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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we reveal the power of adding client voices to your advocacy messaging, and how to make sure it has the impact you want.
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So stay tuned.
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If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I'm Kath Patrick and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are.
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To have them seeking you out as an equal partner.
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And to have them Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey everybody.
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Kath Patrick here.
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Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode.
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You probably already know that client voices can be a key part of influencing decision makers.
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But it's not automatic.
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How that messaging is structured has a huge impact on how effective it is and whether it helps cause decision-makers to take action.
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For your client voices to be as impactful as possible, that messaging has to be as strategic and targeted as all the rest of your advocacy messaging.
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So let's get right into how you can make that happen.
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Hey there folks.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath Patrick.
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There are two basic ways to involve client voices in your messaging.
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You can quote them and or tell pieces of their story in your communications with decision makers.
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Or the clients themselves can speak directly with decision makers.
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I'm going to tackle the first piece in today's episode.
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And I'll devote another episode to how you can support and facilitate direct client engagement with decision makers.
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Because there's so much to cover with both of these.
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They each deserve their own episode.
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Very likely you're already using clients' stories and voices in some of your messaging.
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You've probably got some testimonials on your website.
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Maybe you tell client success stories in your grant proposals, things like that.
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And that's great.
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But those applications are not the same as advocacy messaging.
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With advocacy messaging, everything is serving the goal of ultimately engaging a decision maker to take a specific action.
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Usually around money and or policy.
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When you're focusing on using client voices and stories in your advocacy messaging, there are really two main things to think about.
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And the first is what messaging elements you need.
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And then how to obtain those pieces of messaging.
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Let's look at that first part, identifying what messaging elements you need from clients that are going to be the most impactful with decision makers.
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Your essential core advocacy messaging should always contain four main elements.
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What you do.
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The specific problem or problems that you solve.
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What's unique about your solution.
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And the impact of your unique solution and how it creates exceptional outcomes.
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So with client messaging, you're looking to address each of these four elements through the client's experience.
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Your advocacy messaging is already organized around those four elements, hopefully.
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So you're looking to compliment each of those pieces as much as possible with some specific client perspective and thoughts and voice.
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To bring it more to life, to have it resonate more deeply with a decision-maker.
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And then you also want to think about the key decision makers you're looking to influence.
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What do they care about?
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How do they currently think about those four elements?
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And what do you particularly need them to get?
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Very often when I'm working with nonprofit leaders A big frustration is their messaging not having the impact they want with decision-makers.
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A lot of the time, the complaint is that there's one or more things about the work, about its value about its impact, that the decision maker doesn't really get.
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They don't fully understand it.
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And until they fully understand it, they can't fully value it.
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Right.
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This is the perennial challenge.
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So if you think about a particular decision-maker, or a set of decision makers that you are trying to influence.
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And you notice that there's a couple of aspects that they're not getting.
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A really good question to ask is how can we bring client voices into this conversation that help them get it.
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You can do this with all the four elements.
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So let's look at this.
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So what you do and the specific problem you solve.
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Let's take those two together.
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One of the ways to help the decision maker not only understand the specific problem you solve, but to understand why that problem matters..
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Why they should even care that it's a problem and that it needs solving.
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And that you solve it.
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There's a whole bunch of things embedded in that.
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A client's voice can really help bring that to life.
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If a client is talking about how they experienced the problem.
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What it means for them and their lives and their family's lives when they are experiencing this problem.
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And it's not being solved.
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What are the consequences of them not having that problem solved.
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In almost all instances, there are a lot of pretty profound effects on that individual and on their family and on their ability to not only thrive, but also be a fully contributing member of the community.
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So there are many aspects to how the client experiences the problem that could really bring to life for a decision maker, an understanding of why this matters so much.
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Then you look at some things about what's unique about your solution.
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What do you do that's different.
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The client can speak to that again from their experience.
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And they might have a story or an experience to tell about where they tried some other solutions.
