The Nonprofit Alliance members and the broader nonprofit sector are facing many challenges right now, including drastic funding cuts, questions around individual programming portfolios, and unwarranted scrutiny of the sector’s overall role.

Strengthening your messaging and communications about your organization’s role will help reinforce the importance of the incredible work that is being done every single day. At this critical time for the nonprofit sector, it is more important than ever to “Own Your Value.”

Rather than tying talking points to an individual policy threat or falsehood, Own Your Value guides organizations to own their own worth by strategically shaping messaging for a variety of audiences, including the general public, empowering staff with meaningful and consistent talking points, and showcasing the valuable work they are doing in our communities.

The brief framework below will help organizational staff with external communications across advocacy, programming, employee recruitment, and fundraising. This messaging will also contribute to our collective sector goal to maintain and strengthen public trust with the communities we serve. Data is key to this initiative, with statistics on employment, beneficiaries, and funding.

There are 10 messaging components to address three critical questions: Who you are, Why you matter, and Why you can be trusted.

1. Clear impact statement: a succinct explanation of your organization’s work and role in the community and its measurable value
2. Scale of service: The number of beneficiaries served (overall and annual)
3. Organizational history: The longevity of your work and individual programs
4. Beneficiary stories: authentic storytelling from those you serve
5. Economic contribution: the number of jobs your organization has created and related impacts (job training, as example)
6. Gap analysis: Where your services fill societal gaps or answer other kinds of external funding constraints for programming
7. Partnership highlights: private partnerships that strengthen organizational outcomes
8. Community validation: external leaders and partners in the community that work with your organization, support its work, and can validate your value (community leaders, faith-based leadership, etc.)
9. Donor engagement: funding sources and scope of donor base, demonstration of public validation
10. Accountability measures: examples of transparent, accountable best practices

GET STARTED TODAY:

Start with two pages. See a sample narrative example here to help kickstart your internal messaging audit. Consider all of your public-facing communications: fundraising appeals, website pages, annual report, job postings, IRS Form 990 narratives, grant applications, and more.

Then, support our efforts to raise your stories and contribute to elevating our sector’s substantial contributions:

Share your narratives within the nonprofit community and more broadly to help others amplify these organizational stories.

Record a 30-second video to own your value. Follow this link for more information, including a sample script and an easy-to-use record button. See two examples below.