestly, I think these results reflect a naivete in our sector about just how hard it will be to break through the coming-soon onslaught of political noise with meaningful messaging. 

It’s like the first year of the pandemic . . .  nonprofits that put their work into the context of what EVERYONE was experiencing fared better than those that either stopped messaging or just tried to ignore what was happening.

So what should you expect? What does that context look like for you? What should you do? 

Every nonprofit in the U.S. will need to sort through its own election year messaging strategy. Even those outside the U.S. may need to think this through, especially those with large U.S. donor bases and those working on international issues where the U.S. has great influence on policy.

Here are a few points to get you started . . .

Know Your Rights

It’s a common misperception that 501(c)(3) nonprofits can’t say anything about election politics. That’s not true. You can absolutely speak to the issues you work on. You can even criticize or praise politicians for their specific activities or policies. For example, you could fact-check the debates on your issues and get your opinion pieces ready.

But you CANNOT support or oppose the candidate themselves. So it’s a fine line and one you need to understand. But that doesn’t mean you should be silent on anything election or policy-related this fall. Alliance for Justice has some great fact sheets to get you started.

Acknowledge the Challenges in Swing States

The election year messaging barrage is not felt equally across the country. Swing states get pummeled with campaign messaging in every conceivable channel now through the election.  That includes Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in 2024 and may also include North Carolina and Florida.

The competition for attention there will be fierce and unavoidable. So think through your calls to action in your election year messaging. You probably want to tightly limit the number of calls to action and expect to repeat them at least three-four times more often than you usually do. Candid offers some advice for fundraising during election years, especially in swing states.

Of course, on the flip side, you could also benefit from “reactionary” or “rage” giving, where people give after getting fired up by a specific issue or concern during election years. Classy talks about rage giving and more here. 

Prep Your Rapid Response Team

Rather than trying to compete with the election year messaging news cycle, prepare to surf in on it when the wave comes your way. Identify the key spokespersons and the key talking points that you feel confident in now, so when the moment arrives, you are ready to respond. That’s called newsjacking.

For example, let’s say a candidate says something you either strongly agree or disagree with. If you prepare now, you can follow up directly with reporters covering the story or be ready for their calls. If you wait to develop your strategy until the issue is actually in the news, you will miss the moment, just like a surfer can’t catch the wave from the beach. You have to be in the water, ready, and watching. Media Cause shares some additional messaging advice for nonprofits during election season. 

Think Beyond Election Day

While we are focused on the “before” now because we are in it, it’s probably even more important that you start thinking about what happens after election day. Regardless of the winners and losers locally, statewide, and nationally, what do you care most about during the “transition period” between the election and when people take office in January? What do you care about during the first 100 days of new administrations? These are also fabulous times to get your values and viewpoints out there.  This is the last point on an Election Outcomes Checklist from Lightbox Collaborative. 

You can see a great example of post-election day messaging from 2020 here: Audubon Nails Post-Election Email Messaging

Want more? I highly recommend the M+R blog. While you may know M+R for their annual benchmarks report, they also do a great deal of work on election year messaging for nonprofits and share advice before, during, and after elections. For example, see We Exist in the Context: The Memeification of the Harris Campaign.  If you haven’t already added your email to their list, now is a good time to do so!

Is it time to refresh your nonprofit’s email newsletter? We recently shared our seven tips for modern nonprofit email newsletter designs.

Today, let’s look at five email newsletter trends that will influence the way your nonprofit’s e-newsletter looks in the future.

1. Movement at the Top

We all know the power of video and animated content. It’s everywhere. So why not at the top of your e-newsletter too?

Here’s an example from Charity: Water.

You can easily make animated gifs from still photos or graphics using tools like Canva or by inserting just a few seconds from a video you are highlighting.

2. Video Newsletters

Why not go all in with video and deliver the newsletter content itself that way? The National Military Family Association does a monthly video newsletter with a very brief text summary. While we don’t see a ton of these, we think it’s a great email newsletter trend. If you can’t pull it off, at least try to add movement at the top.

3. Seeking Feedback in the Footer

We all want to know how the folks on our mailing lists are perceiving our work. Why not ask?

Placing a section in your newsletter footer is another email newsletter trend we love, as Compassion International does. Each icon takes you to a landing page. You can include a form there to collect additional data or just acknowledge the feedback. If you are technically savvy enough, you could also pass this information (which icon they clicked on) into your CRM as another data point about the individuals on your list who do click.

