Don't Put the Marketing Cart Before the Messaging Horse
What to get right before you greenlight your next marketing initiative
Don't Put the Marketing Cart Before the Messaging Horse
A nonprofit leader I worked with had everything lined up for a website redesign.
The budget was approved. The designer was ready. The board was excited.
And then she pumped the brakes.
"I need to get the messaging right first," she told me. "Otherwise I'm just going to end up with a load of rubbish in there again."
She was right. And catching it before pulling the trigger saved her organization time, money, and a whole lot of frustration.
Messaging Before Materials
Marketing and fundraising materials—your website, your annual report, your fundraising appeals, your social posts—are vehicles. They carry your message out into the world.
But if you haven't figured out what your message is first, those vehicles are driving in circles.
You can have the most beautifully designed website, but if the copy doesn't clearly communicate who you are, who you serve, and why it matters—your visitors will leave confused. And confused people don't donate. They don't volunteer. They scroll past.
The Sequence Matters
It's easy to get the sequence backward—especially when the pressure to act comes from every direction.
So the website goes live. The campaign launches. The brochure gets printed.
And six months later, your board is asking hard questions and wondering why nothing is landing the way they hoped.
The design is fine. The platform is fine. The execution is fine.
The messaging? That's where things fell apart.
It's not about doing less. It's about doing things in the right order.
Strong messaging doesn't slow down your marketing or fundraising. It accelerates it.
When you know exactly what you stand for, who you're talking to, and what you want them to feel and do—everything else gets easier.
Your web designer has something to work with. Your communications staffer has a foundation to build from. Your board members stop describing your organization five different ways.
And your campaigns? They start working the way you always hoped they would.
Before you greenlight the next big marketing initiative, it's worth pausing to ask: do we actually know what we're trying to say—and to whom?
Because the horse has to come before the cart to get where you're going.
After a decade as an in-house nonprofit marketer, Jordana Merkin founded Voice for Good to bring her insider knowledge and outsider perspective to help leaders of growing nonprofits like yours clarify their messaging to raise awareness and funds for their missions.
Her work with nonprofit leaders includes messaging guides, communication strategy, and copywriting. (Learn more here!)
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