Bring communications onto trustee board

Professional Fundraising

September 2007

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Charities should aim to recruit trustees with communications experience on their boards to make sure communications is taken seriously by chief executives and other trustees, according to Joe Saxton, driver of ideas at the think-tank nfpSynergy.

Saxton was speaking last week at the first seminar run by the newly-launched CharityComms, the professional body for charity sector communicators, which he chairs.

Saxton said that while fundraisers were “good at getting decent-sized budgets”, communications departments often struggled. “Just as fundraising people need to be on trustee boards, communications people need to be there too,” he said.

He warned delegates that communications should not be seen as an “add-on”, as a good strategy could be the most cost-effective way for a charity to deliver its mission by making more people aware of its services, especially those in hard-to-reach groups.

Saxton warned delegates against bringing in a new brand each year. “The number of organisations who keep a clear and consistent message over a number of years to build their brand is few and far between.” He said that building the right image for a charity can take years and was “a marathon, not a sprint”.

He added that charities needed to make sure they got clear and evidence-based key messages out of their policy teams, so that everybody involved in the charity could explain what the policy was and what benefits it would bring.

CharityComms has 18 founding charity members including Oxfam, the British Red Cross and Barnardo’s and is directed by Norma Johnston, former communications director for Amnesty International UK.

It will run a regular series of seminars for charity communications professionals each month and in January will also take over responsibility for the media contact facility, AskCharity, which will be extended to allow MPs and their researchers as well as journalists to put questions to charities.

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