4. Cleaner Event Marketing

Nonprofits market a lot of events. Like a lot. 

All of those details can really clutter up an email and make it very hard to skim.

I love the more visually oriented calendar approaches taken by Insight Memory Care Center and the Triangle Land Conservancy.

We really hope this trend catches on in the sector!

       

5. Conditional Content to Increase Personalization

The biggest email newsletter trend of all? Using conditional content to personalize newsletters to each person on your list based on what you know about them.

We’ll share much more about using conditional content as it becomes more universally available in email marketing software, but here’s the basic idea.

Conditional content lets you either show or hide content that will appear in each person’s version of your newsletter in their inbox. As you build the newsletter, you set the rules determining who will see what chunks of content.

So, you could show event marketing to people who have not RSVPd for the event yet, but suppress it or show attendee-only content to those who have.

If you know certain folks like cats and others like dogs because you have them tagged in your CRM, you can show cat images to cat people and dog images to dog people (or whatever makes sense given the topics you work on).

It will look like a bit of a mess on your end because you are adding ALL of the content in the version that you build. But when it is delivered to inboxes, it will look right. We highly recommend testing the variations before sending them!

We would love to see how you are implementing these trends in your nonprofit newsletters!

We recently presented a new webinar on modern nonprofit email newsletter designs. If you missed it, All-Access Pass holders can watch the recording in our private community.

We looked at more than a decade of nonprofit email newsletter designs and compared those to best practices today, which was very eye-opening for many participants. Are you still emailing like it’s 2020, 2017, or even 2012?

Here are seven pointers we recommend for any nonprofit considering a newsletter redesign. Based on the number of webinar participants who said they wanted to implement this change, I’m sharing these in order of importance. Eighty-four nonprofit communicators participated in the polling for reference.  Keep in mind they wouldn’t have voted for it if they had already made the change.

1. Shorten, Shorten, Shorten.

Nonprofit email newsletters are almost universally too long. Shorten, shorten, shorten. If you have that much great info to share via email, consider sending your newsletter more often instead of cramming everything in.  This was the most popular change participants wanted to make, with 65% saying they would like to shorten their nonprofit’s email newsletter.

More: Three Trends That Beg for Shorter Email Newsletters

2. No Paragraphs Longer Than Three Sentences.

One easy way to shorten your newsletter is to stop with the big blocks of text! Shorten your sentences and paragraphs! Keeping your nonprofit email newsletter design short also means making it skimmable, which means shorter blocks of text. A little over half of participants, 54%, said they wanted to try this.

3. Simplify the Header.

Don’t blow the most important email real estate right at the top with a meaningless graphic. Your “from” line should tell them it’s from you, and you don’t need to name your newsletter with an enormous graphic. Keep it small. Forty percent of webinar poll takers wanted to simplify their headers.

4. Add Motion to the Top.

Everywhere you look online, we know video works. But how do you capitalize on that with email? Adding animated gifs to your newsletter can work, whether you use three seconds from a video you link to or a more traditional animated gif you create in something like Canva. Forty percent of webinar poll takers also wanted to add motion to the top of their email newsletters.

5. Use One Main Article Followed by Secondary Teasers.

Here’s another way to keep your newsletters shorter and skimmable: Prioritize the content for your readers. Give more space to the single most important message and follow that with something more akin to bullets or teaser copy. About a third, 36%, wanted to try this approach to their nonprofit email newsletter design.

6. Left Justify Everything.

There’s no need to get fancy. When folks are skimming emails, it’s too much work for their eyes to dart around left, right, and center, trying to figure out what they should be looking at. Left-justify everything so it’s easy to skim. About a quarter, 26%, thought this could be helpful with their email newsletter redesign.

7. Limit the Use of Extraneous Lines and Photos That Don’t Add Meaning.

If it doesn’t add meaning, get rid of it. We reviewed many nonprofit newsletters with extraneous lines and photos that didn’t add any meaning but were just filler. A well-placed icon can often convey more meaning than a vague photo! A fifth, or 20%, of participants wanted to consider this tip when redesigning their nonprofit email newsletter.

See our Nonprofit Email Newsletter Best Practices and Tips for more.

