Strengthen Your Nonprofit Communications: Study Reveals Skills Gaps and Suggests Steps for Improvement

Information moves rapidly these days, and an increasing amount of it competes for the time and attention of donors, journalists, online influencers, and the public. In this marketplace, what skills should communications professionals possess to raise the profile of their organizations? To find out, The Communications Network, an association of professionals in the field, commissioned a survey.

Nearly 300 members of the network participated in the survey. Forty percent of respondents work for foundations, 31 percent for nonprofits, and 22 percent for consulting firms that advise charities.

What’s often missing, according to the survey:

Strategic thinking, “a person’s ability to think beyond his or her organization and seek change at a systems level,” was the most valued skill, yet most respondents said it is difficult to find job candidates with this ability.

Emotional intelligence, defined in part as the ability to “use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior,” is a quality that few candidates possess, according to half of respondents. The study states that communicators who use emotional intelligence can build trust and connect with individuals on a personal level.

“Emotional intelligence is the unsung hero of the social-impact sector,” said John Trybus, deputy director at the Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University, in the report. “Sometimes people are not being educated earlier in their career about the importance of emotional intelligence.” The skill helps people work well in teams, adjust to new situations, and regulate their emotions.

Marketing, writing, branding, messaging, and social-media engagement are basic requirements for communicators, according to the study. Of those, respondents cited messaging — the ability to craft statements for internal and external audiences — and general writing talent as most important.

Data and research skills seem to be scarcest among job candidates: Three-quarters of respondents said those skills are difficult to find.

That didn’t surprise Sean Gibbons, chief executive of the Communications Network. Because many nonprofits and foundations are not yet using data and research to inform their communications work, or are relying on third parties to provide data analysis, their employees are not getting the training they need to hone those skills.

“It’s still a fairly new function in a lot of these organizations,” he said. “We are at the cusp of a new revolution in communications. It’s not surprising that only a few people are on the frontier.”

Collaboration skills, on the other hand, are quite prevalent: Only a quarter of respondents had trouble finding job candidates with those skills.

Ways to Improve

Based on the survey’s findings, the Communications Network recommends that nonprofits take the following steps to improve communications:

1. Develop a strategic communications plan with measurable goals and details about your audiences

2. Get support from leadership for your strategic plan.

3. Encourage employees to work collaboratively.

4. Reflect with team members about which strategies are effective and which need revision.

5. Use data and research to make decisions.

6. Hire carefully, taking into consideration which skills your team needs from new employees.

7. Pay attention to the importance of emotional intelligence.

Access the full report.