 Thanks for being here for another episode of the nonprofit show. Today is Monday, so you're starting your week in the right place. I'm a little biased, but I do think that you're in the right place to start a wonderful week. And of course, those of you that are watching live, welcome to the live show. Those of you that might be watching the recording, again, welcome. We're just glad to have you here. So today we have back with us, Jennifer Hudson. Think beyond public relations. Jennifer's going to share with us about strategic communication. So stay with us. Just a couple of onboarding moments to share with you. Julia Patrick, I hope you're feeling well. She's the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, getting some much deserved rest. I'm Jarrett Ransom, Julia's personal nonprofit nerd, but all of yours as well. I like to say there's plenty of nerdiness to go around. But CEO also of my own consulting firm, The Raven Group. We are always honored to continue to have the support of our presenting sponsors. Jennifer, if you remember, you've joined us for multiple episodes as a guest. And I shared with you just earlier that we're coming up on 600 episodes. And that's true. That's crazy. Congratulations. Yes. It's amazing. To our sponsors, those of you watching, you can see their logo, those of you listening. Please, I want to give a shout out to Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, Nonprofit Nerd, Your Part Time Controller, Staffing Boutique, and Nonprofit Thought Leaders. These are the companies that keep our show going and growing with amazing listeners, all of you, as well as our guests. So again, all of these episodes, you can find them on Roku, YouTube, Fire TV, as well as Vimeo. And for those of you that are podcasters, you can queue us up in your podcast stream. So Jennifer, this episode will be bifurcated into the channels, of course, of the podcast. So back again. I feel like that list has expanded since I was first here. Yeah. It's amazing. It has expanded. Thank you for noticing. Absolutely. And I feel like our conversations with you keep expanding, Jennifer. You know, I mentioned you've been on several times since the very beginning, which was March of 2020. And so we're just, Julie and I, both love, I call it, of course, nerding out with you. But as president of Think Beyond Public Relations, I personally want to welcome you back. And again, tell us a little bit about yourself for those of you that are watching and listening and not quite sure if you've tuned into Jennifer's episode. So Jennifer, tell us a little bit about yourself and Think Beyond. Yeah, thank you so much for having me again. I love, I call it geeking out on communications. I love geeking out on communications. I'm a strategic communications consultant. I work with nonprofits and small to mid-sized businesses as well to help them match their communications activities to their business goals. And I love, love, love the strategic communications planning process because it is adaptable and workable for any size organization, particularly for nonprofits. I also teach communications planning to nonprofit leaders through workshops that I lead. And I created Corporate Messaging for Communicators, which is a five-month program designed to help communications leaders learn how to facilitate and lead and get buy-in from their executives for cross-departmental corporate messaging sessions where you got everybody in a room together to get everybody singing out of the same hymnal to talk about how we should describe the brand, how we should talk about the brand, how we should tell our best stories. So that's me. I also mentor startup founders through a few organizations here in South Florida, the Venture Mentoring Team. We work with startup founders all over the country, Radical Partners, which is a nonprofit capacity-building organization here in South Florida, and then the 1909 Accelerator. I just started working with a mentor who is working on growing hydroponic food in communities, in neighborhoods. There are people doing amazing things in this community, and I love that. So that's about me, Julia. Sorry, Julia. It's calling you Julia. How many hours existed in my life? No. How many hours? My friend. I know, but you know I'm so passionate about all of it. And I know it's important to say no, and I know people's always important to say no, but these are truly things that I love doing and that I'm very, very passionate about, especially the mentoring. I learned so much from mentoring nonprofit leaders and startup founders, because there are young people who just want to change the world, and they're fascinating. They're fascinating, Jared, and I love helping them. I love talking to them early on in the earlier parts of their business, earlier stages of their businesses, about communications planning, about core values, getting that stuff right now, because it helps you make smarter business decisions later on about partnerships and everything. Oh, gosh. I could go on about that all day. Clearly, you're the geek in this, and so I love that. So you can maintain the geekiness. I'll maintain the nerdiness. Those of you that want to geek out with Jennifer, please do check her out. Wethinkbeyond.com is her website, of course, and you can find all of that good stuff that she just shared with us. So thank you, Jennifer, for being here, for all that you