Have you caught yourself saying any of these statements lately?

🦥 We still haven’t updated the website or launched that campaign!

🧯We planned to focus more on comms strategy this year, but fires kept coming up.

🥱 Our email looks the same as it did a year ago – and so do our results.

Nonprofit communications are especially complex: You’re talking to more audiences than the typical for-profit business, and you’re often asked to do more with less. The work of communications is never done, but even small moves can boost your impact.

Here are some of our favorite quick-win projects that typically take less than 10 weeks for small to midsize nonprofits.

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1. Set up social graphics in Canva

Timeline: 4-6 weeks

Creating social content can be a huge time drain for nonprofits, especially if you’re creating unique graphics for each post. A Canva system with organized templates, brand colors, fonts, and a photo library streamlines the process and keeps your brand polished. We recently built a template system for Funders Concerned About AIDS to announce events, highlight new research, and spotlight staff and partners.

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2. Update messaging for ONE part of your organization.

Timeline: 4-6 weeks

If overhauling your entire organizational messaging feels like too much, consider focusing on a single program to start. A targeted refresh goes faster with fewer people involved, and you can test new messages before a broader rollout. Your refresh can be audience-focused, like messaging for your corporate donors, or service-focused, like the membership messaging we assisted with for the Financial Health Network.

For tips on what to include in your new messaging, explore our messaging toolkit checklist.    

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3. Give your email strategy a facelift.

Timeline: 6-8 weeks

Nonprofit emails average a 30% open rate—much higher than for-profits. Your email list is made up of people who have already shown interest in your work, and that list is also yours – unlike the audiences you reach on the rented land that is social media. That’s why it’s crucial to delight your supporters when you land in their inboxes. Start by segmenting your emails into groups like fundraising or newsletters, define the audience and goals, and refine your content and design to drive action. We successfully applied this email approach for our partners at Cancer Wellness Center.

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4. Do a mini website refresh.

Timeline: 6-8 weeks

A website refresh doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing effort. Modernizing a high-traffic page with updated content and design can make a significant impact (check your site analytics to determine where to start). If you need your nonprofit to shine for a special moment, you can also create a one-page site on a new domain. For Oak Park Temple’s capital campaign, we built a unique one-page website designed to engage supporters' hearts and minds through community-led storytelling.

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5. Slice and dice an existing piece of content.

Timeline: 2-3 weeks

Here's a simple idea that will pay off in the long run. Take something you produced this year – a research study, an annual report, your gala video – and brainstorm 10 new pieces you can create from it. Maybe it’s a series of social data spotlights on your research findings or video sound bites from event attendees. For our partner CURE Epilepsy, the annual impact reports we create become the foundation for infographics and posts featuring their latest discoveries and community stories.

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What should you tackle first?

You could start with the easiest lift to see results fast, or prioritize the channel that’s causing you the most stress. We’re here if you need a brainstorming partner. You’ve got this!