Why Your Communications Director Is Unhappy and What to Do About It

What if I told you that one of the most important members of your team plans to leave within the next two years?

She’s the one who makes sure your supporters know what your nonprofit does and what it needs. She manages your group’s reputation and brand and often plays a vital role in ensuring that your fundraising efforts are successful.

But she’s hamstrung by too many competing priorities. She feels like she’s moving from fire drill to fire drill rather than having the autonomy to focus on what’s most important.

She’s your communications director — and she needs your help.

For the past six years, my organization, Nonprofit Marketing Guide, has surveyed communications directors at nonprofits to capture some of the challenges facing these important professionals and to provide insights into the tactics and strategies they use day to day.

This year we added something new: a look at how nonprofit communications directors feel about their jobs, their relationships with executive directors, and their aspirations.

The results of this survey of 1,613 communications professionals should give nonprofit executive directors, CEOs, and development directors pause.

About 48 percent of communications directors plan to leave their current position in the next two years. This mirrors the alarming rate of turnover among fundraisers documented in the landmark 2013 report “UnderDeveloped: A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising.”

What’s driving this trend?

For many communications professionals who are looking to jump ship, the issues are clear.

Forty percent of the communications directors said that lack of management direction is a severe problem: About 22 percent complained about excessive management oversight.

As someone who works closely with communications professionals across the country, I’m not surprised by these concerns.

Chances are, your communications staff is feeling squeezed by several factors within your control. Lack of clear strategy and competing priorities are a huge problem for many nonprofits. And because there are so many to communicate today, and no one can do them all (or even a tenth of them), many communications professionals feel like they are on a treadmill, running fast but getting nowhere.

Often they are being pulled in too many directions, with too many varied responsibilities, too many “bright ideas” being thrown at them by their executive directors, and not enough time to execute any of them.

As a result, they are frustrated — and looking elsewhere. Like many who work in the nonprofit world, communications directors want to make a difference, and they will gladly move on to an organization that will help them achieve more.

So how can you create an organization that is a prime landing spot for the best communications talent? Here are four practices that will help you more effectively work with and lead your communications team.

Dedicate time and resources. At many organizations, communications directors are not part of the senior management team. As a result, they are often not participating in or thinking about key organizational decisions until too late in the process.

If your nonprofit is serious about conveying the right message about your work and communicating effectively with your supporters, board members, and partners, stop treating your communications director like a short-order cook and add her to your senior team.

Regardless of your formal management structure, it’s your responsibility to discuss openly ways to improve internal communications and foster cooperation among program, development, and communications staff. Our research shows that integrated communications and fundraising teams are likely to feel a greater sense of responsibility for accomplishing your goals and gain more satisfaction on the job.

Communications isn’t a “nice to have” option. It is a discipline that is crucial to your nonprofit’s success. By integrating your teams and giving communications staff a seat at the table, you ensure that those employees have a say in key decisions from the start, which will produce much better results in the end.

Define the work. Many of the biggest challenges facing communications leaders come from being asked to do too many things. The most effective organizations are adept at setting a few big goals and sticking to them. As a leader, it’s important that you lead the process of making choices about your priorities.

What’s more, you have the power to decide the scope of what your communications team should focus on. Some communications directors are assigned office-wide tech-support responsibilities because they are often savvy computer and Internet users. In other organizations, they are saddled with administrative tasks by executive directors who consider writing up board-meeting minutes and proofreading grant reports to be “communications.”

Assignments like these take time and focus away from the real job of communicating with the people who support your organization and influence others to do so.

Delegate the work. Empower your communications staff to make decisions and put them into effect. Be clear about what you are delegating fully, where you should be consulted, and where you want to make final decisions.

As you delegate, allow staff to invest in learning about their profession and listen to what they learn! Nonprofit communications, marketing, and fundraising staff have access to bloggers who share abundantly, in addition to paid professional-development programs.

But time and again, we see executive directors ruin great work by staff. It happens most often when a leader’s personal preferences (and often ignorance of what works best) trump what’s right for the real target of the communications. Remember, you are not the target audience for your nonprofit’s communications.

Allow communications staff to control their own time and calendars and let them say no to you. They are constantly pulled into meetings and asked to do work that is distracting. Don’t expect them to be “always on and available” to you, just because their work is all about communicating.

Discuss the work often. Many of the most effective nonprofit communications operations include executive directors who are actively engaged in talking with staff and who provide feedback at the right times. How can you ensure that you’re engaging in the most productive way?

It starts by participating in regularly scheduled editorial meetings so you can be aware of what’s happening and help ensure that your communications team work is in line with your organization’s priorities.

Many smart executive directors also make time for check-in discussions as staff develop campaigns. They use these check-ins to be a flexible sounding board, asking questions and gaining insight into what the communications team is thinking. In these discussions, it’s important to be explicit about when you are simply sharing your opinions and ideas and when you are giving direction that staff must follow.

What else do you need to know to manage effectively and retain your communications staff members? Ask them. Odds are they’ll echo much of what I’ve shared with you and add words of wisdom specific to your organization. If you want great communications to come out of your organization, start by communicating well within it.

Kivi Leroux Miller founded the Nonprofit Marketing Guide and is author of the 2016 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report.