You need a communications plan just as much as you need a fundraising strategy. But what does that mean? Below are four areas to consider, and eight kinds of communications to use.

Four Areas to Consider

Tony Poderis points out that you need to look four areas when planning your communications. Here they are, with my interpretations.

1. Message: Link your words to your fundraising strategy and your mission.
2. Recipients: Who is your audience? What do they read? How do they like to be contacted?
3. Results: When they read or hear your message, what specific action do you want them to take? And remember, telling their friends about you, or calling you for information, can lead to donations.
4. Media: Should the message go as direct mail, a PSA, a newsletter? When deciding, consider both your message and your audience.

Eight Communications Media

As you make your communication plan, consider materials that go beyond the basic annual fund letters and direct mail appeals.

1.  Articles:  Tell your stories for your newsletter and/or your website. Donors want to know what you're doing.  Katya's NonProfit Marketing Blog has some great tips on how to do this.

2.  Stewardship materials:   Thank-you letters, endowment reports, newsletters, annual reports. Penelope Burk has actually trademarked the phrase “donor centered fundraising,” but what other kind is there?!

3.  Brochures: These can be simple, inexpensive three-fold flyers, or an expensive, glossy campaign brochure. Or both, depending on where you are in the fundraising cycle.  Tom Ahern always has great ideas about writing for fundraising.

4.  Project Descriptions:  If you can’t see how cram everything you do into one brochure, you might want to create a series of project descriptions that can be packaged for each individual prospect.

5.  Newsletters.  These can be paper or e-mail, depending on what your donors want to read.  And, as Vinay Bhaqat. points out, using both approaches can make sense.

6.  Web Content:  Here's where you can reuse and recycle your articles, brochures, newsletter content, and project descriptions.  Just make them shorter, and provide interesting links.

7.  Annual Fund Letters and Direct Mail: Your basic tools.  Joanne Fritz,, Stephen Hitchcock and Alan Sharpe have good ideas about these.

Finally, consider what your staff might need in order to implement your communications plan!

8.  Documentation:  Describe your work processes for volunteers and new hires. This might look impossibly labor intensive, until you realize just how much time is spent training and relearning procedures.