Roundtable: How Can Charities Effectively Communicate With Their Audience?

In our Roundtable blog series, we ask a handful of contributors to provide their points of view on complex topics or unsettled questions. We hope that this approach will help us to integrate and learn from multiple perspectives on animal advocacy.

Introduction

How you communicate with your audience makes a significant difference for nonprofit organizations and is key to building solid connections. Defining your language, tone of voice, and brand personality allow your followers to get to know you, relate to you, and trust you over time. First, organizations must learn about their audience, define what mediums¹ work best for them, and use this information to build an effective communications strategy to ensure their message reaches the right people and maximizes their impact. But what do we mean by communications?

Communications is a form of marketing that makes use of your website, blog, emails, social channels, and other media to showcase your work and highlight the importance of your mission. To be effective in this area, you must ensure that the content you’re putting out engages and resonates with your audience. Digital communications, in particular, offer an endless opportunity to increase your reach and potential impact. To help guide you in this area, we asked four communications professionals in the animal advocacy movement to share their advice. Each contributor has answered five questions, four of which are the same for each contributor and one that’s unique to their expertise. Thank you to the following people for contributing to this post:

• Jennifer Barckley, The Humane League
• Warren Bowen, We Animals Media
• Amy Klarup, Wild Animal Initiative
• Jenna Riedi, Faunalytics

Each of our contributors offers a wealth of experience and a unique perspective. After joining The Humane League (THL) in 2018, Jennifer Barckley spearheaded THL’s global rebrand, earning a finalist spot in the Shorty Awards for best Brand Redesign. Warren Bowen, an animal advocate and educator for more than 15 years, brings visibility to hidden animals through investigative photo and video journalism. Amy Klarup, who has worked as a writer and communicator for the likes of Oregon Sea Grant and NASA, uses her skills to create compelling content about wild animal welfare research. Lastly, Jenna Riedi has worked and volunteered for nonprofit organizations for over 20 years, focusing on marketing and fundraising.

We encourage you to discuss our contributors’ thoughts—and share your own—in the comments!

Note: Some contributions have been edited for length and clarity.

Jennifer Barckley

Senior Vice President of Marketing & Communications for The Humane League

Jennifer Barckley is the Senior Vice President of Marketing & Communications for THL. She leads strategic communications, including branding, omnichannel content, customer relationship management (CRM), social media, advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), public relations, design, and video production. After joining the organization in 2018, she spearheaded THL’s global rebrand, earning a finalist spot in the Shorty Awards for best Brand Redesign.

Prior to joining THL, Jennifer worked in the U.S. and internationally for several prosocial organizations, leading their marketing communications, corporate social responsibility, sales, and training development. She also founded and ran a vegan cookie company as a fun side project. Jennifer holds a Bachelor of Professional Studies from Marist College and a graduate certificate in Strategy & Leadership from New York University. She lives in New York City with her partner and an adorable rescue dog.

1. How can charities leverage communications to reach the most people?

Meet Katie. Katie began her life like nearly every other chicken raised for meat. Alone and scared, despite being surrounded by thousands of other chicks. Like all babies, she needed the comfort and care of her mom and dad. But they were nowhere in sight—left on the farm where she was laid as an egg…

This is the start of a true story. A story that pulls at heartstrings and invites others into the life of a chicken raised for meat. It is these types of stories that help draw others in, meet people where they are without casting judgment, evoke empathy and outrage, and drive people to take action.

2. What methods can charities use to increase community engagement?

A heart-tugging story is only the beginning. As advocates, we have the opportunity and need to be digital marketers—creating experiences that give people a reason to care enough to (quickly and easily) take action for the animals. An example of this is a landing page our communications team at The Humane League created to drive both new and existing supporters to take action for one of the most neglected animals on earth—the chicken raised for meat.

Of course, creating the page and its story will likely do little without a clear promotion and distribution plan. To drive people to a landing page like this, you’ll likely benefit from thinking cross-channel. Is the page optimized for SEO, and does other content on your site drive traffic to this page? How can you motivate action from new supporters via digital ads on Facebook or other platforms? What does this look like on your owned Instagram, Twitter, and other social media channels? How can you tap into your current supporter base via email to drive an initial action? What could a follow-up series look like to thank supporters for taking action and keep them engaged in the campaign? What media and influencers might drive awareness and action, and how can we inspire them to do so?