do. Thanks for having me. For having well more than 24 hours in your day, because it's really amazing to hear what you do. So today's conversation, we're going to talk about strategic communications, and let's start off with focusing on two specific aspects. And what would these two specific aspects be when it relates to that strategic communications? So let me take a step back first and just say that the strategic communications planning process includes four phases. Research, planning, implementation, and evaluation. And I may have talked about this before, but in that research phase, I like to say this is the time when you're ensuring that you really know what you think you know. This is the time to do communication SWOT analysis. This is the time to talk to your key stakeholders. This is the time to look at the data that you have about the work that you're doing. That's the, and the planning phase is where you're identifying goals, objectives, strategies, tactics, thinking through target audiences, thinking through messaging. So what we were going to talk about today is within that second phase. And the implementation phase is, how are we gonna get all this work done? Who's gonna do what? What's our calendar? How, when are we gonna do it? And what kind of budget do we have to get it done? And then the evaluation phase of planning, you're thinking about success. What does success look like? How are we gonna know we've been successful? Those measurable objectives. So I wanted to just lay that out first because that's really important. And so target audiences and messaging fall within that second phase in the planning phase. And I always say that they are the two most critical pieces of the pie because think about it. Like if you have the most creative ideas for communicating something, but you're communicating that thing to the wrong people and you're not messaging it in a way that will resonate with them and have value to them, you've really shot yourself in the foot, right? Like you have to understand who the people are who are most important to your success. And there's a process to do that. And then you have to understand what messages are gonna resonate with them. And so I always tell people for target audiences to understand, and I see this so often when I do corporate messaging sessions with nonprofits, Jared, they're different and even with corporations too, like their people have different ideas about who we should be reaching with our sometimes very limited communications resources and budget. So some folks will say it's the funders because they pay our bills. It's the news media because they don't know who we are. It's our employees because they don't really get, they don't understand the mission and how their work fits into it. No, it's our partners because they're the ones who help us serve more. No, it's our clients because those are the people we're working with every single day, right? So it's really important to get the key internal stakeholders. And when I say internal, I mean board members as well, into the room together to think about a few things. Who are those key stakeholders? And I like to ask them very specific questions. Why should we be targeting them? What can they, how can they contribute to our success? What is it that we need to know from them? How can they help us? What is it that we, and what is, if you had one specific message that you wanted to deliver to that audience, what would it be? And just going through that simple exercise often yields, always yields so much benefit because many times people have different ideas about who we should be targeting. And it could be that it's news media, but if your staff are not in tune with the organization's mission and vision, and if they don't understand how their work supports that, it's, you run the risk of, first of all, communicating inauthentically, externally. You run the risk of creating a staff of employees who are unengaged and disenfranchised and unconnected to your mission, which you never want. And I always say this, honestly, like nine times out of 10, this has been my experience. There are exceptions, but if there is a communications challenge in an organization, it's internal. And so those organizations that attend to their staff and listen to their great ideas that create intentional spaces for them to share their thoughts and ideas about the brand tend to be more successful in communicating. And we know that when there's a disconnect, it seeps out into the world. And the people who want to have their voices heard inside the organization and don't often get the chance to, that discontent or disconnect or whatever is happening often seeps its way out into the world in the way that they're communicating with partners in the way that they are communicating internally with one another, those become the folks who can sometimes poison the atmosphere. So we wanna make sure we allow them to be a part of the process. And we wanna get everyone aligned around who we should be talking to. So one of the things I think of as you share this insight and it's very timely as you talk about the messaging internal, external, all of the target audience that we just talked about here. What is the target audience? Who are they? And it's plural, right? It's not just one singular audience, it's plural and the messaging. And I'm curious, Jennifer, cause I feel like, you