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Maybe they went to a different agency and that agency couldn't solve their problem.
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Or maybe they went to somebody else.
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Most of the time, when people are in a problem, they've tried a number of things to solve it.
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They're not just sitting passively by waiting for someone to come and solve their problem.
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They're trying things.
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They're seeking help.
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They're going to different organizations, to different providers, whatever the context is.
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And they're hoping someone can help them with their problem.
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A lot of the time it will be the case that the client has already tried some other things that didn't work or that didn't fully solve the problem.
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And they can speak to that and they can say, you know, look, I went here, I went there, I tried this, I tried that.
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None of that really fixed it.
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But then when I found your organization, that's when things really started to change.
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That's when I started to see real results.
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That's when I started to see real change in my life for the better.
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And it's because you do this, this, and this, these different things.
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They can talk about how it's different from their perspective.
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All these other folks that I talked to, they just had one piece of advice or one solution.
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And you know, it did a little, but it really didn't solve the problem.
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But then when I came to you and you had this complete solution, which they can then describe and describe how they experienced it.
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That's when things changed.
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That's when things started to improve.
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That's when I started to get my life back, whatever the impact is.
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And then that seques you into the impact that your unique solution has and how it creates exceptional outcomes.
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And this is the part where we're usually pretty good at getting the clients to talk about the exceptional outcomes.
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You know, we of course pick our most successful success stories to highlight.
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And that's great.
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And you should continue to do that.
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But you're also just looking for the key ingredients of those success stories.
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Client A might have a particularly compelling perspective on the problem you solve or your unique solution.
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Client B might have a really powerful outcomes story that was totally transformative.
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And they went on to do amazing things that could never have been possible without the help of your unique solution.
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What is much less helpful is kind of generic client messaging that says, oh, it was so great.
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When I came to XYZ organization, they really helped me.
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They made such a difference and my life is much better now.
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That's nice.
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But how is that different than any other organization, any other entity trying to solve this problem?
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What you want as much as possible is the client voice calling out what is unique about your solution.
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What is unique about the kind of outcomes that you're able to get, and how it made a massive difference for them.
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And the more they can be specific about that, the more helpful it is to you in your advocacy messaging.
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So all this to say, you want to have a pretty good picture in your head about what you need decision makers to get about each of those four elements.
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And you probably have a pretty good idea of which of your clients are going to have a particularly compelling experience to relate around each of those elements.
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So you do all of that thinking and analysis ahead of time.
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Once you've clarified all of that, then you're ready to move to actually gathering some client voices.
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A key first step is to talk with your clients about how their voices can make a difference.
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Help them understand what it is that you're hoping to have decision makers do.
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What the decision maker needs to understand in order to take that action.
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Help them understand what the decision-makers missing, what they're not getting.
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And how their voice can change that and have a big impact on helping other people.
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Because one thing that is virtually universal about direct service clients who have been helped, who've had a positive experience, have had good outcomes.
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They want more than anything to help more people have that same result.
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It's a powerful motivator for clients in every organization that I've ever worked with.
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Whatever the service is, they're just so happy that their problem has been solved or made much better.
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And they know there are other people with this problem, and they want them to have this too.
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And For them to understand that by sharing a little bit about their experience, about their story, that they could actually help more people get access to these services, more people get the outcomes that they got.
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That's huge.
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So when clients understand why you're asking them to share their thoughts and their perspective, they will share much more fully and much more enthusiastically.
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Than if you just ask them to fill out a survey or whatever, without context, without meaning.
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The context and meaning are everything in terms of motivation.
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And unfortunately, this is a step that a lot of organizations skip.
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And then they're frustrated that they have a poor response rate on their surveys and other story gathering tools, feedback gathering tools.
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Unfortunately it's not enough to just put a couple of lines on the survey that says, Hey, you know, we really need your feedback.
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It's valuable.
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We'll use it to make our services better or whatever.