I know this can feel like a lot to consider and create, and that’s why it is valuable to build marketing and communications as a key pillar of your organization. It is our job, as communications professionals and animal advocates, to turn those who care about animals into those who create change for animals—one story, one call-to-action at a time.

3. How can charities best track the impact of their communications efforts?

Just as we have historically tracked the number of companies we’ve convinced to go cage-free, it’s critical to track the impact of our communications that ultimately drives this real change for animals.

At The Humane League, we set specific awareness, acquisition, engagement, and retention goals —to help us bring new people into the movement and help them make a difference, whether by taking action on a campaign, volunteering, or donating. Each channel has specific goals and metrics that we track. These ladder up to our larger organizational goals. We usually pull the data from each platform directly, such as Facebook Analytics for ads and organic content, our CRM for email and SMS, or Google Analytics for web content. We then run reports, track data in Google Sheets, and chart or graph the data so we can clearly visualize our impact and opportunities to change/grow. We also talk about our results—what went well, and what could have gone better, so that we can continue to learn and strengthen our impact.

4. What are common misconceptions when it comes to effective communications (e.g., shock imagery vs. clean animal imagery; using the word vegan vs. plant-based)?

While the adage, “If it bleeds, it leads,” can definitely ring true—as we often see in the performance of our content that focuses on a cruel practice or horrifying experience suffered by an animal—I think we’re also broadly seeing that people, more than ever, are craving content that helps them feel good, too. (Understandably so, as anxiety increases amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, political unrest, natural disasters and climate change, economic fluctuation, and more.) In my mind, it’s all about balance—offering a diversity of content that taps into different emotions and needs and recognizes that each person we are reaching has a unique lived experience. My goal is for us to reach them where they are.

Another occasional misconception is that if we shout louder and farther with new, bigger facts, we’ll ultimately break through and change someone’s food and lifestyle choices. Yet, these choices are deeply embedded within our childhood experiences, cultures, and social rituals. In other words, they are emotional, not rational, choices. That’s why I recommend leaning into emotion-provoking communications (like the storytelling we spoke about earlier) and prioritizing inclusive content that speaks to our common ground connections that most of us can agree upon, like “animals deserve better” or “no amount of profit makes this [abuse] okay.’’

5. How can charities improve or leverage their branding to increase awareness and support?

“Like us, our organization—our brand—has a heartbeat. Why does it exist? Why does the world need it to exist? Digging deep into questions like these, internally and with existing stakeholders, can help your organization sense check its mission—your organization’s guiding heartbeat.”

You may have heard the mantra in leadership guides to “know thyself.” This applies as much to each of us as it does to our organizations. Like us, our organization—our brand—has a heartbeat. Why does it exist? Why does the world need it to exist? Digging deep into questions like these, internally and with existing stakeholders, can help your organization sense check its mission—your organization’s guiding heartbeat.

Four years ago, at The Humane League, we embarked on a 10-month journey to be ONE unified voice—stronger, together. To strengthen our shared purpose. To embolden current supporters. To attract newcomers to our organization and our movement. To be the change now, more than ever. With boldness. Strength. Courage.

We embarked on this rebrand because we needed clear, effective communications that aligned with the bold tone and stance of our campaign strategies and tactics. And we needed to be clear on who we were and how we showed up in the world in order to help others be clear. What’s more, we needed to change hearts and minds, open peoples’ eyes, and influence the world’s largest companies to take an ethical stance. To do all of this, we needed a purposeful, mission-driven approach, powerful visuals, and emotionally evocative communications.

That’s the power of a strong, clear brand. It helps you stay grounded, focused, clear, and impactful. And it’s why I’m a huge advocate for revisiting your brand if you haven’t done so yet and considering if it’s truly supporting you and your organization.

Warren Bowen

Communications Director, We Animals Media

Warren Bowen is the Communications Director at We Animals Media and has been an animal advocate and educator for more than 15 years. He holds an M.A. from the University of British Columbia, where his studies focused on rhetoric and animal research. As Communications Director, Warren is responsible for strategy, planning, and execution of communication integral to WAM’s mission to bring visibility to hidden animals through compelling photo and video journalism.

