Why do communicators need a seat at the table?

Farra Trompeter: Welcome to the Smart Communications Podcast. This is Farra Trompeter, co-director and worker-owner at Big Duck. In today’s episode, we’re going to ask the question: Why do nonprofit communicators need a seat at the table? And this is a very special episode because we are recording it live from Beacon, New York, where I am co-working with today’s guest, Ally Dommu. Ally Dommu uses she/her pronouns and is Big Duck’s Director of Service Development, and has been a member of our team for over 12 years. Ally has worked in-house at nonprofits, has a graduate degree in nonprofit management, and is on the board of three organizations: Land to Learn, The Parker Project, and Big Duck. She’s been a guest many times and also serves as a guest host on this podcast. In fact, she recently led a great conversation back on episode 201: How do you approach rebranding a 100-year-old nonprofit? Ally, welcome back.

Ally Dommu: Thank you, Farra, and welcome to Beacon, where we’re coworking today. This is so fun.

Farra Trompeter: It is so fun. Love it up here. So Ally recently wrote a blog that is, in fact, the inspiration for today’s conversation. The name of that blog is More than a megaphone: Why nonprofit communicators need a seat at the table. And for those who want to read it, or reread it, we’ll be sure to link to it in the transcript at bigduck.com/insights. But in summary, the article highlights the strategic insights that communicators bring and the need to have them in at the beginning of projects, versus at the end. I’d love to just start with the why behind this blog post. What led you to write it, Ally? What do you observe about how nonprofit communication staff are often treated, viewed, or valued at nonprofits?

Ally Dommu: Yeah, so I, and you too, Farra, we work with countless nonprofits, and we often are in conversation or doing work tied to like the structure of communications teams and more of the internal workings of communications teams, like their infrastructure processes, workflows. And what I’ve heard over the years, time and time again, is that communications teams or team members are brought in really late to projects. And they’re almost treated, often, like an in-house Kinko’s shop. So, after big decisions are made, after there’s like a big program strategy that’s already established or a big research project, kind of like timelines are set, the work is done, and then, “Hey, can communications come in and like help get out the news about this?” Really kind of at the end of the process, kind of treated, you know, as the final megaphone rather than a strategic partner.

Ally Dommu: So after hearing this many, many times from a lot of different organizations, small and big, I was kind of just wanting to dig in and think more about why might this be and if there’s like an opportunity for the sector to approach communications in a little different way. Because organizations, they invest so much, right? In their programs and in their advocacy. All of that’s the important work. But there’s sometimes a missed opportunity to think about communications as a strategic function, not just as, you know, those that are managing the Instagram account or the website of just promotion, but really comms and narrative change and communication strategy as part of the work. So that really kind of motivated me––really just hearing directly from nonprofit communicators about some of the limitations of this––to write this blog post and to make sure that comms is seen as valued at organizations, and they’re brought into conversations early, because I think that really has a ripple effect of impact for communications to be, you know, used as effectively as possible.

Farra Trompeter: Great. And I want to give a shout-out, too, in this conversation to our friends at Nonprofit Marketing Guide. Kivi Leroux Miller has also been on the podcast a bunch of times. In fact, you and Kivi might be tied for how many appearances on the podcast. And in the Nonprofit Communications Trends Reports, they’re often bringing up issues related to this, right? About comms staff being order-takers versus strategic thinkers and leaders, and just a shout out if folks haven’t listened to that podcast conversation, the last one we had with Kivi is, Is the field of nonprofit communications coming of age? You might want to listen to that. It’s the same thing, right? It’s time. There’s been so much change in the field and in the sector for nonprofit communicators, and I think this idea of thinking about your communications team as strategic partners, and not just order takers, is important. So Ally, you described nonprofit communicators, again, you sort of said this idea of being treated like a megaphone. What’s the clearest sign that that might be happening in my organization? How would I know if I’m being treated as a megaphone, or let’s say I’m on the leadership team, and I want to rethink how I’m approaching it, or I’m on staff, and I’m wondering about it. What’s the indication of being in that megaphone moment?

Ally Dommu: Yeah, and I want to clarify that megaphones are important, but it shouldn’t be the only way you think about communication. So, meaning that, you know, megaphone as amplification of noise and being loud, but you want to make sure that from a communication standpoint, you’re not just in the role of amplification, you’re also in the role from a communication standpoint of strategy. Some of the signs that might be happening (and I’m sure there are others you might be thinking about), is when you are just as a communications person, you’re constantly being sort of brought in to say, you know, “Can you blast this out? Can you get this out tomorrow? Can you make this into a blog post?” And oftentimes that is the work of communications, right? Like bringing in that content and getting it out through comms. But especially when it’s like the work is done, the work is finished, and you’re being asked, you know, “Can you just push this out? Can you blast this out? Can you get this out on social?” And you’re again, kind of like to use that language of like order taker or like the Kinko’s metaphor, because I think that’s it: You bring your thing to Kinko’s, you say, “Can you make the copies? Can you print this?” And that’s the job of communications rather than being part of earlier-stage strategy conversations.