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That's fine.
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It's better than nothing.
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It's better than no explanation.
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But I think it's also very important and valuable for Nonprofit direct service clients to understand that the services exist because of successful advocacy in one way or another.
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And that the continuation of those services, and preferably making them available to even more people, is dependent on successful advocacy.
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On getting decision makers to get it, to value the service and to invest in it appropriately.
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This is not information that clients need to be shielded from.
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It's empowering information.
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It's information that helps them say, Hey, I get to help make this happen.
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This is cool.
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So be sure and help your clients understand that.
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Now, obviously timing matters.
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The time to be talking with clients about all of that is not when they're in the depth of their problem.
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And all they can focus on is dealing with the problem.
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That's obviously not the time to be talking to them about this or asking them for their contribution to your messaging.
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But when they're on the other side, when they have had a successful experience, when they are enjoying some of the results that they've gotten.
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Is a great time.
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And even while they're experiencing the benefits.
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Depends in part on what your service focus is, and how long your clients are with you and what their path looks like.
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So you'll obviously use your judgment about when is a good time, but I would encourage you to experiment with that a little bit.
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So.
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You've taken care of that.
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You've crafted messaging for yourself to your clients about why you want to get their perspective, why you want to get their thoughts.
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How you would like to be able to share their thoughts and perspectives with decision makers so that you can help more people.
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So then you create a set of questions that are built around the four key messaging elements.
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And then any additional decision-maker specific issues that you've identified that you need to address.
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And your questions should be geared toward filling in the pieces where it will be most compelling for the decision makers you're dealing with.
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You can probably tell that getting this kind of client input and voices and stories is not ideally suited to say a survey.
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The more you can get kind of long form answers to these questions, the more material you're going to have to work with.
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.A couple of options that are really good for this kind of input gathering are focus groups, which you can totally run yourself.
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And interviews, where you just sit down and have a chat.
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And the person from the organization is asking questions and asking follow-up questions.
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That allow you when you start to identify a thread that's going to be really valuable, to pull more out.
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.Tell me more about that.
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You can do that in both interviews and focus groups, where you're interacting in real time with the client, or clients in the case of a group.
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You can also do like a modified focus group.
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That's really more of an interview session.
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And that's kind of fun.
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You can actually do that as a social gathering, which has a lot of merit on many fronts.
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If you're operating the kind of service where clients are already accustomed to coming to your space, then that tends to lend itself particularly well to group things.
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If the service is such that that's not how you operate.
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Or for whatever reason, it's not workable for them to go somewhere.
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You've always got zoom, or FaceTime or whatever you've got.
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There's a way to do this on a phone.
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But the point is two way interaction.
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So that you can ask questions and then ask follow up and draw more out.
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And it is great if it works in your situation to bring folks together for lunch or for coffee..
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Food always helps.
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Anytime you add food, everybody's happier.
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So if you're bringing people together, be sure to feed them at least a little something.
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This will give you some general guidance about how you can bring people together.
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But the operative point is the two way interaction is far better for gathering this type of input for potential messaging.
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A third option is testimonials.
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But you want a really clear set of guiding questions You would say, We would love for you to give us a testimonial.
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And here are three or four questions to think about as you craft your answer.
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That is workable.
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Not as good, but it'll work and it will give you some useful stuff.
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Your goal is to get as many of those client voices as you possibly can.
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Not that you will use a hundred percent of them.
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You will not.
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You will probably only use a fraction.
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But the more you can gather, the more you can build complete messaging with pieces from all these different inputs.
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So then the task is to integrate the client voices into your messaging.
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And there are two ways to do this.
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One is direct quotes of the actual client voice, literally.
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Assuming you have.
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I forgot to mention this earlier.
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That when you gather folks in one-on-one interviews or group interviews or focus groups or whatever, you should be recording all of this.
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At a minimum audio recording and ideally video, too, if that is possible.
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But you must get their permission.
