Communication Plan

Interesting concept? Essential concept. An organization needs to have a communiation plan.  You can tell whether the origanization has a plan by how each of the organizational leaders, the board, and committee chairs/members view themselves in their appointed responsibilities about getting the word out.  Friends groups are member organizations.  Information and communications should be focused toward the members.

It is becoming extremely important for organizations to not only embrace their mission, but understand who their members and public are.  "Build it and they will come" may be great for baseball yet it may be seen as a self centered approach.  We need to communicate in a member centered approach.

So what do you do?  Take an inventory of your recent communications to your members.  Ask yourself not only the number of communications, but what are the topics discussed.  Now ask yourself, what information was given to the member.  Was it about what WE did or was it to let them know how important they are or how their contribution made a difference?

Real Life Example:  A Friend's group produced a flyer for upcoming programs they were sponsoring.  I asked them how was it going to be distributed.  Their answer was to put it in the library and hand it out at the booth they take at a street fair. I thought to myself, "a street fair, that's an interesting venue". I had them explain what other methods they were using to get the word out about these events.  I heard their plan, though I heard a missing link.  When I asked them how their members would hear of it, I received an honest answer, opps we didn't think of them.  Good for them, I just love an honest answer.

We continued the disucssion with some zeal and began to rough out a communication plan.  Handing out these flyers at the street fair is similar to, what the for profit world labels, making cold calls.  Except there isn't any way to followup with people that took a flyer.  While some of the group's members may stop by their booth, most of their members will not be there for this event.  We talked about having a sign up to get email addresses from folks that stoped by.  That way they could follow up; there could be a new member just waiting to be asked to join. 

Since this flyer covered several events over an extended time frame, continued use of this flyer at future events wasn't so clear.   There wasn't enough flyers to send to members.  That was corrected quickly.  We ran through the balance of the events and came up with a few more suggestions.  With formulating this plan, we found some information still needs to be clarified and those questions will go back to their committee.

Let me say, it was a great process.  This group will now be able to reach out to their members and not just the public at large.

Conclusion: 
A communication plan is an essential element to an organization's success.  I will ask the organizational leaders, the board, and committee chairs/members how is your work being communicated to the members of your organization?  Are you covering the various ways to communicate? The avenues are so numerous today:  think about print, your own web page/site, other organizations' web pages/sites, newspapers, radio, email, social networking sites are only a few. 

Do you have a written plan and time line? This is a great tool.  The plan is about what avenues to use. Your time line will contain the constraints of using each of the avenues.  Example, our friendly printer will do the flyers for cost provided we get the finished flyer to them three weeks before we need to distribute it. Without a plan, the organization may miss an opportunity to communicate, burn out individuals as it is a 'last minute' job, or possibly have copy with errors in it.  A time line is simple, but is someone minding the process for the organization?

When do you do write the time line?  My suggestion is that the group look at it once every six months.  The time line should be at least a year out, though I recommend two to three years.  Search on-line - you'll find great examples to use.  Ring in with your ideas and comments!