When you’ve been taking part in with our Nonprofit Communications Strategic Planning Card Deck, you could be questioning what number of playing cards are too many for one particular person to deal with.
Sticking with the cardboard deck metaphor, I’m referring to the playing cards you might be utilizing as “your hand.” To encourage of us to be real looking in regards to the comms workload, I problem folks to decide simply 10 playing cards for his or her hand when creating their technique, not together with the customization playing cards. However actually, utilizing extra like 15 playing cards and even 20 is okay, assuming it’s the precise mixture of playing cards.
However that may be a BIG assumption. The suitable mixture is basically the figuring out issue, not the variety of playing cards per se. If the combos make sense then the precise 20 playing cards will really be much less work than 10 playing cards that don’t actually go nicely collectively.
When I’m teaching purchasers or contributors in our Communications Director Mentoring Program by means of the creation of their methods utilizing the playing cards, right here’s the place these conversations most frequently go . . . hopefully, you should utilize this recommendation to enable you kind out your personal decisions too.
The Purpose Playing cards
First off, I’m typically much less involved in regards to the variety of aim playing cards in contrast to all of the others. Our analysis reveals that having a number of communications objectives isn’t as dangerous as you may assume.
The Technique Playing cards
Nearly each nonprofit goes to have Permission-Based mostly Advertising and Content material Advertising of their hand. They are going to probably have one other one to three technique playing cards. So long as they don’t go over 5 technique playing cards, it’s typically OK.
Simply make certain these methods work collectively collectively to meet your objectives. In case you are actually struggling to maintain it to 5 technique playing cards or much less, that tells me you might be far and wide and wish much more focus.
The Goal Playing cards
That is the place we’d like essentially the most focus. Utilizing greater than three to 5 playing cards right here is usually an indication of massive hassle.
That’s very true when utilizing a number of of the aims that have a tendency to be more durable to measure, resembling Change in Information and Understanding, Elevated Readiness and Empowerment, Expressions of Belief, and Ranges of Affect. It’s OK to pair one in every of these tougher aims to measure with some which can be simpler (like Monetary Positive factors; Becoming a member of, Subscribing and Following; and Participation Ranges, for instance), however usually not multiple. I encourage a number of dialog across the Goal playing cards for that purpose.
The Tactic Playing cards
Having a number of techniques will not be mechanically a foul factor so long as these techniques play very properly collectively. By play properly, I imply repurposing is simple.
In case you are actually good at creating versatile content material and repurposing that content material between many channels, you possibly can embrace much more tactic playing cards in your hand. That probably additionally means you may have clear workflows for creating content material.
If this isn’t the case, and you might be struggling to create good content material, handle your communications channels, and do all of that constantly, then I encourage you to again down the variety of techniques to your very high priorities.
It’s also possible to give attention to the playing cards that symbolize the vast majority of your comms work (or the place it is best to put your future vitality and emphasis if this can be a forward-looking plan, fairly than an outline of what you might be doing now).
Do you may have extra questions on utilizing the Nonprofit Communications Strategic Planning Card Deck?
Simply tell us!
