Your plans to communicate with constituents should relate to your plan to achieve your organization's mission. Usually, organizational goals are achieved both directly and indirectly through communications: serving clients, educating and persuading people, raising the profile of your organization within certain target groups, increasing event attendance, recruiting new volunteers, or generating new donations from new target markets. Make sure your communications efforts are directed appropriately. Do you need to improve the number of subscribers at the top of your funnel through reaching new people and soliciting new funds, or is it more important to improve the conversion rate of event attendees into volunteers, thereby increasing relationship depth and constituent involvement? Your strategies and efforts should directly relate to the organizational goals and objectives you've defined.

Non-profits benefit from having a variety of communication products and channels to suit the interests of their constituents in terms of topics and timings of communications. However, the treatment you give your topics—condensed current development or thorough backstory and analysis—creates a certain persona for your organization. The tone you use is also part of the "voice" of your organization's persona, which may be academic, breezy, mocking, or earnest.

You need to match your resources with what is achievable in terms of treatment and timing. Starting out with a single newsletter appearing once a month is probably better than trying to put one out once a day. But, if your aim is to be rapidly responding to news cycles, putting out a crisp short piece a day instead of a multi-page monthly newsletter might be a better choice.

Every constituent in your system will have taken some particular step to first interact with your organization. After becoming aware of your organization through a web search, through hearing one of your volunteers or staff speak at an engagement, or through some other entry point, the next significant step on a ladder of engagement usually consists of opting in to receive regular communication from your organization. Though every organization is different, this regular communication normally consists of summarized information of general interest, such as news about your organization, industry, profession, or subject matter that drives the vision of your organization. This initial "push" communication might be followed by "pull" communication, such as an organizational Twitter account, Facebook fan page, or an RSS-friendly blog.

Perhaps the most common form of communication by non-profits today, and our focus in this chapter, is bulk-email products that constituents may subscribe to. These could be monthly newsletters, daily updates, time-sensitive communication such as urgent action alerts, notifications of new publications, or other content of interest to users. As constituents move up the ladder of engagement, your CiviCRM system will know more about them, providing you tools to more effectively target contact segments and personalize the communication content and calls to action they receive.

The kind of material you distribute will determine who signs up and remains on your list. Make sure that the content of your communications and its "voice" is appropriate: Is it analytical or anecdotal? Is it authoritative or casual? You may publish dry announcements for an organization that is a clearing house on changes in labor law, narratives from an opinionated person for a homeless shelter, or a quirky gossip column for a creative sector association. Each speaks in a tone and with content that may resonate with its intended audience.

Repurposing content for different channels helps stretch your resources further. Let's say your organization puts out a few major research reports a year. You might want to:

All this could be done in addition to sending out an announcement to people who have specifically asked to receive notifications of new publications. Find ways to extend the reach of your work through multi-purposing content.

Take advantage of automated communications to cross-market your organization's activities, services, and news. There are a number of places where CiviCRM automatically sends out messages in response to a user's action, such as an event registration confirmation e-mail or donation receipt. You can customize the templates used to produce automated messages. These include confirming event sign-ups, thanking people for contributions, and notifying them when their volunteer sign-up preferences have been received with thanks.

Tokens, which are merge field placeholders for a contact's data, can be used to ensure that personalized information such as names and addresses are included in receipts. By crafting these messages beyond the default version that ships with CiviCRM, you can use them to tell your organization's story, seek further involvement, or solicit more support. Make sure the voice and tone in these messages are appropriate. The primary purpose of these automated messages should be to continue providing details to constituents in direct response to their action (for example, a receipt). Without hijacking their primary purpose, you can build secondary messaging into these messages to build your brand and impart your story. For example, you can put your organization's tag line or this month's featured call to action into the footer of all automated messages.

As mentioned above for all of your communications, the writing style or voice of these automated messages should suit your organization’s persona. A professional business tone, for example, might result in: “Thank you for your contribution. Your official tax receipt will be issued in January for all charitable contributions received this year." For a youth-oriented organization, a more casual style is likely better: "Thanks for helping to deck the Dumbo Corporation. Tweet #deckdumbo with other oddball campaign ideas."

CiviCRM provides support for several proven best practices in online viral communications. For example, "forward to a friend" functionality may be enabled and will appear just after a constituent has signed up for an event or completed a donation. By offering this opportunity to invite others, you take advantage of "motivation-inertia" and extend your organization's reach through constituent networks. Besides, most people would be happy if some colleagues or friends were at the event with them, or want to tell others about a cause they've just donated to. Similarly, a good moment to invite people to start their own personal campaign to raise money for your organization is just after they have completed their own donation.

The essence of what we're getting at is the need to be intentional and strategic about what you say, when you say it, and how you say it, while remaining on the lookout for serendipitous opportunities to link communications and extend your message.

Many for-profit marketing and sales techniques work well in the non-profit sector when asking for donations, volunteer time, event attendance, signing petitions, and so on. One simple but important communication technique to improve response rates is to have a clear, compelling call to action.

Making the link between the action and a concrete desirable outcome improves response rates. For example, an emergency relief organization might communicate that every dollar you contribute will buy a child in the earthquake zone one day's worth of food. Increasing the urgency of the call improves response rates: "If you act now, then [fill in the blank with a desirable outcome]" or "If you don't act now, then [fill in the blank with an undesirable outcome]."

Engaging respondents' emotions such as through graphic pictures, anecdotes, and personal stories usually greatly increases response rates. They are the star actors in the show. By contrast, compelling rational cases using statistics and telling factoids are like supporting cast. They are best used to fill out the performance and help the stars shine.

The surrounding communication text, graphics, music, and video—should all build the case for taking the action. Repeating the call to action several times in visually appealing and different ways helps, such as bold text links as well as buttons. By making it easier to complete the action, you improve response rates. "Click here" works better than expecting people to print a form, find their check book, get an envelope and stamp, and post the letter containing a donation.

Whether you are aware of it or not, everything your organization does while interacting with the world contributes to its reputation. Do people trust that your research is solid, come to you for innovative policy suggestions, or refer volunteers to you? Are they worried you'll waste their donations on administration? Can they count on you to get media attention for the issue? Are they uncomfortable with your approach because it is too confrontational or too cozy with the villains? Your brand is the sum of all these perceptions.

While knowing how you are perceived is one part of the story, the more important part is what is yet to happen. How does your organization want to be thought of? Could changing the organization's brand improve how well it achieves its goals? Would a sunnier, more playful visual identity help? A grittier, low-cost one? What about a more conservative, slicker one?

Communication activities are an important part of your brand. More people will typically receive bulk or broadcast communications than will interact directly with your organization through the programs and services you offer.

Everyone communicating with constituents on behalf of your organization should understand how their work fits into achieving the objectives of the organization. That way, they'll be able to strike the right tone in the messages, words, images, colors, and style they use. Communicating with constituents through CiviCRM, either one-on-one or in a broadcast manner, should always be done in a way that is intune with your organization's overall brand and visual identity.