Farra Trompeter: Yeah. I’m also thinking part of communications is like flipping that megaphone where the outside is sort of more toward your ear, and you’re hearing from the field, you’re hearing from your staff, you’re doing a lot of listening. And that’s an important piece to all of this, too.

Ally Dommu: Yeah. Another thing is when there’s assumptions about the tactics that would make sense. So like I mentioned, you know, “Can you push this out on social or on Instagram?” If you’re hearing, over and over again, like the same kind of tactical request for a program update. Like, “Hey, can you turn this into a blog post? Hey, can you, you know, make a flyer for this?” rather than thinking (and I’m sure we’ll shift into this more): What are some of the strategic questions that should be addressed earlier on in the process to make the biggest impact?

Farra Trompeter: So I know I talked to people about this topic a lot too, and I’ve heard folks who are heads of organizations, or maybe they run development, and development sort of is part of comms as external relations or oversees comms. They say, “Yeah, I hear you. Comms should be at every step or stage of everything we’re doing. Comms should be in the beginning; they should be on the leadership team, but it doesn’t happen.” Why is it often the case that comms teams are just coming in at the end and not at the beginning, and throughout the process?

Ally Dommu: Yeah, I think it’s a culture change, you know, challenge. Culture, you know, isn’t everything, so there are a number of reasons, it’s not just one. One thing is just kind of like organizational muscle memory, you know, or just the way things have been done. So if communications was sort of treated more as, you know, a just a more of a tactical function, like the people that put out their social content, or the people that manage the website. “This is sort of like how we’ve always done it.” It can be hard to kind of shift that pattern.

Ally Dommu: I think that there also is, you know, kind of a general assumption that like, communications work can be done, like overnight, right? Or especially if you’re not in it. But it could be, it could be done really quickly, and sometimes yes. Oftentimes, great communications work; it has to be thoughtful, right? You’re bringing in writing, you’re bringing in quality control, you’re bringing in design, you’re bringing in strategy, you’re bringing in stakeholders. It isn’t something that, often, can be done in a flip of a switch. So that could be sometimes like a knowledge gap of really kind of not knowing what are the ingredients or the labor or the work that goes into communications?

Ally Dommu: And then just the reality is that people move fast, right? And sometimes, you know, leadership or anyone at the organization does know, “This is like something that we need to shift, but you know, we’re moving fast, we’re putting out fires.” Like it’s just from a time perspective, like, “Oh, we worked on this important work, and we didn’t, you know, really consider until the end the importance of like the strategic function of how that ties into the work.” So those are a few things that kind of, I think, lead into why this becomes like a pattern over and over again.

Farra Trompeter: Right? And I appreciate your sense that again, for many of these cases, it’s not coming from a place of wanting to keep communications at the end, it’s just been the history, or they just don’t understand why it’s important. Well, let’s flip the script. What changes when communicators are involved from the start? How can we make the case? What actually gets better when we have the comms team here from day one and not day 100?

Ally Dommu: So when we bring in communications early in the process or like having a seat at the table, let’s say, you know, for important strategy conversations, organizational strategy conversations, program strategy conversations, there can be more intentionality related to those communications, right? So instead of asking, “Can this content be pushed out on Blue Sky tomorrow?” you’re asking, “Who needs to hear this and how do they consume information?” And that shapes what you actually create. So there’s opportunity to ask more strategic questions related to communications. What are the goals of this program that relate to communications? Who are the audiences? What are we trying to reach? What’s the change we’re trying to accomplish here with this work? Policy change, fundraising outcomes, narrative change. We could have more of that bigger picture conversation related to impact and goals. So more intentional.

Ally Dommu: Another thing I would say is that we can be more creative and more expansive with what’s possible with communications. I love working in communications because it can be a really creative field, but when we’re not bringing in communications early, we don’t have the time to be able to be creative, right? Creativity takes brainstorming; it takes some space. So not just thinking about what’s the minimal viable thing that we could do from a comms standpoint. Like, “We all just have time to get out this press release,” or “We just have time to put this blog post up,” but we actually have more time to think creatively and expansively about what communication strategy could look like. Maybe we have more time to invest in design, or we have more time to center community voices in this process, whatever it might be. Maybe we have more time to think about the use of video. You know, there are so many different things that we can incorporate in, and even if we can’t do them all, we can at least kind of brainstorm them and then prioritize from there.

Ally Dommu: And then finally timelines become more realistic, right? When communications is brought in early, there’s an opportunity to flag things like, okay, maybe someone says, you know, “We really want a lot of media coverage,” but that flag is brought a week before, right? If we want that earned media coverage, we need to actually some time to build those relationships to make sure that we’re pitching, that we’re able to generate those results, right? If we want community voices in this campaign, we need time to cultivate spokespeople and make sure that we are, you know, in conversation with those community voices to make sure that there’s consent and the right kind of preparation. So it really avoids those last-minute scrambles, which oftentimes communicators are just living, day in and day out.

