How can you keep your communications plan alive?

Ally Dommu: Hello, and welcome to the Smart Communications Podcast. I’m Ally Dommu, director of service development and worker-owner at Big Duck. I’m excited to be here today with someone you probably know well, Farra Trompeter, Big Duck’s co-director and fellow worker-owner at Big Duck. Farra is the regular host of this podcast, and today she’s going to be in the guest seat. Thank you, Farra. We’re going to discuss how to keep a communications plan alive so it doesn’t sit on the shelf; it’s actually something your nonprofit uses. Farra recently wrote an article on Big Duck’s blog titled Five ways to keep your communications plan alive, right on the topic, so that was the inspiration for today’s podcast. So we’re going to talk about that article, some of the ideas within it, but before we start chatting a little bit more about Farra, if you are not familiar with her background already.

Ally Dommu: So Farra uses she/her pronouns and has been on Big Duck’s team for 18 years. Wow, Farra. In addition to helping manage Big Duck overall, Farra directs our marketing and business development efforts, seeking to build relationships with nonprofits who want to use communications to advance their missions. Before Big Duck, she worked in various fundraising and marketing roles within nonprofits and at other agencies focused on supporting nonprofits. Beyond Big Duck, you could find Farra bonding with her wife and cats. You may hear one of her cats in the background. Don’t worry, the cat is doing fine. You’ll find her enjoying a good meal and taking in New York City’s art and culture scene. She also loves teaching and is currently an adjunct faculty member at CUNY Baruch College. Farra, welcome to the show as a guest.

Farra Trompeter: Thanks, Ally. It’s fun to be on the other side here.

Ally Dommu: All right, so let’s start with the problem and why you chose to write this article that I just mentioned, which by the way, we will link to in the show notes if you haven’t a chance to check it out yet, Five ways to keep your communications plan alive. So what’s the most common reason you see nonprofit communications plans gathering dust after they’ve been created? Does that happen? Do you hear this from clients?

Farra Trompeter: Yeah, I mean, I hear it, I see it, I’ve experienced it myself. Like you, (as people may or may not be familiar with your background), Ally also has worked within nonprofits before she came on over to the consulting side. And a lot of my experience, both being within a nonprofit in a comms or development role or as a consultant, is sometimes we put all this time and energy into a communications plan. I would say I see this also with strategic plans. You know, in the old days, back in the nineties and aughts, you might get a beautiful printout, stick it in a binder, and then it really does go on the shelf and collect dust. Now we have sort of the more virtual collecting of dust, where we see organizations put all this time and energy into a communications plan, whether they do that internally with volunteers, with their board, or with consultants.

Farra Trompeter: And then things happen, life gets in the way, and that plan starts fading into the recesses of memory and may not be alive and well. So I wrote the article because I so deeply appreciate the intention that we and other people put into creating a communications plan. There’s usually a lot of research that precedes it. A lot of questioning over what works and what doesn’t work in our current approaches, what we should be doing based on our community, based on the context we’re working in. And I think that that is all great, but then they go to the wayside. And they go to the wayside because (A) organizations have to be reactive and fight fires. There is a daily reality to that. There’s also a lot of challenges with staff turnover within both the communications team but also the leadership of the organization, so that the people who created the plan and maybe were in it day-to-day, may no longer be in the organization and have it top of mind.

Farra Trompeter: The third reason I started with (A), so now I guess we’re at (C) here, (C) then, I’ll go back to that, maybe board over-involvement. So there’s a whole other conversation we can have about nonprofit life cycles and where boards fit into play. I have been involved in boards where we were as the communications committee, we were the communications team because there was no communication staff. And I’ve been on boards where there have been one or two or a communications department, and the board has to somehow, you know, evolve with what it needs. And sometimes the organization, the staff is really ready to manage and run communications, but the board gets overinvolved and they keep asking, “Why aren’t you doing this? What’s happening here?” And so then the staff feels like they have to respond to those requests and are not able to pull back and think strategically.

Farra Trompeter: And relatedly, I think this idea of not being able to say “No”. “No” to the board. “No” to the executive director. “No” to colleagues who just keep asking, you know, again, “Can we do this?” And those questions may come pushing to go on a tactic, or to chase the shiny new object that is the latest communications channel. And listen, don’t get me wrong, I think experimentation is great and people should be open to trying new things, but if we’re constantly responding to the fires, we’re constantly having to say “Yes” to requests, we lose sight of really why we’re doing something and what it connects to. But you know, Ally, those are my observations. What about you? I can’t help but also interview you here because I know you have been deeply involved in creating a lot of communications plans and running them when you were at organizations. Anything you’ve seen happen here that I missed?

Ally Dommu: Yeah, definitely. And I love the reference to binders. I hope we all out of this get an inspiration to put together a binder. I still love a binder, but yes.

