By Sarah Louise Ewing – Co-founder – TASK Agency
Good third sector communications is not about polish, nor is it about volume. It’s about focus, trust and consistency. It puts the people you serve at the centre of every message, speaks plainly to every audience, and says the same true thing whether it is talking to a funder, a commissioner or a service user. Done well, it is one of the most powerful tools in your organisation.
Key Takeaways
- Good comms starts with knowing exactly who you are talking to and what you need them to understand.
- One size does not fit all. Funders, donors, commissioners and service users all need different things from you.
- Jargon is the enemy of effectiveness and trust. Plain English is not dumbing down. Rather, it is respecting your reader.
- Consistency matters more than frequency. Showing up reliably with something useful beats a burst of activity followed by radio silence.
- Impact storytelling is not the same as bragging. Telling people what your work actually changes is how you earn continued support.
- Your comms needs to feel like it comes from a human organisation, not a corporate brand machine.
- Most third sector comms is guilty of operating from a deficit mindset. The shift to strength-based approaches changes everything.
The real question behind the headline.
When people ask what good third sector communications looks like, what they are really asking is: are we doing it wrong?
Well, occasionally, yes. But more often than not, the problem isn’t that organisations are doing it badly. It’s that they are doing it without a clear picture of what they’re actually trying to achieve, or who they’re genuinely talking to. The result is comms that just exists rather than actually communicates. It fills space, ticks a box. But it does not move people.
It’s a fixable problem – and understanding what good looks like is the first step.
It ALWAYS begins with audience.
That sounds rather obvious, but in practice it rarely is.
Third sector organisations tend to have multiple audiences pulling all different directions at once. A domestic abuse charity, for example, is communicating simultaneously with victims and survivors, who need to feel safe and understood, with funders who need evidence of impact and financial accountability, and with the wider public who need enough context to care. These are not the same conversation. They require different language, different channels and entirely different emotional registers.
The mistake many organisations make is defaulting to one voice for everyone. Often the funder-facing voice wins out, because that is where the money is and the stakes feel highest. But service users are a an incredibly important audience too, and so is the general public, and so are potential staff and volunteers. Lumping all those groups into a single institutional tone speaks to no one.
Good communications knows exactly who it’s talking to before it’s even said a single word.
Plain language is not a compromise.
This sector is guilty of a persistent myth that professional communications means formal language. There’s a tendency to think that using terms like “holistic outcomes” and “place-based approaches” and “lived experience expertise” (… I could go on and on – you get the gist) signals credibility. It doesn’t. What it signals is that you have stopped thinking about whether the person reading this actually understands you.
This is certainly not an argument against precision, relevance or nuance. Some projects do require careful language. But the simple test is: does the person I’m writing this for understand what I’m saying and do they know what I need them to do next? If the answer to either of those is uncertain, then’s it’s back to the first draft for you.
Being clear in your communications is not a style to adopt. It is a form of respect for your audience.
Consistency does more work than you think.
One of the most common patterns in third sector communications is “the burst”: a flurry of activity when there’s a specific campaign, funding bid, crisis or anniversary. Then tumbleweed. Then another burst.
The problem with this is that trust is built through repetition. People need to hear from you more than once before they believe you. Donors who see a charity only when it needs something from them are not being cultivated. They are being asked. Repeatedly. Without the relationship that makes the ask feel in warranted.
Consistent, low-pressure communication such as a monthly email that’s genuinely worth reading, a social presence that doesn’t disappear for six weeks at a time, a website which feels actively maintained rather than abandoned, builds familiarity and connection. So when you ask for something, those people are already on your side.
Tell the story of change, not of busyness.
Many third sector organisations communicate primarily about activity. We delivered this many sessions/ran this event/launched this initiative. There’s an unspoken assumption that activity implies impact – but that’s not true. Certainly not to a funder deciding where their limited grant funding should go. Nor to a donor who wants to know whether their money is doing something real. Or, indeed, to a commissioner who needs to justify a contract renewal.
What people really need to understand is what changed because you were there.
Let’s compare “we delivered 400 hours of mental health support” with “400 hours of mental health support were made possible for the people who needed them”. The difference between a statistic and a story is the human being in the middle of it. Good impact comms doesn’t strip that out for the sake of brevity. It puts it front and centre, with care.
This is not sentiment for its own sake. This is storytelling. And that’s the thing which makes people care.
Confidence is not arrogance
The third sector has a difficult relationship with self-promotion. There is almost a cultural discomfort with saying clearly: we are really good at this and here is why you should trust us to do it.
That’s partly understandable. Organisations working with vulnerable communities, in difficult financial times, with staff frequently underpaid and over-stretched, are cautious about appearing to “overclaim”. And rightly so. Appearing to be spending on glossy comms while the frontline is underfunded is not a good look.
But there is often a cost to the deficit thinking which can result from this. Organisations that communicate primarily about their struggles, their funding gaps, their stretched capacity can inadvertently undermine the very confidence people need in them. If your comms says “we’re barely keeping the lights on!”, why would a funder choose you over an organisation projecting stability and purpose?
Good communication can represent both things at once. An honesty about the current environment and the genuine confidence in great work. The balance can be a challenge to strike, but it is achievable, and it really matters.
Getting it right
Communications that work don’t always feel dramatic. It feels like the phone is ringing more, funder emails are increasing, and volunteers say they heard about you from a friend. It feels like service users show up already knowing something about you, and maybe already trusting you a little, because they’ve noticed you in their world, saying something useful.
Getting it right feels like recognition.
The organisations that get this right share a few things in common. They know exactly who they are, and they say so plainly and clearly. They understand that comms is integral to their mission. They treat every touchpoint, every email, every social media post, every annual report as an opportunity to deepen someone’s understanding of why their work matters.
Good communication is not perfect. Nor is it expensive. It is honest, consistent and done with purpose.
If you are wondering whether your comms is doing that, it probably needs a conversation. That’s exactly what TASK is here for.
FAQs
We are a small organisation with no dedicated comms resource. How do we approach this?
Begin with one thing and do it well. A monthly newsletter, for example, is something one person could manage. Done consistently, it can become a high-trust channel. Choose the channel where your most important audience already resides. Commit to a realistic cadence and focus entirely on whether each piece of content is genuinely useful or meaningful to the person receiving it. Volume is not the goal here; making a true connection is.
How do we communicate differently to funders versus service users and still have an authentic voice?
Your voice doesn’t have to display the same register in every context. Just think about how you might speak to a colleague at work versus how you speak to someone you’ve just met who needs your help. The values remain the same; however, you adjust your language accordingly. In life, we do this all the time. For funders, prioritise outcomes, evidence and organisational credibility. For service users, lead with empathy and practical information. The “who we are” always remains consistent. But the “what you need to know” changes depending on the audience.
What’s the biggest single mistake you see third sector organisations making in their comms?
Talking about themselves rather than talking to their audience. Here’s an example: there’s a difference between “we have been supporting people in recovery for 15 years” and “if you are trying to rebuild your life after addiction, here is how we can support you.” The first is an announcement. The second is an invitation. Great third sector comms is always an invitation. One offered to a specific person about something genuinely relevant to their life. Most organisations know this in theory. But in practice, many struggle to do it consistently.
Further Reading
- When Budgets Shrink, Should You Cut Your marketing? (TASK Agency)
- Finding The Right Words: Plain Language in the Charity Sector (NCVO)
- The State of the Sector 2025 (Charities Aid Foundation)
- How to Write an Impact Report People Actually Read (CharityComms)