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A to record them at all.
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And B, separately, if you are hoping to use snippets of audio or video in your messaging, as opposed to simply a written quote.
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You need their permission for that as well.
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And you want them to sign a release form giving you permission to use their image or their voice in your messaging.
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So depending on what you have for your raw material.
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You may have audio, you may have video, or you may just have stuff that's transcribed and written feedback that they've provided, maybe in a testimonial or what have you.
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So you've got three modalities here.
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You're very likely going to be doing some mixing and matching.
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If you have multiple aspects of outcomes that you really want to highlight.
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Say there are three major outcomes or impacts that your unique solution to the problem has that you want to highlight.
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That might be three separate client voices.
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One highlighting each one.
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Or maybe you have a story that incorporates all three.
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But a lot of times you won't.
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A lot of times it'll be mixing and matching.
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But again, is so much easier to organize all this if you are operating from that four element framework in the first place.
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So first of all, you're gathering the right input.
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And then secondly, you know where it goes.
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You know where it goes in your messaging structure.
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And it's not just, let's hope that a good client story will help move this decision-maker.
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It needs to be far more intentional and strategic than that.
00:19:50.938 --> 00:19:58.335
Part of the art of all of this is matching the client story elements to the messaging objective.
00:19:59.265 --> 00:20:02.625
And that may be different for every single decision maker.
00:20:03.045 --> 00:20:05.684
Not massive reworking, but tweaking.
00:20:06.194 --> 00:20:10.617
To make sure that it's dialed in, that's really going to hit for that decision-maker.
00:20:11.621 --> 00:20:17.845
And in fact, there are even ways to use client voices to reinforce an ROI message element.
00:20:18.535 --> 00:20:21.938
So don't just think of this in terms of the feel good part.
00:20:22.448 --> 00:20:24.157
This is all the aspects..
00:20:25.087 --> 00:20:32.770
And the last thing is that there are also times when the right messaging strategy is for you to craft the client story.
00:20:33.488 --> 00:20:39.038
And then you drop in the client's voice to key parts of that story.
00:20:39.775 --> 00:20:42.144
So that's another way to use this input.
00:20:42.785 --> 00:20:44.375
It will always require editing.
00:20:45.075 --> 00:20:49.815
Even your favorite podcasters, nobody gets it perfect on the first take.
00:20:49.994 --> 00:20:51.434
There's always editing.
00:20:52.355 --> 00:20:56.530
So that's not a knock on your clients at all.
00:20:57.288 --> 00:21:01.038
First of all, they are not professional message crafters.
00:21:01.454 --> 00:21:04.448
But even if they were, everybody needs a good editor.
00:21:05.131 --> 00:21:14.266
So your job as editor is to bring out the intensity of impact that you know is there.
00:21:15.115 --> 00:21:19.526
And a lot of times what people will do when they're telling their own story.
00:21:20.096 --> 00:21:21.925
Is first of all, they'll get sidetracked.
00:21:22.165 --> 00:21:25.945
So that's why the interview format is good too, because it helps you pull them back.
00:21:26.605 --> 00:21:32.365
So they don't go down a rabbit hole that's going to take 20 minutes that is not anything that you need or can use.
00:21:33.016 --> 00:21:33.736
Pull them back.
00:21:34.128 --> 00:21:37.818
And keep them on the track for where they need to be focusing their conversation.
00:21:38.496 --> 00:21:40.596
So people will get sidetracked and go down rabbit holes.
00:21:40.596 --> 00:21:43.076
But also they often bury the lede.
00:21:43.919 --> 00:21:48.022
They'll be talking about an experience they had with your program.
00:21:48.316 --> 00:21:49.965
This is the problem that I was having.
00:21:49.965 --> 00:21:51.766
This is how it was affecting my life.
00:21:52.053 --> 00:21:52.952
Et cetera.
00:21:52.982 --> 00:21:54.182
This part was really bad.
