Nonprofit Communications Training: Changes Coming in 2023

In 2023, you’ll find a few changes in how we organize and present our nonprofit communications training and coaching content to you.

Why We Are Making Some Changes

For the last few years, we’ve tried to help you “level up” from beginner to intermediate to advanced as a nonprofit communications professional. We published nonprofit communications training plans to help you better understand what you should be focusing on as you level up. The training plans covered 10 different areas, such as planning, writing, best practices in managing communications channels, etc.

While this is useful in deciding what you should focus on now versus later, we’ve realized that this framework isn’t as helpful as it could be. That’s because it doesn’t fully acknowledge the staffing environment you are working in. Time and again, through our research with the Nonprofit Communications Trends Reports and our own practical experience in coaching hundreds of communications directors, we know that comms team size and your role in that team really matter.

Don’t get me wrong: We still believe that you can reach an advanced level and be very successful regardless of team size. It’s just that your path along the way to greatness changes a great deal based on team size and your role on that team!

How We See You, As Our Community Members and Customers

Thus, we are making a few shifts in how we approach our work of helping you learn your job, love your work, and lead your teams. Some of this will be behind the scenes in our decision-making. But you will also see it front and center, especially in our private community for nonprofit communicators and in our Learning Center.   As a result, we’ll start soon and make these changes over the next several months as we re-orient our nonprofit communications training plans.

We are now thinking of the people we serve (that’s you!) in four segments based on team size and role, rather than based on experience level:

• Solo Comms Staff (you are the only one whose primary job is communications)
• Small Team Leader (up to three people including yourself doing comms with you in the lead)
• Large Team Leader (four or more people including yourself doing comms with you in lead)
• Team Member (member of comms team of two or more people, but not the team leader)

Based on the participants to date in our current Nonprofit Communications Trends Survey, these segments look something like this:

• Solo Comms Staff (38% of our community, based on survey participation)
• Small Team Leader (40% of our community)
• Large Team Leader (6% of our community)
• Team Member (15% of our community)

Nonprofit Communications Training: Nonprofit Marketing Guide’s 10 Keys

In addition to this shift in how we think of our community members, we are also going to be much more explicit in what we offer. This will help you better understand what we think you should be working on in your professional development. These 10 Keys to Successful Nonprofit Marketing and Communications are based on our existing nonprofit communications training plans with a few tweaks.

1. Communications Planning and Strategy
2. Understanding Your Community and Prioritizing Targets
3. Creating Relevant Messaging and Engaging Content
4. Communications Channel Management
5. Brand Consistency and Reputation Management
6. Writing Skills and Content Creation
7. Visual Content Skills and Creation
8. Communications Workflows, Processes, and Team Management
9. Relationships, Boundaries, and Productivity
10. Measuring Success and Optimizing Your Approaches

Eventually, you’ll be able to earn certificates in each key in a number of ways. You can complete training coursework with us by reading my books, attending live training, and completing e-courses. All of this content will be available in my three books and via our Annual All-Access Pass.

There won’t be anything “new” to purchase.  You can also test out entirely based on your current level of experience. Finally, you can also earn all 10 certificates by successfully completing our six-month Nonprofit Communications Director Mentoring Program. 

We plan to launch the certificates for at least three of these keys in 2023, with others to follow.  As we build out our nonprofit communications training and blogging schedules, we will always keep these keys in mind. Again, over the next several months, you will start to see all of our content reoriented around these ten keys and the four segments above.

I hope this peek into the strategic thinking behind our work at Nonprofit Marketing Guide is helpful. We are really excited about this shift and hope you’ll jump on these professional development opportunities with us!