Why Most Activation Plans Fail and How to Fix Yours

Let’s talk about how to activate your community of supporters. We've spent a lot of time talking about brand and brand strategy and even digital and marketing, but we haven't really hit too much on specifically how to activate supporters and what different forms of activation might look like for different organizations.

The Missing Pillar in Social Impact Work

When helping nonprofits and social impact organizations, the work breaks down into three core pillars: 

• Brand work
• Digital work
• Activation work

Over time, it has become clear that activation work is the pillar that clients struggle with the most.

The problem is that we can do an amazing job building out an incredible brand with a solid brand strategy, good messaging and positioning, and strong visual identity, et cetera. We can build incredible digital experiences that serve as the home base for that brand with great content, user experience, and deeply integrated tech. 

But without a strong activation pillar — either that we're helping with or that our clients are doing on their own — the investment in those first two pillars doesn't have nearly as much value or return on investment as it should or could with strong activation as the third ingredient.

Why Activation Is So Challenging

The hardest and scariest part of marketing and communications work tends to be activation. So it makes sense that our clients are struggling the most with that pillar.

The irony is that when people talk about marketing or communications, this third activation pillar is usually what they're thinking about. They might not even be thinking about brand so much, or the word brand might feel foreign in the social impact space. They're not thinking about the website as part of marketing — the website just sits there while marketing happens in social channels, email, or elsewhere.

Despite that this is still the place where clients struggle the most. There are a couple of reasons for this:

Capacity Constraints

Someone is often doing too many jobs, and activation is their second or third responsibility. They don't have the time or energy necessary to do this work well. For many organizations, even having one full-time employee is not nearly enough to do this work properly.

Underestimated Expertise

People sometimes think marketing is easy and anyone can just do it. How hard could it be to post some stuff on social and write some emails? But marketing and communications is deep psychology and behavior change, understanding the human mind and media. There's an underestimation of how difficult and important this work is. Organizations default to having an intern handle it, or assume that any employee who's active on social media can figure things out.

This can work sometimes, but it's underestimated how much care, attention, time, and energy needs to go into proper activation work. Organizations can receive solid strategies or even evaluation starters for this work, but without proper resources, time, and expertise in-house to execute on it, the efforts inevitably won't be very effective.

Defining Activation

The word activation is valuable because it's a nice way to bucket several different complementary, synergistic actions. Things that fit into the activation bucket include:

• Fundraising and courting donors (small or large)
• Mobilizing volunteers
• Advocating for work and influencing policy or lawmakers
• Behavior change campaigns or public information campaigns
• Motivating internal teams to make some kind of change

Activation encompasses any time an organization tries to activate any particular audience. 

Both of those steps are required for activation.

If an organization gets a lot of attention but doesn't convert that attention into action, then it's just attention. But without that attention, there isn't even the first ingredient to turn into action. Activation is a broad pillar that encompasses marketing and fundraising — the actual change being created in the world or the change needed to be properly resourced to make the intended impact. Even program work is a form of activation.

Think about the word fuel. Much of the change being sought requires people fuel — people writing letters and making calls, giving money, sharing time, sharing information. That fuel powers the impact. 

The work that we do is being an impact accelerator. These terms are very synergistic and they work really well together. But how do you get that traction and how are you focusing that traction into action? The word activation really encompasses all of those things. Let’s dig a little deeper into a couple of big ideas required to do activation work.

Big Idea #1: Modern Content Creation

Organizations must be able to create and distribute content in a way that actually breaks through in the attention economy. Remember, activation is attention converted into action, so attention is the first step.

• If an organization can't get the attention of whoever they're trying to activate, how can they expect to get people to take action? What should people do? 
• How can they be persuaded, reminded, or nurtured to do that? 

All of this requires capturing attention. It's difficult to capture sustained attention today when attention spans are shorter and more organizations and people are vying for our attention at the same time.

The Importance of Both Organizational and Cause Attention

When capturing someone's attention for an organization, you're capturing attention for your cause area at the same time. If people are supporting an organization and giving it attention, then by necessity they're also giving the cause and cause area attention. Let’s say a climate action organization gets attention from constituents or audience segments, then by default those people are also giving climate action attention.

However, sometimes people are interested in the category — like climate action — but maybe interested in a different organization, or not any one organization yet. Sometimes building trust and awareness for a brand is necessary so people understand that the organization is a leading, credible, respectable entity in the climate action space that’s worthy and deserving of attention.