Here at Nonprofit Marketing Guide, we specialize in nonprofit marketing training. We do this in our quest to help you learn your job, love your work, and lead your team.

But we know everyone learns differently. Everyone has a different amount of time to devote to professional development. Everyone is at a different level of experience and learning on the job. Some want hard skills training, and others want to talk it out with colleagues before they make decisions at their organizations.

That’s why our nonprofit marketing training menu offers so many different styles and topics—and we’ve just added a couple more!

Nonprofit Marketing Training – Live Formats in Real Time

Webinars

Each month, we offer one or two 60-minute training webinars on topics in nonprofit marketing and communications, covering both tactical and strategic skills. Here’s the current schedule. Anyone can register for these a la carte, and they are also included at no additional charge in the All-Access Pass.  Popular webinars include social media, email marketing, and video trends for nonprofits.

Master Classes

Five or six times a year, we offer a three-hour Master Class on Zoom. This approximates an in-person workshop experience, including training, small group work time, lots of worksheets and resources, and plenty of time for Q&A. Our most popular Master Classes are the “Seven Writing Styles All Nonprofit Communicators Should Master” and the “Communications Planning Master Class.” Anyone can register for these a la carte, and they are also included in the All-Access Pass. 

Jump Starters

Once a month, we offer an hour-long small group workshop on a specific topic to our All-Access Pass holders only. During Jump Starters, you get a bit of training, time to discuss strategic questions with other nonprofit communicators, 15 minutes of quiet time to start on a provided worksheet, and time for open Q&A.  Popular Jump Starters include prioritizing which metrics to track on social media or email, developing personas or journeys, and setting boundaries with coworkers.

And we’ve recently added two new formats– Study Halls and Chitchats — within our free, private community!

Study Halls

Every month or two, we’ll hold a mini-training session we call a Study Hall in our private community. You’ll get a bit of training (5-10 minutes), and you will likely get a worksheet or template. In this way, Study Halls are similar to Jump Starters, but not as intensive. We will also use Study Halls for feedback and fine-tuning sessions where you share your work with others and provide feedback to each other. Many of these will be free for anyone to attend, although some will be limited to All-Access Pass holders only.

Community Chitchats

Chitchats are a chance for us to come together and discuss a certain topic. These will be Zoom-style meetings in our community on specific topics but without a training agenda. It’s more of an opportunity for community members to share their insights and questions with each other, and we’ll simply provide facilitation and relevant resources.

Study Halls and Chitchats will be about 30 minutes long and generally more casual and less structured than Webinars, Master Classes, and Jump Starters.

Check out the full schedule of events in our community.

Nonprofit Marketing Training – At Your Own Pace

Everything above takes place in real-time. Put it on your schedule and join us live! We do record some of these sessions, but not all of them. For example, Master Classes and Jump Starters are rarely recorded.

We do, however, have many resources and recordings for folks who cannot join us live for whatever reason. We know that many members of our community live outside North America, and time zone differences make live participation tough. We also know how busy many of you are during the workday.

No worries –our private community is a gold mine of resources, recorded webinars, and self-paced certificate courses.

Free Resources and Discussions

Start with our Free Resources Library where you will find a vast array of worksheets, how-to guides, checklists, and some webinar recordings. Then connect with other nonprofit communicators in our discussion spaces. If you do it at work, there’s a place to talk about it with others in our community! All-Access Pass holders have an even greater library of materials, including many more webinar recordings and in-depth worksheets, templates, and guides on all kinds of nonprofit marketing and communications topics.

Micro-Credentials and Professional Certificates

We are working this summer to expand our micro-credentialing program and our professional certificate program. We are designing these to be meaningful learning experiences. You can’t just say you read a few blog posts or watched a video and call it a certificate! But we’ll make everything we ask you to do relevant, fun, and meaningful.

Three Books

Kivi Leroux Miller is the author of three books on nonprofit marketing and communications. These books are used as texts for university and certificate programs across the U.S. and Canada. But these are not your average boring textbooks. These were written first as pragmatic guides for working professionals and then adopted later by academics because they are so relevant to working in the sector.

• The Nonprofit Marketing Guide, second edition
• Content Marketing for Nonprofits
• CALM not BUSY

The Communications Director Mentoring Program

The Communications Director Mentoring Program is our premier training and coaching program. With a cohort of up to 16 people in each session, this six-month program runs from January to June and again from July to December. It covers everything a professional communicator or marketer working in the nonprofit sector needs to know. In six months, you’ll gain the knowledge and experience that it often takes three to five years to build in the sector on your own.

