Creating a communications strategy is a crucial element of conveying your coalition’s mission, goals and impact, and inspiring volunteers—and your community. A well-planned strategy will ensure that your messaging is consistent and that you’re maximizing the number of people you’re able to reach.

Key components

Design and implement your plan

All of the above components, in addition to others such as content, print and digital materials, events and videos, can be looked at holistically as your marketing plan. By zooming out and looking at each of these components as part of the larger whole, you can begin to define a reliable plan for communicating with and growing your audience effectively. Below are some general steps we took to get started:

1. Define your coalition’s goals
2. Identify your audience(s). In general, they may include coalition partners, community organizations, local officials, users of specific services, the general public, potential and current donors, schools, media outlets, etc.  
3. Develop key messaging for each audience
4. Choose your communication channels
5. Create a content calendar

There is no “one size fits all” approach to your coalition’s communications strategy—every coalition’s marketing plan will be different based on their unique situation, needs and audiences.

Don’t be discouraged if your social media growth is slow at first. Continue posting often, boost your content to specific areas and audiences to ensure it’s reaching the people you want it to, and take advantage of in-person activations to help build your social following (for example: QR codes on flyers with links to social media accounts).

Invoke member help. Your coalition partners and core team members will want to help propel the message. We learned that posts featuring team members, and often shared by them too, garnered the highest levels of engagement. So don’t forget to tag members in your posts.

Telling Your Story 

By combining insights from real-world experiences with thoughtful design and human-centered storytelling, you can create narratives that are both impactful and deeply resonant. The stories that stick are often those where complexity is embraced and human elements take center stage. Storytelling can play many important roles for your coalition; it can help communicate your mission, connect with volunteers and donors, and demonstrate the progress your coalition is making in a relatable way. 

• Learn how to find stories: One of the most important aspects of storytelling is story mining. There are many ways you can find stories, but an easy way to start is by talking with fellow coalition members or partners. Begin by adopting the mindset of an anthropologist. Create environments where conversations about the topic can flow freely and remain open-ended. This allows for a wide range of insights to emerge. Whether you’re interviewing people or gathering observations, foster a space where individuals feel comfortable sharing their experiences.
  
• Interviewing: Just like an anthropologist, approach interviews as a form of discovery. Encourage open-ended conversations that allow the subject to lead you into their personal experiences and insights. Let their responses guide the discussion rather than directing it toward preconceived conclusions. Your goal is to collect meaningful, unfiltered stories that reveal deeper truths about the topic.
• Lean into complexity: It’s almost impossible to go into a story without some assumption about what you are going to find. Human nature pushes us to seek information that confirms our preconceptions. Learn to recognize the moment when your assumptions are being challenged, and lean into that new information. This is often where the story takes an unexpected turn and where new insights emerge. Embracing that very complexity can lead to surprising and significant discoveries. 
• Tell the story on a human scale: Grounding stories in human experiences makes the story relatable and memorable. Vignettes, personal testimonials, or direct quotes help bring the data to life. Whether through short stories, video clips or vivid quotes, humanizing the data ensures that it resonates on a deeper level. For example, instead of just reporting statistics on food insecurity, share the stories of the 16-year-old girl who comes to the Salvation Army meals not just for food but to connect with her friends.
• Design your story: Use visuals and graphics to enhance the storytelling. Engaging, well-designed visuals help communicate complex information more clearly and make the story more accessible to your audience. Whether it’s infographics, charts or visual maps, these tools help distill and highlight key points in a way that’s both informative and compelling.

We began by defining a list of potential story buckets, including:

• Coalition profiles: Human-centric stories that highlight the faces behind those involved with your coalition. Most of these profiles were written in traditional magazine/newspaper style. In some cases we used simpler Q&A formats as well as as-told-to first person stories. Pictures always help.
• Event updates: We wrote stories before and after major events to both publicize them and celebrate the coalition’s success. We learned that telling the story of an event before it happens helps community members better understand the need and share support.
• Partner organizations: We often created stories about partner organizations, spotlighting the coalition’s connection with them.

Drafting from national efforts 

Each year there are various awareness days and weeks. These are often the best times to approach media outlets looking for local stories about hunger and poverty. They include:

• International Day for the Eradication of Poverty: The United Nations sponsors this day on October 17 each year to raise awareness about poverty.
• National Hunger Action Day: This day is on September 10 and is used as a nationwide effort to raise awareness about hunger in the United States. 
• Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week: This week is held annually in November, and includes educational, service, fundraising and advocacy events. It’s held at more than 700 locations and was founded in 1975 at Villanova University. 
• World Hunger Day: Observed every May 28, this day raises awareness about the people around the world who are suffering from chronic hunger.