The Power of In-person Activation

One of the reasons why the end of year gala is such a prominent fundraising strategy is because you're literally getting everyone together, getting them excited and emotional about your cause, and then there's a clear call to action and opportunity to get that in front of people when they're paying attention. That's a tried and true strategy that's still worth pursuing for some organizations.

It’s also powerful to activate people when you have a space that people can visit. Organizations that provide onsite services should lean into activating funders when they are at their location.

The Digital Activation Challenge

More and more activation is happening through digital channels, and those channels are noisier than ever. The recent election season exemplified this — many people received 10 to 15 text messages from both sides trying to fundraise, no matter how many times they said stop. 

Activation must be looked at more holistically. Because so much of getting people's attention these days is through content, understanding modern content creation is crucial. Content is a broad idea around sharing ideas and perspectives and motivating people to take action at the right time.

Modernize Your Content Strategy

The really important word in this big idea is modern. Content creation — for such a long time, especially in the nonprofit and social impact space — has been about sending articles, reports, annual reports, impact reports, or donor appeals. It's been thought of as old school communication. But the pace of culture, digital culture, platforms, and channels is rapidly changing. Many social impact organizations have not kept up with that change.

Figuring out how to do modern content creation is under-indexed in terms of importance, and people are still using old playbooks.

Three Key Elements for Modern Content Creation

Modern content creation breaks down into three key elements:

1. A Distribution-First Mindset

A distribution-first mindset is about understanding how to create content that is appropriate culturally for whatever channel will be distributing it, and thinking about that distribution strategy before creating the content, not after.

A common pattern: organizations write an article, title the article, and then promote it on their email list or social media. A distribution-first mindset asks: What are we trying to accomplish with this piece of content or strategy? Where will we be distributing that content? How might that channel influence what should even be distributed in the first place?

An Example: One organization ran a campaign encouraging their community to write postcards supporting a shipping vessel protection measure. They put postcards out in their physical space — very easy to access and fill out, already pre-written with an opportunity to add coloring, a picture, or a poem. 

Given their particular distribution form, they knew this would perform well for their in-person campaign. However, when they put that call out online to speak up, it didn't work. They developed a distribution technique that worked for in-person activation, but it didn't work digitally. Having attention and creating things for people to do in the moment in a really easy way was successful for activation in their case.

This example is valuable for two reasons. First, it highlights that distribution channels aren't only digital — in-person distribution is equally valid. Second, the reflection demonstrates that distribution doesn't work the same in every channel.

2. Channel Proficiency

Channel proficiency is a fancy way of saying organizations need to understand what actually works in each channel, platform, or experience.

 In our postcard example above, the organization had designed a program with a distribution-first mindset around the in-person experience, likely putting 90% of attention and energy toward really nailing that experience. But they didn't think as much about how to promote or distribute that content digitally. It became an afterthought, and because of that, it wasn't successful. More thought about digital distribution and activation could have helped with promotion and getting that activation out there more effectively. The organization probably could have produced more letters in support of that particular campaign with more attention to that channel.

These two points work well together because using a distribution-first mindset and making choices around distribution channels allows organizations to be more effective within those channels. It also helps determine what channels should even be used. Organizations can't be everywhere and shouldn't try to be everywhere for any one activation or even at large for activation efforts. 

3. Community Feedback

Building feedback loops through dialogue, interviews, and pulse checks is essential. Online, this might be through engaging with comments or email. In person, this might be checking in with people, doing little pulses, having conversations, or retrospectives on events. Getting feedback from the community is probably the most important part of modern content creation. It's not thought of as a megaphone — it's thought of as a conversation.

Community feedback should include not just conversation between the community and the organization, but between community members themselves—a three-way conversation happening. 

In the postcard campaign case, once the campaign got going in the physical space, it created a conversation with the partner organization who was leading the campaign. The organization was just fueling it with people power, but conversations started happening between the community and the partner organization. This created a community feedback mechanism that propelled the campaign faster.

Big Idea #2: Evaluation and Iteration

The second big idea for doing activation work exceptionally well is evaluation and iteration. This responds to the old school way of doing content and activation — thinking about a year-long editorial calendar with some big moments and big campaigns — often at the end of the year or around Giving Tuesday.

We're in a new era where organizations have to constantly earn attention, build trust, and nurture relationships in an ongoing way — the same way relationships are maintained with friends. If someone only throws a big party once a year and never picks up the phone throughout the rest of the year, is that really a deep relationship?