1. How can charities leverage communications to reach the most people?

We use several channels to reach people: email campaigns and personalized emails, social media, blog posts, talks and events, media outreach, Medium, and Google ads.

Leveraging each of these to the best of their potential requires different strategies and styles. We are increasingly aware, for instance, of the need to diversify our messaging. Some of these channels demand more formal and journalistic language, while others can be more conversational or experimental.

There are so many methods to reach people, each with opportunities and risks. Smaller organizations may also have to weigh the cost of stretching thin across so many channels. It’s useful to ask: who are we trying to reach by using this channel, what are our expected outcomes, and how can we achieve them? Be strategic, responsive, and true to yourself.

2. What methods can charities use to increase community engagement?

The first steps are identifying the communities important to your work and why they are. There are many ways to define a community and the more specific you are, the better you can tailor your messaging in ways that best speak to them.

Be useful to these communities. You’re probably engaging with them because you want something from them, whether it’s adopting more humane policies, becoming more aware, providing funding, etc. What can you do for them, and what do they get out of your relationship?

Where possible, engage in person or with a phone or video call. Make engaging with you enjoyable and fruitful.

3. How can charities best track the impact of their communications efforts?

Have clear, specific goals. If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, you won’t know what you’re tracking. It’s not possible to track goals like “raise awareness” or “improve welfare.”

The quantitative side of impact tracking is made easier with the built-in analytics of many communication channels, e.g., the number of clicks, opens, views, shares, etc. However, the trap of these numbers is that they can still beg the question: What is the impact? How do views translate into achieving a specific goal? If you have the resources, qualitative assessments like surveys can help fill in some of these gaps.

Organizations like Faunalytics can also help answer these kinds of questions and develop appropriate assessments of a project’s outcomes.

4. What are common misconceptions when it comes to effective communications (e.g., shock imagery vs. clean animal imagery; using the word vegan vs. plant-based)?

Analogies are rarely useful, but I see them a lot. (In fact, entire books have been based on them). Direct comparisons of systemic animal suffering to systemic human suffering will almost always alienate people outside of the animal advocacy movement. These analogies are almost always unpersuasive to someone who doesn’t already think like the speaker, and I have seen very ugly conversations come from these techniques. There is plenty about animal industries and suffering to communicate without relying on fraught analogies.

5. Can you share your insights on the effectiveness of investigative journalism and what type of investigative content gains the most support?

Information alone isn’t enough to enact change, which is why we work with other animal organizations, media, academics, and advocates to amplify the impact of these visuals.”

The marketing and rhetoric of animal industries have been effective in persuading the public that welfare practices are sufficient (or exceptional) or that “standard practices” are necessary. Animal industries fiercely guard access and information, often lobbying governments to enact harsher laws against investigative work (e.g., ag-gag) and pouring millions into deceptive advertising campaigns.

Animal photojournalism counters the enforced opacity of animal industries. It provides information to the public so that powerful industries can be held accountable for their actions. Without animal photojournalism, fewer people would know how animal industries operate.

Information alone isn’t enough to enact change, which is why we work with other animal organizations, media, academics, and advocates to amplify the impact of these visuals. Together with organizations like the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST), the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), and World Animal Protection (WAP), our investigations have helped achieve battery cage bans in Taiwan, criminal charges in Canada, and the end of dolphin show sales by Expedia.

If your organization needs visuals for your campaign work, please register to our free stock platform or partner with us for new investigations.

Amy Klarup

Content Specialist, Wild Animal Initiative

Amy studied zoology at Oregon State University and earned her M.S. in journalism from the University of Oregon. She has worked as a writer and communicator for Oregon Sea Grant, NASA, and others. As Content Specialist at Wild Animal Initiative (WAI), Amy creates a range of compelling content to communicate wild animal welfare and relevant research. The transdisciplinary perspective of wild animal welfare draws upon ethics, ecology, and animal welfare science. Wild Animal Initiative gathers this knowledge to facilitate evidence-based improvements for wild animals’ lives.

