By Tillie Corlett, communications and engagement manager at CharityComms
Sometimes colleagues can view communications as just posting on social media, sending newsletters or engaging with press enquiries. Without a real investment, a shared understanding, and creating the space for strategic thinking or integration across an organisation, that’s how it can feel.
But communicators want you to know how we can be more effective with your support…
Strategic communications is the connective tissue that joins all your comms together. It’s the shaping of the why and how behind what your charity communicates, not just what you’re going to say. It’s the difference between your charity shouting into the noise and crossing its fingers and rallying an audience behind your cause.
But strategic communications only works when there’s a deep understanding and appreciation that comms flows through everything the charity does.
More than ever, it’s important that leaders know how the marcomms landscape is changing and the business case for a strong comms function. It could be the very difference between thriving and surviving. Here are three ways communicators can help meet today’s challenges and what they might need from you to do so:
Driving growth and sustainability through supporter engagement
It’s a tough time for income generation. Comms isn’t a magic wand, but it can help to move your charity beyond delivering awareness activities to generating deeper, sustainable engagement. This work ensures that your connection with supporters is longer and more meaningful.
The nurturing of supporter relationships ultimately looks like turning charity asks into audience-first messages. This approach gets more support, like continued donations, legacy giving or campaigning involvement.
Give comms the space and resources to develop, refine or contribute to growth initiatives, engagement activities and tracking, and target-setting to respond to trends in supporter behaviour.
Recommendations: read Who Cares? Building audience-centred engagement strategies. At the Strategic Communicators’ Conference, watch Claire from More Onion on how Shelter evolved supporter journeys to better meet supporter needs, to see what works goes into building supporter engagement and how teams can iterate the process.
Growing public trust and protecting reputations
Trust in charities is not guaranteed, either individually or institutionally.
With people expecting more transparency from organisations, comms teams translate and deliver messages to build resonance in a noisy world. They create everything from impact reporting and reactive responses to internal bulletins, too.
Their understanding of audiences and news, as well as their role on “the frontlines”, makes communicators finely attuned to spotting any risks to reputation. Harness this insight by including a comms representative in relevant discussions about risk and policies.
Don’t just view communications as the protective armour of your organisation, guiding charities through the tricky or crisis situations when they happen. Think of them as one of the key mechanisms for building trust in the first place. Discuss what this looks like in practice, be curious and open to their suggestions, and what they might need to help the organisation maintain stakeholders’ trust.
With misinformation rife and divisive conversations happening at national and local levels, communicators can help your organisation remain a visible and reliable source of information and support. But this work isn’t going to be easy so don’t underestimate what it requires.
Recommendations: read charity brand trends for 2026 and beyond and the best practice guide: crisis communications. At the Strategic Communicators’ Conference, watch Russell from Change Grow Live on reframing reputation to understand how it works in practice and strategies to implement.
Bridging the gap between output and impact
Without representation of comms at higher levels, communications can revert to being a tactical function that comes in at the end of projects. When this happens, they tend to do the best they can with the time and information they have.
This approach will see your comms team responding more to short-term requests and opportunities rather than being in service of your long-term vision or business critical challenges. But it is here that they can help sustain conversations, exceed goals and create change.
Truth is, they could also burn out too.
Communicators need you to advocate for comms and be realistic about resources. Better yet, make sure skilled communicators are representing comms at strategic meetings and board discussions. Ensure information, insights and support are filtering across the organisation to better bridge outputs and impact.
We’ve seen that when communicators feel communications is integrated, they are happier and more impactful communicators.
If your charity is larger, communications is strategic when it integrates teams and levels to help drive goals and connect messages across every touchpoint. Charities that are smaller may need to view integration as ensuring communicators understand what’s happening across the organisation and get involved in conversations much earlier in an advisory capacity.
Also be a champion for comms across the organisation. Platforming how their work ultimately feeds other parts of the organisation. You’ll help to position comms as a strategic function, who help to connect the dots, deliver results, and that their oversight is helpful.
Recommendations: read the value of comms at the top table and download the Connected Comms framework. At the Strategic Communicators’ Conference, watch freelance consultant Amy on how to make the case for comms to understand the challenges communicators face in advocating for their work and consider how you could help.
So, what’s next?
Have an honest and open conversation with your comms team about how to embed strategic communications more effectively and sustainably. Listen to what it’s like working in comms and encourage them to tell you the small and big wins they’re seeing that would drive change.
Invest in learning and development of your comms colleagues, so they can keep their finger on the pulse and apply best practices. This isn’t just about professional development and motivation – their development is also critical to an organisation’s effectiveness.
If you’re eager to improve your understanding of what’s changing in comms, I hope to see you and your comms teams at our Strategic Communicators’ Conference on 12 March or on the on-demand access list.