Consider yourself invited to join our community of nonprofit communicators working on their own professional development individually and together! We hope to see you in one of these trainings soon.

Knowing who you are talking to in your communications—who your target audience or personas are—is an essential part of any marketing strategy, even a “quick and dirty” one sketched out on a napkin.

But it’s hard to build personas customized to your nonprofit if you don’t have solid information on exactly who is on your mailing list.

That’s where research into universal and basic human values can help. The Schwartz Theory of Basic Human Values is a universal, cross-cultural model that outlines ten broad values that steer human behavior:

• Universalism
• Benevolence
• Tradition
• Conformity
• Security
• Power
• Achievement
• Pleasure (or Hedonism)
• Stimulation
• Self-Direction 

If you dive into the research, you’ll find a tremendous amount of details, including what each of the ten values really means in terms of people’s motivations and decision-making.

To simplify this model for you so you can use it to inform your thinking about your target audiences or personas for your nonprofit, we’ve condensed the ten values into what we call the Four Values-Based Persona Groups:

• The Helpers
• The Keepers
• The Captains
• The Artisans

Now, let’s examine more closely how you can hone your messaging for each persona group and which brand archetypes naturally connect best. Remember, each value persona has defining goals and motivations. Do your calls to action and messaging match these values? 

The Helpers

The Helpers embody the values of Universalism and/or Benevolence in Schwartz’s theory. They are socially focused and concerned about the effects on others. They have a growth mindset, and therefore are interested in “gain” goals or desires. In the nonprofit sector, desire can look like hope, dreams, comfort, and anything we want to provide for others. 

Speak to the Helpers with messaging that appeals to their understanding and appreciation of others. That could be the support, love, and protection of all of humanity and nature. Or it could be the welfare of their specific communities of interest (their “in-group”).

The Helpers are the natural target audience for the Caregiver, Everyperson, and Lover brand archetypes for nonprofits. They can also work for the Innocent, Creator, and Jester archetypes. 

The Keepers

In Schwartz’s theory, the Keepers embody the values of Tradition, Conformity, and Security. Like the Helpers, they are socially minded and concerned about the effects of their actions on others. But they are motivated by “loss” goals or fears rather than gain goals/desires like the Helpers. They want to prevent losses. That can look like defending people against anguish or injustice and preserving what they hold most dear. 

Nonprofit language about fighting or stopping things from happening appeals to the Keepers. Communicate with them in a way that appeals to their desire for stability, discipline, moderation, loyalty, responsibility, respect, health, and/or humility. 

The Keepers are the natural target audience for the Innocent and Hero brand archetypes for nonprofits. They can also work for the Everyperson, Ruler, Caregiver, and Sage archetypes. 

The Keepers’ core value is Conservation.

The Captains

The Captains embody the values of Achievement and Power in Schwartz’s theory. Like the Keepers, they are motivated by the prevention of loss and self-protection against threats. But unlike the Keepers and the Helpers, they are more motivated by a focus on themselves and their own self-expression, rather than by the effect of their actions on others. 

Your messaging to Captains must answer what’s in it for them. Appeal to their interest in success, influence, performance, prestige, ambition, authority, and/or control. 

The Captains are the natural target audience for the Sage and Ruler brand archetypes for nonprofits. They can also work for the Explorer, Outlaw, Magician, and Hero archetypes. 

The Captains’ core value is Self-Enhancement.

The Artisans

The Artisans are the fourth and final persona. They embody the values of Self-Direction, Stimulation, and Pleasure in Schwartz’s theory. Like the Captains, they are motivated by a focus on self and self-expression. But like the Helpers (and unlike the Keepers and Captains) they are motivated by gain goals and desires, rather than loss or fear. They are the persona most open to growth and change.

Speak to the Artisans with messaging that appeals to their independence, curiosity, creativity, freedom, exploration, excitement, pleasure-seeking, and/or enjoyment of life. 

The Artisans are a natural fit for the Creator, Explorer, Outlaw, Magician, and Jester brand archetypes for nonprofits. They can also work for the Lover archetype.  

The Artisans’ core value is Openness to Change. 

Look Beyond the Helpers!

