August is the unofficial kick-off month for workplace campaign season at many United Ways. With all the challenges facing workplace campaigns, it is absolutely essential that when you have the opportunity to visit (in person or virtually) with employees that your message is as effective as possible. Based on our research with donors from local United Ways large and small, we can tell you that effective campaign messaging comes down to this:

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

The most common mistake United Ways make with their campaign messaging is they try to say too much. I previously blogged about United Ways that focused on their processes, which most donors do not care about in the slightest. Other United Ways attempt to include every last thing their United Way does in their campaign messaging, as if to say “There must be something our United Way does that will interest you.”

When United Ways try to say everything, it makes it extremely difficult for donors and potential donors to understand exactly why they should give to United Way. More information does not make it easier for people to give, especially when that information is not what they need to know in order to give. The old advertising maxim about needing to see a message at least seven times before it sinks in is impossible to achieve when you are trying to say everything.

Issue-Actions-Results

Just how do you simplify your campaign messaging? With an easy to remember three letters: I-A-R, which stands for Issue, Actions, and Results.

ISSUE: Our donor research has found over and over again that donors need to know what issue your United Way is addressing. Donors will not give if they don’t know the issue you are addressing or if the issue you are addressing is not important to them. It doesn’t matter what organizations you fund or how many people were served by a program if your donors don’t know what issue is being addressed.

A lot of United Ways think they are talking about an issue when they say “education, income, and health.” In reality, these are broad categories which can be interpreted very differently depending on who you ask. For example, when I hear education I might think of kindergarten readiness, you might think of high school graduation, and someone in the community might think “Isn’t education the school district’s responsibility? Education already gets a lot of my tax dollars so I don’t need to give to United Way.”

Issues need to be expressed at a very basic level that everyone will understand. Kindergarten readiness and high school graduation are both issues because people would share a common understanding of what they mean. Another way to identify an issue is that it can be measured. Income is also a category not only because it can be broadly interpreted depending on who you ask, but also because there is not a common measurement for “income.” There are certainly measures for issues like poverty, earning a living wage, affordable housing, affordable health care, etc.

To simplify your campaign messaging, choose one issue. Why? Because the next step is to talk about the actions you are taking to address that issue. If you choose more than one issue, then you will need to talk about too many actions to message effectively.

ACTIONS: Your donors will want to know what actions you are taking to address the issue, which could be funding local programs operated by partner agencies, providing services like VITA, providing programs like Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, or even convening the community to volunteer. It is highly likely that you are taking several actions to address the issue and once again, to simplify, you probably don’t even need to talk about every action.

The best actions are often ones that your United Way does such as providing programs or services. Many people still think of United Way as a pass-through organization, so if you are able to highlight programs and services operated by your United Way, it will be easier for donors to see why they should be giving to United Way to support your programs and services.

To simplify your campaign messaging, choose one or two actions you are taking to address the issue.

RESULTS: The final step is to share some results of the one or two actions you selected related to your issue. Results can take several forms, but the best and most powerful results are lives changed. For example, share with donors how their contribution will help 25 families find permanent housing and they will no longer be homeless. One way to think about lives changed is to talk about the number of people who are no longer experiencing a hardship.

Results should be expressed not only in numbers but through stories of people whose lives have changed. All it takes is one good story, and then you can say something like “This is the story of just one of the 243 students who are entering kindergarten ready to learn.”

To simplify your campaign messaging, share a number and a story for each of the actions you chose to address your issue.

Putting It Together

Choose an issue, one or two actions, and some results for each of your actions and you have simplified your campaign messaging. I am sure some of you are thinking “That is just too simple” which is exactly the point. When it is this simple, donors will remember that when they give to United Way, they are impacting the issue of [insert your issue here] through actions like [insert one or two actions here] and changing lives [insert your numbers and story of your results].

If you want to learn more about I-A-R, check out our free video The Simplest Way to Explain What Your United Way Does, which you can find on our Resource Center along with over two dozen webinar and video resources to help your United Way.

Issue Focused United Ways Do This Everyday

Issue focused United Ways choose an issue, like poverty, homelessness, graduation rate, or kindergarten readiness, and they lead and convene the community to make a measurable change on that issue. Instead of a campaign goal, their success is measured by the number of lives changed such as families no longer living in poverty, people who now have a home, students who graduated from high school, or children that are ready for kindergarten. Their campaign messaging is always simple because they ask donors and funders to give to reduce poverty, end homelessness, increase the graduation rate, or have every child enter kindergarten ready to learn and not for a campaign goal.

Take a couple of minutes and learn more about how an issue focus will transform your United Way by watching our free United Way Survival Guide video.

The easiest way to simplify your campaign messaging is with an issue focus.