Farra Trompeter: Or maybe a good Trapper Keeper for my Gen Xers out there.

Ally Dommu: I fit into that though. I love back-to-school shopping. Trapper Keepers. Oh yes. So much fun. But absolutely agree with what you shared there, Farra. I think a lot of it just comes down to and, and it’s kind of within each of those reasons you shared, is just capacity, right? Maybe there’s a thirst, a desire, a hunger to put to feel like, “Yes, we’re going to overhaul our website in 2025,” or “We’re going to, you know, really put effort into a new campaign to reach this new audience we need to reach.” But then, you know, “Do we have the bandwidth? Do we have the capacity to be able to take that on?” And then, you know, that’s one of the reasons that you know, it could go by the wayside, right? There’s just not enough resources, people power, or financial resources to be able to take it on.

Ally Dommu: But then sometimes I see it as just the plan isn’t sticky and we talk about this in other ways of work, but like internally, it hasn’t taken hold. So, and there’s not necessarily, you know, the plan was put together with good intention, but then it’s just, it’s not kept alive because there aren’t necessarily the internal practices. You know, keeping something alive takes work, right? It does take that intentionality of saying, “Oh, does this align with our plan? What have we, what have we made progress on? What have we not?” To keep coming back to it in those debrief moments, or in those team sessions, or in those individual spaces where you have a little bit of time to take a step back. And I would love for every nonprofit communicator to have a huge bucket of time in every week to be able to say, “This is not urgent, but this is necessary.” And unfortunately, that’s not always the case for nonprofit communicators because they’re just dealing with so much. So that’s a couple things that come to mind.

Ally Dommu: So we’ve talked about a few, you know, culprits of why sometimes strategic communications plans could, you know, not be kept alive or seem to go by the wayside, as you put it: Turnover; shiny new tactics, you know; a need to be reactive. We talked about capacity. Is there any of these that feel like the biggest threat today, especially in this particular time of uncertainty and challenge in the nonprofit sector in 2025?

Farra Trompeter: Well, we’re recording this conversation in July 2025, after a budget bill has been passed that threatens cuts to Medicaid, threats to a lot of social services, all which will require nonprofits to actually step up and provide more, as things get cut from the social space. And generally, it’s just been an intense six months in this new year with a lot of challenges based on things that are happening, not just with the current administration here in the US, but just where we are as a climate and a country. And all of the culprits that I mentioned that you just noted, you know, things like turnover, those new communications channels, crises, all of those are always present. But I think so many organizations I know right now are in crisis mode. And it just feels like those issues are just growing, happening more and more. And it’s really, I would say, if I had to pick, it’s just a tie between crisis and staffing.

Farra Trompeter: We are just seeing a lot of organizations who have to either reduce their staff or let folks go. Or just staff who are having to do the job of two or three people with limited resources. So, you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about how nonprofits had to pivot and react five years ago during the first year of COVID. And loyal fans of Big Duck out there may recall a blog that Sarah Durham, our founder and now board member, wrote, called Managing through COVID-19 without losing sight of the bigger picture. We’ll link to that blog post also at the show notes at bigduck.com/insights. But just a quick snapshot, one of the things that I loved about that post that I really have held onto, you know, here we are five years later, is how organizations might have two internal teams, a “now team” and a “tomorrow team”.

Farra Trompeter: The “now team” focuses on short-term decision making, and the “tomorrow team” focuses on the long-term. So, for bigger organizations, you might divide up who is on these teams and consider how often they meet. For smaller organizations, especially if you’re a team of one, you might just divide up your own time, giving yourself some space to ask questions that are about the now, maybe weekly, and holding space for “tomorrow questions” every month or every quarter. To your point, there’s always stuff in that quadrant of important but not urgent that can be easily dismissed for the urgent and important or just the urgent and even not important, as things go. But carving out some space to ask questions about tomorrow or ask questions about things that are important but not on fire is really essential.

Ally Dommu: Thank you for that. Yeah, and it feels like there’s a lot of forces keeping nonprofits in the “now” reactive mode. So it’s intentionally carving that space out for the future or for the tomorrow is actually a very bold, visionary mindset to be in, especially during this climate. So, thank you for that. So there’s a lot of barriers to keeping a communications plan alive. I’m just thinking like, why even have a communications plan if there’s so many obstacles to getting there? So I’m just curious if you could reflect on that, but also just share a little bit about like, what does it look like when a nonprofit actually does keep their plan alive? You know, what does it, what are the ripple effects across the organization, and what makes a plan maybe a little bit more easy to keep alive? You know, how should nonprofits be thinking about communications planning in light of, you know, so, so many challenges right now? But a lot of these things are things that nonprofits have faced for a while and might just be exacerbated now.