Farra Trompeter: Yeah, that’s great. And I would add also, in my experience (particularly we’ll currently talk about this team of two that we’ve got here in this conversation), but I think communicators are great problem solvers, and I think if you have communicators in from the start, you’re likely going to avoid problems that come later because communicators, we are trained to think that way. We’re trained to understand something from the start, we can see the finish line, and then map out how to get there. And if you bring folks in at the end, you may inevitably have missed some things along the way that become problems that communications might have to clean up, or the whole organization has to deal with. So I think when you bring comms folks in from the beginning, you might actually avoid those problems and create new opportunities. So I would add that into the list, too. Well, for our friends out there that might be stuck in that implementation, only taking those orders at Kinko’s mode that you talked about, what’s the first move that you would recommend they take to try to shift things?

Ally Dommu: I think that when partnering with colleagues, particularly those outside the communications team and sort of trying to shift that culture, it’s important to make sure that you’re talking about the outcomes that you both share. So from a communication standpoint, and from either programs or advocacy standpoint, fundraising standpoint. So rather than leading with, you know, “We need to be more strategic with communications,” which kind of sounds like vague, you know, jargony language, like what does that really mean? Kind of leading with, you know, “We can use communications to reach more of the donors you’re trying to retain,” or whatever is most relevant. “We can use communications to help ensure policy makers actually see this research you worked so hard on,” and really sort of like illustrating how comms can lead to the impact that, you know, we’re trying to accomplish as an organization, a little bit more concretely,

Farra Trompeter: You’re making me think of something we often talk about when we’re doing messaging, which is features versus benefits, right? The features are all the details, all the things the thing does, but the benefits are what are the outcomes? What are the positive impact of doing something? And perhaps thinking about those benefits and trying to make the case would be helpful.

Ally Dommu: Yeah. And something that we get tripped up on, oftentimes in nonprofits, is the difference between organizational goals and communications goals. So an organizational goal might be: We are trying to shift policy to better impact workers in our community. Let’s just say that. That’s not a communications goal, right? A communications goal is, well, what is communications going to achieve in service of that goal? Okay, communications is going to publish research that influences policymakers in ways that impact their ability to advance that policy, or whatever it might be. So, one of the moves to make is really making sure when you’re brought in or in building relationships to say, “Okay, what are our goals?” Having clear understanding of what are the organizational or the programmatic strategy goals, and what are the communications goals attached to that? And making sure there’s like space and conversation to have that, right? Sometimes those get buried or hidden or even unsaid. So as comms staff shifting more towards having a seat at the table and being brought in early, you can be the voice of kind of naming and articulating those goals.

Farra Trompeter: That’s great. Well, and on that spirit, I like, you know, giving things for our listeners to do. Is there a small doable action that someone on a communications team could take this month as they’re listening to this conversation to show the strategic value of having communicators in from day one, from that beginning to have a seat at that table? What could they do to try to shift the culture? Anything else you’d recommend?

Ally Dommu: Yep. So I would say like, take a relationship and experimental mindset to this. So, rather than try to think that you’re doing this all over the place, focus on one relationship, maybe that’s one, you know, colleague or leader of another department, and invest in it and just experiment with that arrangement. So let’s just say you’re picking a program director in a particular program at your organization, particularly in a program where you know that there’s something kind of big coming up that’s going to have a communications component to it, or someone maybe in the fundraising department who is kind of like wanting to invest, and you’ve talked about the importance of building those bridges. Start there. And when you have a big project coming up, proactively kind of like reach out and say, you know, “I know you’re planning X, Y, and Z. I know you’re planning this big, you know, mid-level donor push, or you’re planning this big program announcement. I’d love to be brought in early on to understand the goals and what you’re planning for this effort so we can partner together to best develop a communication strategy early on.” So start with those that are open to it and then, you know, kind of use it as a testing case, right? Like report back. You could even like celebrate, you know, when that work is done, what’s a positive impact of it? And almost use it as a little case study as it works, or as you learn to share and to sort of spread more throughout the rest of the organization.

Farra Trompeter: Love it. That’s great. Well, we’re going to wrap things up. I encourage folks out there to share and read Ally’s blog post. You know, oftentimes sharing this conversation or the blog post can also spark some great conversations in your organization. We, of course, have lots of other blogs, eBooks, and podcasts about strengthening communications teams and activities, including some other conversations between me and Ally, such as How can you keep your communications plan alive? and How should new communications directors approach their role? I should mention, of course, Big Duck also helps organizations with creating a communications plan and assessing their communications team structure, and help you look at shifting the culture in these ways we’re talking about. If, of course, you’re curious about how we can help strengthen the role and function of communications at your organization, feel free to reach out to us via our website contact form at bigduck.com, and Ally or I will likely be the ones who reach back out to you to set up a conversation. Well, Ally, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for hosting me in your beautiful home in Beacon, New York. Anything else you’d like to say before we sign off?

Ally Dommu: No, thank you all for listening, and obviously, we’re big fans of nonprofit communicators, so good luck with your work and good luck shifting the culture.

Farra Trompeter: There you go. All right, everyone, have a great day.