It’s natural to assume that everyone who supports a nonprofit is a Helper. They care about and want to support others. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Helpers are always the best personas to speak to! While it’s likely that most nonprofit supporters do share some of the values that define the Helpers, they may, in fact, be driven more strongly by some of the other values on the list. 

Think about organizations that support competition, like those related to sports or achievement awards. Their supporters are likely to lean into Achievement or even Power values, which means they are Captains. 

What about modern art, or activism for big social changes, or wildly creative approaches to solving problems?  These are likely attractive to people who embrace Stimulation or Pleasure values and are welcoming of change — those are the Artisans.  

Artisan values oppose those who favor Tradition, Conformity, or Security — we call them the Keepers. The Keepers are great value matches for many religious and historical/heritage nonprofits. But they could also work for organizations fighting to protect the erosion of current rights (think abortion rights, gay marriage, environmental protection). 

What’s important to remember here is that the more you can limit your organization to one archetype and your target audiences to one values-based persona group, the better off you will be. 

Let’s tackle the appropriate reaction for nonprofit communications pros to this situation: Your executive director or other senior managers may have just hired a marketing consultant without previously talking to you. They are excited about a meeting they just had — again without you. They think it’s going to be great and are so excited!

You, not so much.

What You Believe When They Hired a Marketing Consultant Without Telling You

It’s natural to assume that if someone hires a marketing consultant without first discussing it with you, they think your approach is flawed in some way.

• Do they think you don’t have the skills?
• Do they think you don’t know how to be strategic?
• Do they not see you as having leadership potential?
• Do they not realize you are already doing that work?
• Have they not been paying attention at all?
• Is my job at risk?

What the actual hell?

Why would they hire — or even talk to — a marketing consultant without telling you first?!

What They May Actually Be Thinking

Let’s face it: Most nonprofit leaders do not understand nonprofit marketing and communications. It’s a mystery.

When things are mysterious, folks will believe there is some kind of secret to the work that only certain people might know. When Claire Meyerhoff and I did a podcast back in the day, we called it the Magic Keys.

Leaders often believe there are magic keys to unlock the secrets of media coverage, major gifts, or whatever else seems mysterious to them. And guess who they think holds the magic keys? You got it: Consultants.

Sometimes, people will go through the full process of seeking out and gathering proposals without you knowing, but honestly, that’s not the usual scenario.

The most common scenario is that the boss knows someone, knows someone who knows someone, or was maybe even forwarded a blog post from a consultant. (It’s happened on multiple occasions with our blog posts). This could be a personal friend, someone a friend works with, or even a board member’s spouse.

They think, “Sure, let’s have lunch,” or do a quick call. Again, this is all mysterious, so they go into it thinking, what’s the harm?

Any decent consultant can lead a quick discovery conversation and offer potential solutions right there on the spot.

And whoa, your leaders can hear those Magic Keys jingling. It’s a solution to everything they don’t understand. That means it solves things they suspect you don’t understand either. They can get very excited about this.

How to React When They Hire a Marketing Consultant Without Telling You

Instead of immediately reacting poorly when your boss announces that they are planning to hire a marketing consultant without, well, consulting with you first, ask some or all of these questions instead.

“Interesting! Tell me about the conversation.”

Say this in the most genuinely curious voice you can muster without the slightest bit of angst or sarcasm. Try to get an understanding of where the conversation began and how it developed.

“What do you consider the next step?”

See if talking to you is the next step, or if the next step is waiting on a proposal from the consultant, or what. You are trying to discern whether hiring the consultant is truly in motion or just an idea tossed out there.

“What’s the scope of work?”

All consulting agreements have a scope of work. If this is going to happen, you want to have as much influence over it as possible. Offer to help create the scope of work with your boss and the consultant.

“How do you see us (you and the consultant) working together?”

You are trying to understand if they are expecting you to be responsive to whatever the consultant needs or suggests, if this is collaborative with the consultant in a facilitative role, whether the consultant will be assisting you with the implementation of something you are already working on, or what.

“When can I talk to them and give them the background info they will need to be successful?” 

 Again, if this appears to be happening, you need to insert yourself into the conversations ASAP. Any good consultant will want to talk to you very early in the process. If they don’t, that’s a warning sign that something is amiss.

Ideally, you can turn this surprise into something that is genuinely helpful to you and your organization.