know, think beyond in the PR public relations is really looking at that, you know, the media. But are we also talking about social media messaging? Oh yeah, oh yeah. I mean, when we talk about target audiences we're talking about the stakeholder groups to whom we need to deliver our messages. And so we've gotta get clear about who those people are. The channel through which we communicate to those people could be different ways. And I always say we've gotta figure when we get the target audiences down then we've gotta understand where they live, work and play. So if they are engaging most on social media then that's where we go. And within social media also, you know, we've gotta decide which of those channels is most important to us. Everybody doesn't need to be on Facebook. Everybody doesn't need to be on Instagram. We don't all need to take talk, right? So we've gotta go, right? We've gotta go where those target audiences live, work and play. So yeah, the channels is a piece of it. But if you don't get those target audiences right you're never gonna know where they, cause you've gotta dig deeper and find out where they are, where they're communicating. It could be that, you know, one-on-one meetings with some of your sort of low-hanging fruit donors and funders is what you need to do. And that they may not be on social media, you know? So those channels are really important, but understanding the target audiences is what's gonna get you there. That's what's good. And I was gonna say also, yes, it is audiences. However, if you've got limited resources, what the communications planning, this is what's so beautiful about this process is that when you get everyone in agreement about, okay, for the year one, we're gonna focus the majority of our efforts on engaging our staff. It doesn't mean that you're not communicating with your donors and funders. It doesn't mean, is that your resources, the bulk of your resources are going to, and I'm making all of this up, right? It depends on what you reveal in your sessions where you're communicating with staff. But if that's the case, then your resources need to go toward engaging your staff. You wanna retain those good people. How are we gonna engage them in real ways? How are we going to operationalize our core value so that when we say courage is a core value, how are we being courageous in our organization? How are we ensuring that we're inculcating that value in our staff? What does it look like to show up courageously in my department? What does it look like for me as an employee to show up courageously in my work when I'm engaging with clients, when I'm engaging with the public? So I'm sorry, I didn't go on and on. You look like you're on and on. No, I feel like I'm having a conversation with Renee Brown, which is fantastic as we talk about courage, yeah, courage. And one of the things that I'm curious about with the messaging specifically with the audiences and that messaging, do we take the message and then figure out how we change and adapt the message for the audience or do you start with the audience first and then create the message? Cause what I've done before and please tell me if I'm wrong is like, okay, what is our message? That's what we wanna know. What is happening? What do we wanna convey? And then let's figure out how we share it with people where they work, live and play as you so beautifully said. And if it's on social media, perhaps, if it's on TikTok, we say it in one way. If it's on LinkedIn, it's another way. If it's in our electronic newsletter or an actual letterhead, USPS mail, like, do we take that message, if you will and then adapt it for the audience? You do adapt your messages for your audience but you first gotta know what will resonate with those audiences. So there is a process for creating corporate messaging and I always tell people in the corporate messaging sessions that I teach folks to facilitate, you're essentially answering five things and target audiences are part of that. Who are we? What do we do? Who do we serve? Who are we communicating to? Who are we communicating? Why are we unique and why should anyone care? And when you go through that process, it is a rich process that allows you to dig deeply into your organization to pull out the best and the brightest about who you are so that, yes, you will adapt. Obviously, you have to adapt. We know that LinkedIn is a different, I communicate on LinkedIn, I communicate on Instagram. I can be a little more fun. I don't know. I have some different characters. I'm in the same need, but the way that I might communicate much more on Facebook than I do on LinkedIn, like, yes, you have to adapt to the channel but you could be communicating about, let's just take a program that's meaningful, right? And I shouldn't even say that because I like nonprofits communicate their why and why they're doing the work that they're doing and yes, how it's impacting your organization. But for the sake of this, I will say if you're communicating and I'll use the same courage example, if we wanna demonstrate to people how we're being courageous and what that looks like in our organization and we know that we wanna do that on Instagram, we wanna do that on LinkedIn, we wanna do that on Facebook, we wanna show tangible examples of us being courageous. Maybe that's through our advocacy work and so we wanna talk about our advocacy work. Maybe