A lack of audience insight is why many nonprofit communications miss their mark
One of the products we love most is the Digital Communications Audit. It started as an alignment tool for communications strategies and has become a valuable diagnostic for prioritising communications workstreams. Over time, our audits have begun to reveal patterns, which we’re exploring in this blog series.
One of the most consistent patterns is a lack of clarity around the audience. Many NGOs can’t actually tell us for sure who they’re speaking to.
This problem manifests itself across platforms and across contexts: unclear messaging, generic posts, mismatched tone, and low audience engagement. The root cause is often the same. Teams don’t have a shared picture of who their audiences are and how they behave.
In one audit for a medium-sized human rights NGO, staff were asked whether they knew who they were trying to reach. Some said “prospective donors,” others said “activists,” others weren’t sure. This is not unusual. In one organisation with a strong visual brand and a motivated team, survey results revealed that while most staff agreed they had a comms strategy, only two out of five agreed they knew who the strategy was targeting.
When everyone is the audience, no one is
Many nonprofits say they want to reach “the general public” or “international supporters.” But these categories are too broad to be useful in content design or platform strategy. Without audience clarity, organisations default to “broadcast mode”: a steady stream of posts, often repurposed across all channels, without tailoring or targeting. It’s a common pattern we saw in a number of the audits, and one that underlines the importance of having even a simple framework in place, as explored in The Power of a Plan.
One large multilateral organisation with over 300,000 followers was posting high-quality content across four platforms. But a deeper look revealed a key missed opportunity: their LinkedIn feed contained the same updates as Instagram, despite having a vastly different audience and engagement style. Without identifying who was on each platform and why, the team was missing chances to build meaningful relationships with potential collaborators, funders, or journalists.
What good audience work looks like
In contrast, some other nonprofits we analysed had developed formal personas or held team workshops to define their audiences. These teams were often more confident and creative with their content. One cultural centre in Europe had a modest team but a strong grip on its key segments: a specific young demographic in the Netherlands, well defined art partners, and international funders. With this clarity they are able to deploy distinct tones, formats and languages across Instagram, LinkedIn and their newsletter. It may not be a massive audience, but they were very engaged and most likely to share content when posted.
Strategy ≠ schedule
One of the reasons this problem persists is because comms strategy is too often mistaken for an editorial calendar. Several NGOs had excellent-looking social content—frequent, professional, on-brand. But ask the team what the goal was, or who the post was for, and answers were vague. As one community-based organisation told us in an audit workshop, “We just post what we have time for.”It’s the same operational drift we described in Three Weeks at AMS, where small changes in clarity and systems can transform how teams communicate.
This is common. The good news is: all this is very fixable.
The turning point often comes when comms teams are empowered to slow down and ask hard questions. Who are the 2-3 audiences we most need to reach this year? What do we want them to think, feel and do? (Donate, advocate, apply, share…) Where do they already spend time online? What tone speaks to them? What turns them off?
Whenever we’ve facilitated these conversations, even with small teams and tight budgets, the results have been refreshing. Teams have welcomed the clarity they come away with and are able to communicate with more confidence.
Three low-cost fixes to sharpen your audience focus
Build one-day personas
You don’t need a 40-page strategy. Take one day to sketch out short personas for your top 2-3 audiences: a few bullet points on their values, habits and barriers to engagement. Then test these against your last 10 online posts or comms activities. Who were those really for?
Audit the user journey
Pick one target audience. (For example, a mid-level staff member at a foundation, seeing your LinkedIn post for the first time.) What’s their journey from that post to your website? Is it obvious what they should do next? Using these insights, tighten up your posts to ensure every piece of content is purposeful.
Use your data and don’t overlook your team’s insight
Platform analytics can give you clues. But also trust your front-line teams. What kinds of questions do you get most often? What stories do people ask you to repeat? Use those as indicators of what’s cutting through. But Has Social Media Became Our Frenemy? points out, relying on platforms without strategy can erode, rather than strengthen, audience connection.
Final thought
Audience focus is about using resources wisely: only creating content that has a clear job to do. Trying to do everything usually results in nothing much.
AMS works with NGOs of all sizes to define their audiences and design comms that land. An AMS comms audit offers your team a clear, tailored pathway to improve how you connect with the people who matter most to your work. Whether you’re trying to reach new donors, strengthen advocacy, or get more value out of your current work, the audit creates space to reflect, prioritise and sharpen your approach. For more info, and to book, click here.