Farra Trompeter: Yeah, I appreciate that, and I hope people don’t take away from this, “Don’t create a communications plan.” I know you’re being cheeky with that. I think a communications plan, you know, making the time to do it gives us a destination, gives us a place to point to: What are our goals? Who are we trying to reach? Can help us have, when we do have those questions about the now or tomorrow, come back to why are we doing it? Ideally, that comms plan is kind of connected to or informed by things like your strategic plan, your theory of change. Again, research about what people know or don’t know about you, the work that you’re trying to do, who you’re trying to reach. And so I think they can be really helpful. But the question is, is it too much? Is there a world where, actually, maybe you can make a simpler version that is more high-level and easier for people to remember and refer to.

Farra Trompeter: In a simpler plan, I think you can still make space for unknowns and specify what strategies and tactics are the “musts”, what are the “shoulds”, and what are the “coulds”, so that it’s clear to everyone what the priorities are versus what you may take on if capacity allows. So that’s one thing I think that can be helpful. Another is to set up a tracking tool so that you’re not just sharing data, right? So you should have a tracking tool, you should share it, but when you share it, you should include information about the implications of the data or questions that it raises. So, for example, let’s say you’re looking at the past six months and you see that your open rate is decreasing. Is that because of who you’re sending emails to? Is it because of when you’re sending them or whose name is on the send line? Or is it changes in email deliverability, so more of your messages are going into the promo tab or spam, right?

Farra Trompeter: We don’t know just from the data, but it gives us questions to ask and interrogate. And the more that your team understands what’s happening or the challenges you’re dealing with, the more likely they will be to support the requests you have for things. Or understand that when you do push back and say, “No”, or “I can’t do that right now,” they might have a little more context as to why you’re doing that. So again, I think thinking about, yes, create a plan, but maybe one that is simpler or at least has an executive summary that you pass on to others. And then not just creating a tool to track whether or not you’re meeting your goals and objectives, but when you share that data, providing some insight with that. But again, Ally, anything you’ve seen or would add to here?

Ally Dommu: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with a lot of what you shared there. I think some other ways that I’ve seen that have facilitated keeping a communications plan alive is the inclusion of some strategic questions that are part of the plan. And I’ve seen this done as part of strategic planning overall. I’ll link to also some great resources related to developing strategy screens from a strategic partner LaPiana Group. And they do this for strategic planning for nonprofits, but you could do this in a communications plan itself. So rather than the plan be a set of tactics, you know, a long list of to-dos, basically the plan is a set of strategic filtering questions that create space for the nonprofit communicators to use as filtering when a new opportunity or a new question comes up.

Ally Dommu: So for example, some of those filtering questions could be, “Does this communication-related opportunity advance our mission to…?” “Will it help us move forward in reaching x, y, z audiences?” “Does it require substantial investment that we have allotted for in the budget or resources?” So some of these kind of high-level strategy questions that the team could just keep coming back to can be a really helpful framework to include in a communications plan and could help keep things really alive, especially if those questions are utilized and brought up again and again in different settings. Rather than the communications plan, again, just being like a roadmap and a set of to-dos. Sometimes that’s really helpful and necessary as well as like a list of projects, but really thinking about it in a little bit more of a flexible strategic framework. I’ve seen that work well, especially in times when there’s a lot of unknowns and questions facing organizations.

Ally Dommu: So I’m going to shift into some more like project management aspects of a communications plan. What have you seen work well when it comes to integrating the communications plan management into culture, into internal project management? So it just, so it sticks. So it’s not just a communications plan is sitting on one person’s shoulders, but it’s actually like owned and adopted and embraced by a broader team, whether that’s multiple people on a communications team or even it’s something that sticks outside of the communications plan. Have you seen anything work in that regard?

Farra Trompeter: Yeah, a few things. One is, you know, we wrote an ebook a few years ago about communications teams and actually there was an excerpt in one of those books from The Nonprofit Communications Engine (another shout out to Sarah Durham) talking about how you structure a communications team. And one thing that Sarah really elevated, and again we’ll link to the ebook, is having someone actually on your communications team that is a project manager. We really value those skills at Big Duck. We have a whole account management team with three people in those roles. And I think it’s really important to have someone who’s making sure things are moving. And, you know, related to that, as you Ally know, and anyone who’s been to a Big Duck workshop or training is familiar with, we are big fans of stakeholder engagement tools like DACI or MOCHA. If you’re not familiar with those acronyms, we’ll link to frameworks there.