it's through the way that we show up for if we're serving families, for a family and supporting a family through the judicial system or whatever that looks like, the way that you communicate that and the channels on which you communicate that could be maybe on Instagram, it's a photo with a caption. Maybe on Facebook, it's a longer story but you see you're still communicating that core value of courage and how it shows up and you're doing that in a way that will resonate with your audiences. And so I'm gonna go back and say that the research piece is also really important because you've gotta look at your past success in communicating or not communicating that at all to see what's resonated most with folks. So we know that when we talk about a particular program or a particular core value and how it's impacting the people we're serving or how it's impacting the community, we really get folks engaged. How do we replicate that? So that makes me think that getting it right is critical which is for those of you watching, that's what the slide says on the screen. So getting it right is critical, the messaging, the channels, the who, what, when, where, why. What we haven't talked about is timing and I'm curious Jennifer, if you can talk to us about getting it right in all of these ways in which you've already shared but let's add that layer of timing. How critical is timing to this component? When you say timing, are you referring to the frequency with which you deliver the messages? Are you referring to the rollout of a communications plan? Tell me what you mean by timing. More of the rollouts. I'm thinking if there's something that we need to share with either internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, maybe there's a big change in the organization. Maybe there's a wonderful announcement we wanna share and it can be interesting, right? So how do we create the timeline, if you will, of that rollout? Because I'm thinking that's a critical component. Yeah, it is. The timing depends on you. You would also do that during the planning process in that implementation phase that I talked about. That's where you're looking at the long term. So in Q1, what's happening in our organization and what do we need to communicate and why and who are we targeting? Q2 and then within Q1, month one, month two, month three, within month one, week one, week two, week three, week four, what needs to happen so that we are building toward the goal that we set for ourselves with our communications. And so yeah, and the planning is so important because it keeps you from having to put out fires all the time. If there will always be something that comes up for which you have not adequately prepared and you make space for that too in your planning. We know that the inevitable fires will come up. So what are we agreeing early on that's okay to put aside so that we can manage the fires that come up. But your timing, when I do plans, I like thinking about things in terms of quarters depends on what the organization's calendar is on. But I like doing things in quarters, months, weeks with social media even down to days based on what's happening. Building in, like this is Pride Month, right? Last month was Mental Health Awareness Month. It's June, there's Juneteenth coming up. And even thinking about those holidays, I think gives you the opportunity as an organization to say, do we wanna just report about this? Do we wanna just throw up a little slide or how are we embedding our belief in equity and social justice into our work throughout the entire year? So we're not just throwing up a slide, throwing up a post on to celebrate a day. Yeah, throwing up that black square on Instagram that we've talked about before. You've talked about that before. You have to go beyond that. And I love that you just mentioned, yes, June is Pride Month. Last month was Mental Health Awareness. This month we have Juneteenth. Next month, I mean, every month has actually several things. In fact, it's a really looking at how do you bake that into your internal extrovert community? In a meaningful way. In a meaningful way. And not just in your communications. How do we embed this work into our core values so that we're not just communicating, we're not just thinking about what's gonna look nice when we communicate, but how are we reimagining a hiring? How are we recruiting a diverse group of board members? How are we ensuring that every employee feels like they belong? All of it's connected because when you're doing the work inside, it reflects externally. Internal equals external, right? So if we're just doing the pretty stuff for show and we're not doing the hard work inside organizations, people see it. So I have a question and this might be a curve ball. I apologize in advance, but you are definitely I'm gonna throw me a curve ball. I know, you're the geek on this, not me, but I'm curious as many people finish June as their fiscal year and start July one as a new fiscal year. If they are thinking and listening, hopefully to this conversation, I want to be more intentional with our strategic communications. What percentage of our budget should we allocate towards communications? A ballpark would be great. Again, I know this is a curve ball and I'm sure every organization is different. But I like to talk about the brass tacks, the money, especially now as we move into that new calendar or