00:21:54.212 --> 00:21:56.042
This is what it was really the worst of it.
00:21:56.232 --> 00:22:00.383
And I tried all these other solutions and then I came to you and it changed everything.
00:22:01.078 --> 00:22:02.338
And they might skip right over.
00:22:02.338 --> 00:22:04.633
and They might just say it changed everything.
00:22:05.442 --> 00:22:08.863
And then the next thing they say is, and then everything was perfect and the end.
00:22:09.823 --> 00:22:14.413
And so as an interviewer, first of all, you want to go back and say, wait a second.
00:22:14.833 --> 00:22:16.722
That's awesome that it changed everything.
00:22:16.722 --> 00:22:18.282
Can you say more about that?
00:22:18.432 --> 00:22:19.603
What changed?
00:22:20.179 --> 00:22:21.588
What did that feel like?
00:22:21.618 --> 00:22:22.788
What was your experience?
00:22:22.909 --> 00:22:24.558
Pull the details out.
00:22:25.689 --> 00:22:31.269
Because it's always fascinating what people will include and not include when they're just narrating what happened.
00:22:32.348 --> 00:22:35.169
And often they will skip over some of the most important stuff.
00:22:35.199 --> 00:22:42.148
So you want to be sure to pull that out to get the full richness and potential impact of what they have to say.
00:22:43.659 --> 00:22:46.419
There may also be times when you choose to do a composite story.
00:22:47.358 --> 00:22:53.328
And when you do that, you're still drawing from all of this wonderful rich material that your clients have shared with you.
00:22:54.259 --> 00:23:03.588
But you may have a set of messaging that you need to create where you need to illustrate all those four elements, but you need to do it in a really concise fashion.
00:23:04.038 --> 00:23:10.098
And so you might take a composite of multiple experiences to describe what is typical.
00:23:10.885 --> 00:23:15.355
You obviously would not say one client experienced this if it wasn't one client.
00:23:15.746 --> 00:23:21.298
But you can say things like, a typical client might come to us with this set of problems.
00:23:21.509 --> 00:23:23.848
And this is how it tends to be affecting their life.
00:23:24.328 --> 00:23:28.179
And when they get our unique solution, this is the shift they get.
00:23:28.179 --> 00:23:34.618
And this is why our unique solution is the cause of that shift And then here's the ripple effects and the impact that it has.
00:23:35.318 --> 00:23:39.833
And then drop in some key quotes that highlight what actual clients said about it.
00:23:40.709 --> 00:23:48.969
So you also have the ability to create a composite that will do what you need it to do for a specific messaging objective.
00:23:49.479 --> 00:23:51.939
And as long as you do that ethically, there is no problem with that.
00:23:51.939 --> 00:23:53.919
It can be very, very helpful strategically.
00:23:55.016 --> 00:24:06.566
Whichever combination of these approaches you use, incorporating client voices into your strategically designed advocacy messaging can significantly increase its power and impact with decision makers.
00:24:07.135 --> 00:24:15.026
It can help you reach decision makers on levels that wouldn't be possible without those personal narratives, bringing it vividly to life.
00:24:15.925 --> 00:24:24.281
But you only get that kind of impact if you've been equally strategic about gathering those voices and stories in a way that gives you the content you need.
00:24:24.922 --> 00:24:36.862
And to successfully gather those you've engaged clients as partners in helping to craft messaging that will move decision makers to invest more deeply in the services so more people can benefit.
00:24:37.372 --> 00:24:39.892
It takes all these pieces working together.
00:24:40.642 --> 00:24:50.332
I hope that gives you some new ways of thinking about all this and some actionable strategies you can put to work right away to take your advocacy messaging to the next level of impact.
00:24:51.051 --> 00:24:52.011
Thanks for listening.
00:24:52.192 --> 00:24:53.751
And I'll see you in the next episode.
00:24:54.082 --> 00:24:56.362
Right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
