Happy Wednesday, nonprofit communications leaders.
Last week we talked about being The Doer, the stage where your inbox is your job description and someone else's priorities run your day. It sounds like that one hit home as I heard from a lot of you! So... know that you are NOT alone (or crazy).
This week we're moving to career stage 2: The Translator.
You're good at this comms thing. You know you're good at it.
Maybe you're the person leadership calls when they need a campaign that really lands with donors. Maybe you've built a social presence from nothing, or you're the one who finally got the newsletter to a place where people actually open it. You've proven you can deliver on a specific comms function (or 2 or 3...).
But somewhere along the way, you started realizing that delivering isn't enough.
You're watching people get promoted into roles you know you could do and you're being asked to execute strategies you weren't invited to help shape. You're good at your lane, but your lane is starting to feel like a ceiling.
That's The Translator stage.
Here's how to know if you're in it:
- You have one or two areas of comms where you're genuinely strong, but other areas feel like blind spots
- You can deliver a great campaign but you're not always sure how to tie it back to organizational goals in a way leadership understands
- People trust your work but they don't always think to loop you in on strategy conversations
- You've started wondering if your title actually reflects what you're capable of
- You know you need to keep growing but you're not sure exactly where to focus
The Translator stage is where a lot of nonprofit communicators get comfortable. And comfortable is exactly where careers stall.
I doubt you're in this stage because you stopped working hard but because you stayed in your lane past one too many exit ramps. This was me about 4 years into a job that I thought would naturally progress me... until I realized it wasn't. As it turns out, if you remain the person who is super reliable at getting crap done, you often STAY the person who only gets crap done. It was hitting this stage that finally caused me to look at going back to school for a master's, but that's another story for another day.
If you keep doing the things you're already great at and (possibly) avoid the things that feel harder or less familiar, you'll remain stuck. And the longer you stay there, the harder it gets to expand beyond it.
So what do you do if this is you?
Start getting curious about the domains where you're weakest.
- If you're a great writer but you've never had to think about budget, start asking questions about how communications spending gets decided at your org.
- If you're strong in social but crisis comms makes you nervous, find someone who's been there, or a group of people who can help you build that muscle.
Then start connecting your work to organizational goals out loud.
- Not just "we got 500 impressions" (that's a report) but "this campaign drove 40 new donor sign-ups which moves us closer to our Q3 fundraising goal" (that's a real dollar value).
- Leadership doesn't always know how to connect those dots. Your job as a Translator is to start making that translation for them, which is exactly how you stop being the person who executes strategy and start being the person who shapes it.
Finally, get around people who are a stage ahead of you.
- It's not about comparing yourself, but about seeing what's actually possible.
- The Translator who becomes a Strategist almost always does it because someone showed them what thinking at that level actually looks like in practice.
You've already proven you can do the work. The next step is proving you can lead it.
Next week we're talking about The Strategist, the stage where you're thinking at a high level but still fighting to get into the rooms where it matters. Stay tuned!
Happy communicating,
Former nonprofit CCO and founder of the Nonprofit Comms Club
P.S. I'm in a series on the 4 career stages of a nonprofit comms leader, but if you want a question answered in a future issue you can drop it here.โ
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