fiscal year, rather, for many organizations that are reallocating so that they can do more than just a post. That's such a great question. And I always lean into what I know from the corporate world and I'm not even sure it's updated, but I would say 15 to 20% of your operational budget should go toward capacity building and this to toward communications. Someone can tell us in comments or what their thoughts are, but that's what I'm going with. Whether or not, you know, so I will be honest and say I'd be curious what other nonprofit communications leaders would say and how much they believe is allocated to them. I will also say what you raise brings up a really important issue that I think I talked to you about this. We talked about this through messaging and LinkedIn and I told you that I was hosting this session in South Florida with a group of funders and nonprofits and capacity building folks to write. We were talking about Collaboratory and we invited them over to share this new vision and a new way of approaching funding that they have. And I would encourage anyone to look up Collaboratory in Fort Myers, Florida. But during that conversation, you know, I shared with them how when I first started working with the nonprofit community, well, 15 years ago, I had this expectation that when you go through the hard work of developing a plan, you naturally implement the plan. And I found that a couple of things happened. Either they didn't have the expertise that it seemed they had inside the organization to effectively implement or they didn't have the budget in the end to implement. And it was because they were restricted by restricted funding to how much they could devote to communications or to administrative costs in their organization. And I truly believe that branding communications as a capacity building function that if you are not able to fully tell your story, you will never be able to do more, serve more, be more, ever. And so my dream, sorry, what are you saying? Go ahead, go ahead. We're both really passionate right now and we have a lot to say, but I'm gonna take the backseat, you take it. No, just that my dream is, I mean, I have a few dreams around this issue, but my dream is for the world to recognize that when you can better communicate about yourself and when you're doing it strategically, it's gonna help communities. It's gonna help you serve people better. It's gonna help you be a more sustainable organization. So anyway, back to your original question. I would say 20%, but I could be totally wrong, honestly. Like you, I would love for folks to tell us what they think. I would love to know too, because getting it right is absolutely critical. And what I was chomping at the bits to say too is I have never thought of communications as capacity building. So that's my big a-ha from today's conversation, knowing that we've talked previously. That to me is my biggest takeaway because I could not agree more and I'm a little embarrassed that I've never put that together because you're right, without messaging, without communication, we cannot share with the world and our community who we are, what we do, what we offer to are who, what, when, where, why's, right? And so thank you for that gift. And I am definitely taking that as my biggest takeaway. Many great takeaways from you, Jennifer Hudson, and really just looking at that now as part of the capacity building infrastructure. I love that. If that's the biggest takeaway for anyone from today, I would say that's a communications capacity building. Yes, yes. Jennifer, you are amazing. I always adore our conversations. Julia adores our conversations. We are so grateful to know you, your work, and all that you do. Again, for those of you that joined us early and you heard all of the good things that Jennifer does in and around our community, we are so lucky to have her in our corner. So president, thank you on public relations. We think beyond.com. Please check out Jennifer Hudson, all of her great work. She loves to mentor. That was another takeaway that I heard very loud and clear. And I just love that because we need, I believe the same, Jennifer, like we need so many people to enjoy this space and the sector so that they can find this as potentially a career opportunity. So thank you for being here today and joining us for the conversation. We are so lucky, lucky to have you as well as we're lucky to have our presenting sponsors. So again, thank you to Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, Nonprofit Nerd, your part-time controller, staffing fatigue, and non-profit thought leaders. So those of you again that joined us live, thank you if there's something from this conversation you wanna share with your colleagues, your board, your friends, your peers, you can find us on so many platforms, thenonprofitshow.com. Jennifer, thank you again, my friend. Thank you, thank you. This was great. Thanks for letting me geek out on communications. Yeah, I always enjoy talking to you. You too, and I'm gonna be tooting that horn that communications is indeed capacity building. So thank you. Any non-profit communicators out there, reach out to me, we'll talk about that. I love it, I love it. Well, thanks again. Thanks for all of you that joined us. We always end each and every show by saying, please stay well so you can continue to do well. Thanks again, and we will see you here.