Strategic communication with heart

Not-for-profit (NFP) organisations play a vital role in supporting the community of Western Sydney, Australia. They provide invaluable services ranging from parenting support to food banks and crisis accommodation to counselling. The western suburbs of Sydney presents a set of unique challenges, including its cultural and linguistically diverse (CALD) population, access to public transport and affordable housing options, and its perception of disadvantage. NFPs in this area are passionate and resilient but are finding it challenging to reach those who need their support and information. Employing netnography (Kozinets, 2020), this research explored how social media can be harnessed to help NFPs engage their audience, and strengthen feelings of connection and community, while empowering them to meet their advocacy goals. A survey, in-depth interviews, social media observation, and an immersion journey were utilised to triangulate findings. Social media observation provided the opportunity to cross reference if the strategies that NFPs believed they are using are being implemented in real life. If the ‘policies’ they have created are being engaged. It was valuable to also learn what affordances were being utilised, what tone and style of communication was being employed, and what was yielding genuine conversation and interaction. These observations were fundamental to this study as it helped with building an understanding of how relationships were being fostered. Schoenmaker’s (2014) Engagement Framework and Grunig and Hunt’s (1984) Excellence Theory were used to explore how Western Sydney-based NFPs can use social media communication to generate online engagement and build trust, cultivate genuine dialogue and ‘relate’ to their target audience in a strategically effective manner. These communication and relationship building factors contribute to their ability to foster a more inclusive, resilient, and thriving Western Sydney. Initial findings reveal that the barriers to effective communication can be traced back to a lack of human resources, knowledge, and financial constraints as the NFPs are competing against commercial organisations with funding for strategic communication activities. The western suburbs NFPs are finding that there is an ever-increasing demand for their support. As a result, they don’t have funding or time to spare on tasks that aren’t directly related to their core support function. Strategic communication is seen as the business function that can be sacrificed or, be done on an ad hoc basis due to a lack of available time or staff. The research found that NFPs have no or minimal paid staff, and the focus is on their core charter of helping the community. They usually don’t have a dedicated strategic communication staff member, and if a volunteer is interested, they will create social media content when they are able. In conclusion, NFPs recognise the need to engage with social media to help facilitate awareness of their services with their target audience and referral organisations. They recognise that they need a social media strategy to help improve the effectiveness of their communication but find that a lack of staff, knowledge, time and quality content is impacting their ability to be heard online.