1. How can charities leverage communications to reach the most people?

Depending on your organization’s target audience, your strategy for reaching the most people might vary significantly. Since Wild Animal Initiative is a science-focused organization, we’re always looking for the most effective ways to connect with scientists and make sure we’re supporting them. We share updates through our monthly newsletter, write science-focused blog posts, and schedule social media content that appeals to scientists and science-friendly followers. Our niche is uncommon, so the best way we can serve our audiences is to provide content about welfare biology that they can’t find anywhere else.

2. What methods can charities use to increase community engagement?

Any animal advocacy group should consider which methods and channels appeal most to their specific audiences and make those a priority. For example, at Wild Animal Initiative, we’ve found that scientists are more likely to engage with us on a platform like Twitter, where there’s a built-in community of researchers who write about and share their published work. Through our Twitter series, “Wild Welfare Wednesdays,” we discuss scientific papers that aren’t mainly about welfare biology but can still be viewed through the lens of wild animal welfare. We’re enjoying the opportunity to tag researchers and engage with their work while putting a spotlight on wild animal welfare.

3. How can charities best track the impact of their communications efforts?

It’s often not feasible to know exactly how communications might lead to change. For example, donors don’t always specify what prompted them to make a donation—it’s possible that a blog post or tweet caught their attention, but we don’t have a reliable method to track impact in that way. We do keep an eye on metrics that measure engagement, i.e., Hootsuite and Google Analytics.

More broadly, we have plans to survey academics and assess their overall impression of wild animal welfare science. We’ll use the results of this study to evaluate how our strategy is helping and where we have room to improve. As a relatively young nonprofit, we recognize that our current efforts may take years to yield large-scale results, and it’s important to be deliberate and thoughtful in our choices at this early stage.

4. What are common misconceptions when it comes to effective communications (e.g., shock imagery vs. clean animal imagery; using the word vegan vs. plant-based)?

At Wild Animal Initiative, we focus on the individual animal’s perspective, which can challenge conventional ways of thinking about the natural world. For example, we don’t say that we help species, because our mission centers on individuals within a species. Species don’t have positive or negative experiences, and species don’t care if they go extinct. Individual animals might benefit from actions that don’t do much for biodiversity. These are the sorts of questions that welfare biology aims to explore.

5. What would your advice be to charities communicating a new field or area of study that audiences are less familiar with?

Use common journalistic practices to get your message across: tell stories, avoid overly dense text, and write in an active voice.”

Minimize jargon, acronyms, or terms that are used only in specific circles, and if you have to use any uncommon language, make sure you define it. Don’t talk down to your audience—think about how you might explain a complex topic to a friend. Use common journalistic practices to get your message across: tell stories, avoid overly dense text, and write in an active voice. Rather than taking up valuable word counts with lengthy explanations, provide links to additional resources where readers can gain more context.

Jenna Riedi

Communications Manager, Faunalytics

Jenna Riedi is a devoted lifelong animal advocate who is passionate about protecting and advancing the lives of animals worldwide. She has worked and volunteered for nonprofit organizations for over 20 years, focusing on marketing and fundraising. She graduated from University of Wisconsin with a B.A. in History, Religious Studies, and Classical Studies and from University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee with an M.S. in Nonprofit Management and Leadership. She is currently working toward an M.S. in Library Information Sciences from the University of Wisconsin and a certificate in Shelter Medicine from the University of Florida. Jenna spends her downtime with her trio of companion animals (Navi, Mielikki, and Starbuck) and enjoys reading, singing, and hiking.

1. How can animal advocates leverage communications to reach the most people?

I am a big proponent of supporting each other. Follow all the organizations and advocates you support and interact with their content. Think outside your immediate network when choosing who to follow. A great starting point is ACE’s Movement Grants recipients list. Ideally, they will follow you back and share your content, and you can then amplify each other to a larger and larger community.

With the media, find out who the appropriate contact is at each outlet and then follow them on socials if they have them (usually Twitter or LinkedIn). When you send out a press release, follow up with a direct or private message on their social account. In this digital age, it’s no surprise that social media (95%), blog posts/short articles (89%), and email newsletters (81%) are the top three types of content business-to-business (B2B) marketers used in 2018 and 2019. While the majority of cold emails go unopened, the key is to formulate your message, reach out in some way before and/or after the email is sent, and send a follow up email if necessary. Sending just one follow-up email can boost replies by 65.8%.

