Can Your Communications Prove Its Worth?

Photo: boygovideo

Most communications programs track what's easy to count. What they rarely track is whether any of it is actually working.

In the nonprofit sector, that gap — between activity and demonstrated impact — is where communications loses its seat at the leadership table. When it isn’t tied to measurable results, leaders don’t see it as essential and feel justified cutting it first when budgets shrink. Closing the gap starts with a discipline most mission-driven organizations haven't fully adopted: building every communications goal backwards from what the organization has committed to achieving.

The starting point isn't a media pitch or a list of deliverables. It's a conversation — directly with the CEO and each program leader — about what the organization needs to accomplish over the next one to three years. What outcomes depend on reaching the right people with the right message at the right moment? Once those questions are answered, every strategy and tactic connects to something that can be measured.

I learned this discipline early and it changed how I work as a public interest communicator. I started telling organization leaders something that occasionally raised eyebrows: if we can't measure what I'm doing for you, let's not do it. In social impact work, communications that can't demonstrate a connection to outcomes isn't serving the mission.

When I worked with a leading national health care advocacy organization to strengthen their media relations program, increasing coverage was one objective — but the more important one was measuring what that coverage was actually achieving. I built a framework tracking results across five areas: policy and advocacy impact, partnership development, technical assistance to states, thought leadership and fundraising. Once that was in place, every placement and every campaign could be evaluated not just by volume but by its actual contribution to mission outcomes.

Qualitative results — a policymaker's changed position, a funder's deepened confidence, a partner's decision to align their work with yours — are harder to capture but more meaningful.

Quantitative results are easy to count and present. Qualitative results — a policymaker's changed position, a funder's deepened confidence, a partner's decision to align their work with yours — are harder to capture but more meaningful. Organizations that build systems to track both make a case for communications as a leadership investment.

Name one communications activity your organization does regularly. Can you trace it to a program objective and measure how it's helping achieve it? If yes to both, you have something well worth building on. If not, your communications has more to give.

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This post is part of a series on how strategic communications drives program success — drawn from decades of work on climate action, public health, disaster response and economic development.