The nonprofit communications trends report

The 2020 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report has both good news and bad news to share, compiled from the answers of 625 nonprofit communications professionals who took our annual survey in November 2019.

You’ll find data and details visit Nonprofit Marketing Guide

The Bad News

  • Nonprofits are not adopting best practices for email engagement, which could soon result in major failures in their ability to use email successfully. See page 7 for details.
  • While still investing significant amounts of time on social media, nonprofits are not widely adopting some of the approaches that create the most engagement. See page 10 for details.
  • While the communications workload continues to grow, the average size of a nonprofit communications team has not grown to keep pace. See page 12 for details.

The Good News

  • For the first time, we have data on the priority objectives for nonprofit communications teams to round out our previous research on the most common goals, strategies, and tactics. See page 14 for details.
  • Nonprofits are shifting their communications teams to more effective structures like Integrated and Centralized Teams and away from less effective models like Internal Agencies and CEO-led Teams. See page 18 for details. And we continue to learn more about what makes teams effective.
  • Communications staff mostly feel valued and respected in their organizations. The more senior you are and the more control you have over your workload, the more likely you are to feel that way. See page 22 for details.

Other News

Nonprofit communicators also shared with us:

  • Which projects they like most and least. See page 24 for details.
  • What they think they could do to improve their own productivity or effectiveness, and what colleagues could do to help them. See page 25 for details.
  • Which professional skills they would like to develop in 2020. See page 26 for details.