2. What methods can animal advocates use to increase community engagement?

With social media, I encourage experimentation with Instagram Stories. They only last 24 hours, and you can easily monitor engagement with the story. If it does well, make it a post and use the content on other social accounts. If it does not do well, take note and move on. It’s a great way to learn what your followers are looking for and what they find engaging. Collaborations on platforms like Facebook Live are also a great way to increase engagement and widen the reach of both your own organization and the organization(s) you partner with.

Faunalytics covered a study in our Research Library that looked at who clicks on animal advocacy social media posts and what prompts them to do so. Results showed that while advertisements featuring animals had the smallest reach and fewest impressions, they drew more than twice as many clicks as other types of ads. They received a click-through rate of over 3%, compared to 1.1-1.5% for other subjects. Animal ads also had the best results score. Pigs captured the most clicks among animal ads, compared to cows, chickens, and fishes. Among environmental ads, climate change gained the most attention, compared to land use, water use, and deforestation.

3. How can animal advocates best track the impact of their communications efforts?

On social media, all major apps provide their own analytics, and I encourage advocates to track these analytics over time to best understand the impact of their posts and communications. Fancy, expensive software is not needed: A simple spreadsheet where you can enter monthly or quarterly data will easily help you track success. But do note that analytics from one platform aren’t usually comparable to others. It’s important to track changes in impact within each platform over time.

It’s also helpful to set up a Google Alert with your organization’s name, so you always know when a media outlet (or even a personal blog) is writing about your work. You can track these mentions in a spreadsheet to see how coverage is progressing.

4. What are common misconceptions when it comes to effective communications (e.g., shock imagery vs. clean animal imagery; using the word vegan vs. plant-based)?

As an organization focused on empowering advocates with access to research, analyses, strategies, and messages that maximize their effectiveness to reduce animal suffering, we have collected research for our library and conducted some original research on this topic as well!

In Faunalytics’ Twitter Trends analysis, we collected and analyzed a year’s worth of tweets from February 2019 through March 2020. Some key findings included that tweets about veganism were far more frequent than any of the other related dietary keywords. Tweets pertaining to animal-friendly diets—especially veganism—were much more common than related concepts like animal advocacy, animal welfare, or cultured meat. This may suggest that advocates wishing to reach a wider audience should include diet-related content or hashtags whenever possible.

When designing your advocacy campaigns, it’s important to choose images based on the type of reaction you want from your audience. Our Faunalytics Explains video on farmed animal images and advocacy illustrates that if you want people to feel a positive connection with farmed animals, show them in an animal sanctuary or similar setting. Meanwhile, showing animals in factory farms may provoke more negative feelings if that is your goal.

We also did a Faunalytics Explains video on using graphic images in advocacy (i.e., photos of animals experiencing extreme suffering) and how they make an impression on the public. The findings suggest that such imagery can kindle people’s concern for animals and willingness to take action; however, it’s important to use explicit imagery strategically, as over-exposure can lead people to become desensitized to the content.

5. How can advocates and organizations effectively communicate data and numbers to audiences in a clear, digestible, and engaging way?

Keep things as simple and concise as possible with your communications. You can always explain a statement further in a linked blog post on your website. Use an engaging photo with a short statement to make it more appealing.”

If a media contact reaches out for a statement or quote, always make sure that what you provide is factually based on evidence from peer-reviewed studies or trustworthy sources of information.

Keep things as simple and concise as possible with your communications. You can always explain a statement further in a linked blog post on your website. Use an engaging photo with a short statement to make it more appealing. Check out Faunalytics’ Instagram page for examples of how we do this! Our photos engage people with a quick piece of important information, and the post caption goes into more detail.

Data visualizations are great examples of how to show data and numbers in a digestible way. To see examples, visit our Infographics, Fundamentals, and Global Slaughter Statistics & Charts resources.

If you have any questions or need help with communicating data and numbers, please visit our Content Director, karol, during his pro bono office hours—he will be happy to help!

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1. In communications, “mediums” are channels that writers use to talk to their audience. These can be written, verbal, or visual (e.g., a website, forum, or video platform).