Holly Minch, Founder, LightBox Collaborative This workshop will guide you along the first steps in developing an effective communications plan for your nonprofit, including setting goals, identifying allies, approaches for audience engagement. You’ll leave with a working GAME (Goals, Audience, Message, Engagement) Plan you can put to work immediately, so bring your pen and paper!

1. Communications Strategy:
The GAME Plan
Nonprofit Boot Camp
October 10, 2013

2. @LBCollab
www.lightboxcollaborative.com

3. INTENTION
Clarity of goals and the
means to track progress
towards them

4. ILLUMINATION
Information and
perspective to
inform action

5. INSPIRATION
Passion and purpose working
together to create momentum

6. INSIGHT
Alignment of people,
purpose, and resources
preparing you to meet
challenges in a
new way

7. INTENTION
IMPACT
ILLUMINATION
INSIGHT
INSPIRATION

8. You need a GAME plan

9. Goals
Audience
Message
Engagement

10. GAME plan: Goals

12. Your intended outcomes should be
• Strategic
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound
Focused outcomes:
the key to strategy

15. GAME plan: Audience

16. Decision
Makers
Influentials
Your
Constituents
Donors
Allies
???
GAME plan: Audience

17. Target Audiences
Who needs to hear
your message?
• Who must be moved to
action?
• Who has the power to help?
Be specific
• “The public” is not an
audience.

19. Congregants
Clergy
Heads of Regional & State Networks
Key Opinion Leaders
Advisors & Funders

21. Know Your Audiences
What do they care
about?
What are their obstacles
to engagement?
Who do they trust?

22. GAME plan: Message

23. Talk about what people care about

24. Perception
Trumps Reality

25. Brevity Trumps Precision

26. Values Trump Features

27. Positive Beats Negative

28. Emotion Trumps Logic

29. Vibrant Language Trumps Jargon
How foundations garble their message
and lose their audience
bad words for good
Tony Proscio
“We build capacity so
low-income families can
access the vital
infrastructure of the
social safety net
system.”



30. ©2008 letcaliforniaring.org
Messengers
Can Trump
the Message
“Our family tree has just
grown stronger.”
~Aida Lugo, whose granddaughter Lisa was married
this summer to her partner, Melissa.
We have a big family. We just had our annual family reunion–300 people came!

31. “What?”
“So what?”
“Yeah, but…”
“Now what?”

33. 3 out of 4 U.S.
households aren’t
traditional nuclear
families, but you
wouldn’t know it from
the greeting card aisle.
We can have Mama’s Day
Our Way – because all
families should have the
rights, recognition and
resources they need to
thrive.
Traditional notions of who
moms are, what we do
and how we do it don’t fit
for a lot of us.
So send a
Mama’s Day Our
Way e-card.

34. “What?”
“So what?”
YOUR
TURN
“Now what?”
“Yeah, but…”

35. GAME plan: Engagement

36. Earned
Media

38. Social
Media

42. Everything
but Media

45. Goals
Audience
Message
Engagement

46. What are
your
ideas?

47. INTENTION
IMPACT
ILLUMINATION
INSIGHT
INSPIRATION

48. @LBCollab
www.facebook.com/lightboxcollaborative
www.lightboxcollaborative.com