Farra Trompeter: But basically, in those frameworks, one or two people usually drive or own the communications plan and make sure it happens. And I think that it helps to have a person be responsible for pushing it forward, which also means getting others to know who, what, why, when, where, and how it’s all happening. So we’ve seen organizations sort of integrate communications plan management into their team by, first of all, bringing it up repeatedly as the reason why your team might pursue or hold onto something, paying particular attention to the goals and audiences you noted in your plan, offering quarterly look-backs and look-ahead. So, not just “Here’s what happened” but “Here’s what’s on tap for the next one to two quarters and why we’re pursuing it” or any changes we’ve made. And then sharing headlines about major victories or challenges, or changes you’ve made in staff meetings or all staff channels like Slack or Teams. So those are just a few things that I think are ways to integrate it.

Ally Dommu: I love the example of sharing and reporting back on victories or changes, especially the celebrations and victories, because I think in the nonprofit communications world, we always have something that we have to work on next. The moment we finish a project, whether that’s an announcement or a press release, or the latest newsletter, whatever it be, we’re moving on to the next thing. So, actually, having the integration of the report back celebration, maybe some debriefing, I think that’s a really nice way to make it really positive and say, like, “Look what we’ve accomplished. This was in our plan, we set out to do this. Look, we’ve done this,” or “Look, we pivoted and here’s why. Maybe we didn’t take on the full task that we set out to do in the beginning of the year due to capacity, but we’ve been able to accomplish this, and let’s just take a moment to pause, report back, and reflect, and celebrate that.” So, if a listener just takes one action after hearing this conversation, what would you want it to be?

Farra Trompeter: I’m going to share at least two. Okay?

Ally Dommu: Two is fine, go for it.

Farra Trompeter: All right, thank you for that grace. The thing is that I would say share the plan again and again. You can’t just share it once, you know. Doing it in an all-staff meeting or retreat is great. Maybe you introduce that plan in that space. People won’t remember. They’ve got too much going on. The only way you’re going to be able to keep it fresh is to remind them that it exists. Whether that’s through the sharing of victories or challenges, or things that you’re working on. Just coming back to that plan. And then I would just say related to that, as the second action is we really recommend putting into not just doing those quarterly reviews, but when you do those quarterly reviews, to ask yourself one or two questions.

Farra Trompeter: The first one is: What should we stop? What should we start? And what should we test? I guess that’s a combined set of questions, right? Because there may be things in, you’re doing your analysis, they say, “You know what, this isn’t working. Maybe we’re putting all this time and energy into doing X, and we’re no longer getting a response there. Maybe we should move on.” Or “Hey, wow, there seems to be an uptick, seems to be a lot of energy here. I’m hearing a lot of our peers are doing this. Maybe we should start that. It’s something we’ve been talking about.” Or, related, “Maybe there’s something we want to experiment with. We want to just put a little time in, see what kind of traction we get.” So, asking: Stop? Start? Test? is always really helpful. And then another set of questions, again coming back to earlier is: Are there things that we must do, things that we should do, and things that we could do? Because applying those labels of must, should, and could could help you just reground yourself in priorities and give you another space to say, “You know what, this is important. We can’t do it right now. We don’t have the capacity. It’s okay to put it on hold, and here’s why.” So just would encourage you that, you know, you don’t have to redo the plan every 90 days, but take a minute to look at the plan and make some shifts. What about you, Ally? I’m sure you’ve got some actions people might want to take after listening to this.

Ally Dommu: Yes. I think if you’re thinking about developing a communications plan, maybe you are one of those organizations, your plans in the past have sat on the shelf, or maybe you haven’t developed a communications plan in a few years. I know a lot of organizations are in that place. Don’t go from nothing to like a very extensive, comprehensive plan that requires a ton of internal project management and is overly sophisticated. Start small. I always love the mantra of start small. So that might be a one-pager for your first year or a document that’s a few pages, and it’s something that you keep alive, not in the document itself, but through some of these channels. Maybe this year we are just being really specific about our goals and audiences and a few strategies that we’re taking on, and we start there for 2025 or 2026.

Ally Dommu: The plan doesn’t have to be every single thing we’re taking on, but it really becomes more of a strategic tool that you can take on. So start small and tied to that is just don’t take on more than you think you can take on. The moment you feel like, “Oh yeah, we have capacity for that.” you know, you need to leave time for flexibility for that responsiveness. So as much as I like to encourage ambition, sometimes a great plan is actually like strategically realistic and not overambitious. It’s actually achievable, and that’s what makes a smart goal, a smart goal, right? It’s achievable. So start there. Well, thank you all for listening in today. Farra, thank you for being in the guest seat. This has been really fun. We’re going to link to your article. I know we’ve mentioned a couple of resources over the course of this conversation. We’ll be sure to link there. Thank you all. Good luck keeping your communications plan alive. We look forward to hearing how it goes.

Farra Trompeter: And for my stationary geeks out there, Trapper Keeper still exists. Apparently, you can buy them according to the internet. Absolutely. So Trapper Keeper away and keep those comms plans alive. Thanks, Ally, for having me.

Ally Dommu: Cheers.