That's been the strategy for many social impact organizations: big capital campaigns and big end-of-year campaigns. These have a place, but they should be bolstered and supported by everyday, ongoing activation with the community.

The Power of Consistent Activation

When doing activities daily or weekly, organizations learn almost by nature and have a better chance of iterating, evaluating, and improving. Obviously, some attention and discipline are needed, but consistent action provides better opportunities for improvement.

Understanding the Attention Funnel

The other big part of evaluation and iteration is understanding where audiences are in the attention funnel. There are many ways to break down attention or marketing funnels. A very simple but effective way is looking at top, middle, and bottom of funnel segments.

Here's how we think about the funnel for the social impact sector compared to a standard marketing funnel:

Top of Funnel: Awareness

Top of funnel is about moving someone from being unaware of the organization, mission, or activation to being aware. Maybe they've never heard of the organization, or maybe they have just preliminary knowledge, they've heard the name or seen the logo, but that's all they know. 

This has implications on content strategy. What goes out at the top of funnel differs from the middle or bottom. Top of funnel can be thought of as introductory content.

Middle of Funnel: Nurturing and Credibility

Middle of funnel is about nurturing. People receiving middle-of-funnel content are already aware of the organization, but they maybe don't know too much about what it does yet. Even more so, they're not convinced that it's meaningfully different, better, more trustworthy, or more credible.

Middle of funnel in the social impact space is about building credibility, which might be through showcasing impact, telling impact stories, using social proof, and getting campaigns out there that show the organization has had an effect on the world and is moving its mission forward. 

If someone knows about an organization but doesn't see this content, they might never get past that stage. They might think, "They're doing some stuff, but I don't really know what they do exactly. I'm aware of their brand, but I don't have any trust or real relationship with them."

Bottom of Funnel: Conversion to Action

Bottom of funnel content is about converting people who are aware, interested, and have some level of trust and credibility to actually take action. 

That action might be a call to action to donate, sign a petition, or join a virtual or in-person event or activation. 

The overall goal is moving someone from being aware and having some level of trust into actually taking action. This doesn't work sequentially in the real world, but it's an effective overall content strategy and a way to think about activation efforts. 

If an organization only does one of these three funnels all the time — especially only bottom of funnel where they're just asking people to donate, volunteer, and asking for support — but isn’t giving anything back or showcasing impact or building trust, they're not going to activate their community.

Applying the Funnel Beyond Major Donor Fundraising

Major donor fundraisers should be nodding vigorously at this framework. Fundraisers constantly talk about bringing donors along this continuum. Every think tank focused on fundraising has a version of this concept. But what's powerful is applying this method to the entire community and audience.

Fundraisers constantly think about the 10 major donors in their portfolio and how to get them from aware to engaged to ownership, using high-touch, often personal techniques in that space. But for marketers and program managers, this applies to their work too. They can bring along their community and audience through this funnel.

One technique many organizations use is some sort of email drip campaign—automated or triggered email campaigns, sometimes thought of as email journeys. A very simple way to get started is to build these steps into the email journey and build levels of engagement into that sequence to level people up.

Balancing Content Across the Funnel

The distinction between this framework for fundraising and broader activation is important because there are similarities and differences. This framework functions almost like a check when producing content. When putting content out on LinkedIn, through an email newsletter, or through any other activation work, organizations should constantly think about balance between these three core stages.

It's important not to do too much top of funnel content all the time. While top of funnel content gets a lot of engagement and attention — and should be the highest performing content with regards to reach, engagement, comments, and likes in the digital world — balance is key.

For example, an organization might host an open community event. This is a top-of-funnel event. There's no ask at all, not much storytelling about the organization itself. It's simply inviting everyone to be part of the community and getting people activated. This is a brilliant strategy, but if that's all an organization ever did, it would probably have zero impact on fundraising long-term.

This framework should be thought about largely from a content perspective, but it can also be applied to more bespoke, high-touch actions for fundraising. It has many different applications.

Viral Content Strategy vs. Targeted Content Strategy

Some organizations employ what could be called a brute force strategy—getting so much attention that it almost organically eventually leads to bottom of funnel results. But that only works if you literally go viral where you have huge, huge, huge amounts of attention. 

For example, on YouTube, organizations can be really successful with a massive account if they produce content that is broadly applicable for all different ages and demographics — content that is entertaining. It’s a lot of work to produce well and not an easy feat. That kind of content is hard for social impact organizations to produce, so when they are successful, everyone gets excited about breaking the mold.

