Happy Wednesday, nonprofit communications leaders.
Last week I told you I'm building a free Nonprofit Comms Career Assessment. Before that launches, I want to spend the next four weeks going deeper on each stage because if you want to grow as a comms leader, you need to know where you're at NOW.
This week we're looking at The Doer.
If you're in The Doer stage, your day probably looks something like this:
You come in with a plan, maybe even a really good to-do list. And then someone walks up to your desk (or drops into your Slack) and the plan is gone.
Someone needs a graphic for an event they forgot to tell you about. Your ED wrote an all-staff email and wants you to "just clean it up a little." A program team promised a donor a campaign and now it's your job to make it happen in two weeks.
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You are producing constantly. And while the work is real and matters a lot, you are almost never the one deciding what gets made, when it goes out, or why.
Here's how to know if you're in this stage:
- Your to-do list is almost entirely other people's requests
- You find out about things after decisions have already been made
- When someone asks what you're working on, you list deliverables... not a direction
- Your biggest challenge isn't knowing what to say but having enough time to say it.
- You're executing someone else's comms strategy, even if they'd never call it that
I want to be really clear about something: this is not a criticism.
The Doer stage is where almost every nonprofit communicator starts, including me. You learn the craft here. This is where you learn your organization AND what it takes to get things done with limited resources, impossible timelines, and a boss who thinks "can you just post something?" is a complete creative brief.
So what do you do if this is you?
Start noticing the difference between a request and a strategy. When someone comes to you with "I need a graphic," that's a request. The strategy is why that graphic exists, who it's for, and what you want them to do after they see it. Start asking those questions out loud to the person who made the request. You're not trying to be difficult, you're trying to be useful.
Then start owning at least one decision a week that isn't yours to make yet. Decide what time a post goes out. Decide the tone of that all-staff email cleanup. Decide which channel makes the most sense for that campaign. Small decisions compound. And when you start making them confidently and explaining your reasoning, people around you start to notice. Ask for forgiveness not permission, amiright?
Finally, find one person (inside your organization or outside of it) who is operating at a stage ahead of you. Watch how they talk about their work and how they frame decisions. That exposure matters more than most people realize.
You don't get out of The Doer stage by working harder. You get out of it by starting to think like someone who owns the function, even before anyone has given you permission to.
Next week we're talking about The Translator, the stage where you start to build real range and the people around you start to notice. Stay tuned!
Happy communicating,
Former nonprofit CCO and founder of the Nonprofit Comms Club
P.S. Want a question answered in a future issue? Drop it here.โ
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