But there's also a completely different strategy: having a very small, targeted audience and producing really high quality, valuable content for that audience, never expecting to reach even thousands of people, but being extremely persuasive with the type of people being reached for a bigger ticket ask. This essentially describes major donor fundraising.

Organizations need to figure out what the balance is for them. Are they trying to reach millions or be valuable to a niche audience? The sweet spot for many is somewhere in the middle: not trying to reach millions, remaining fairly niche, but being broadly valuable to their core audience without getting so niched down that there's only a potential target audience of a thousand people in the world.

Getting Started: From Theory to Practice

When organizations approach activation work, the process should start at the beginning with the question: 

The question can be framed as: If you could wave a magic wand, what are the outcomes you would wave that wand for in the next one to three years?

Put all content strategy aside, put marketing and branding aside, and focus just on the organization. What are the goals? Maybe some of this comes from the strategic plan. 

Interestingly, the answers to this question almost never match the strategic plan — there's sometimes overlap, but it's often framed in a different way, which can be really helpful.

The Reverse Engineering Process

Start with what your organization is trying to achieve. Then reverse engineer. Based on those goals, what are some of the raw ingredients available to work with from a content standpoint, storytelling standpoint, brand standpoint, strengths standpoint, and differentiation standpoint?

The process looks at: 

• What are the goals? 
• What are the raw ingredients available to create with? 
• What's the capacity either internally or from a budgetary standpoint to invest in this work in a way that is sustainable over time?

Once you’ve answered these questions, then determine how to measure success in these activation efforts. What are you trying to do? Touch a thousand new donors? Convert a hundred major donors into becoming recurring givers? This depends on the actual goals for the organization.

A High-Level Framework

To break it down at a high level:

1. Think big - Use the “If I could wave a magic wand…” question
2. Put KPIs behind that vision
3. Figure out resources
4. Start building activation plans - Consider using the Minimum Viable Strategy framework

Starting Small: A Practical Approach

One practical starting point is to pick one person in the audience and try some things with them. Whether or not they know about it, the exercise becomes: we're going to try to convert this person into a giver, and we're going to try different techniques to see if we can get them there.

This might be an easy and achievable way to get this work started. For executive directors, this approach sounds powerful but can also feel daunting. Where to begin? Who on my team gets on board with this? How should they be coached? How do they build confidence to dive into this work?

Alternately, rather than a single person (which might have too many individual variables like what's going on in their personal life), a slightly larger sample size might be better — perhaps 10 or 100 people. This provides some redundancy while still being manageable.

Why Activation Should Be the Top Priority

The daunting nature of activation work is real. But when social impact organizations feel stuck, feel like they're not getting the attention they deserve or want, or feel like people don't care as much about their cause as they do, activation is the answer to all of those questions.

At the end of the day, if organizations want to get traction and make progress, they have to activate. Whether that's a small group — maybe 10 lawmakers who need to pass a bill or bring it to Congress — or the entire next generation of climate action leaders worldwide, the power of activation is undeniable.

The Human Element of Activation

At the end of the day, there's a human being who's going to make a decision about whether they're going to write that letter or make that donation. What are the fundamental human factors that go into deciding whether someone will spend time, money, attention, or social capital on what they're being asked to do?

The Core Human Decision-Making Factors

No matter what digital techniques or in-person techniques are put into play, organizations are trying to convince people to make a decision. How do human beings make decisions?

Organizations should consider:

• Can we make it easy for them to say yes?
• Can we tell a story that makes it feel like it really impacts them directly?
• Can we build a community of like-minded people, or people they want to be around?

The Role of Trust and Priming

When looking at why someone said yes to an activation, it's worth considering: how much priming had been done? How much trust building had already happened before the decision to say yes?

If a person was invited by a personal friend to be part of a group, that formed personal trust. A trusted spokesperson or close friend is probably the most powerful form of trust possible.

Key Takeaways

For organizations ready to improve their activation work, the appeal is to make sure there's an activation plan, because this is often how action actually happens:

• Think about modern content creation - Understand how to break through in the attention economy
• Build trust over time - Use consistent, ongoing engagement rather than only big splashes
• Remember the top, middle, and bottom of funnel model - Make sure all three buckets are being hit
• Be distribution-first in efforts - Think about channels before creating content
• Focus on the human element - Understand how people make decisions and what makes it easy for them to say yes

More than anything — Go out there and activate your community.