Message Matters: Succeeding at the Crossroads of Mission and Market

It's a common nonprofit complaint, "When we're dealing with such important issues why aren't more people listening?" It may be true that everyone should care about your mission, but virtue alone wont catch the attention of your target audiences or prompt their action. Message Matters: Succeeding at the Crossroads of Mission and Market helps you do both. It shows you how to develop messages that resonate with your audience's desires so they take the action you want. 

Message Matters gives you a simple framework for making strategic decisions and guides you through five steps to produce a powerful, activating message. You'll learn how to: 

1. Clarify the action you want
   
2. Pinpoint who you want to take action
   
3. Discover what your audience wants, hopes for, and desires
   
4. Find the shared desires between your organization and your audience
   
5. Convey your message effectively
   

The ideas and approach in Message Matters build on the author's years of work across the spectrum of professional communications and management and address the everyday challenges facing todays organizations. 

Examples and a case study bring key points to life.

Examples from more than a dozen associations, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and government agencies show how they have advanced their causes by using the framework in this book. A special chapter brings the theory and process to life in a case study showing how an organization used strategic messages to build a nationwide movement to change the paradigm for preventing child abuse. Whether you want people to fund you, participate in your programs, vote your way, quote you, collaborate with you, or volunteer for you, moving people to action is essential to achieving your mission. Compelling communications is the starting point. Use Message Matters and start connecting to people in a way that moves them to action.

REBECCA K. LEET is principal of Rebecca Leet & Associates, which helps organizations think before they speak and speak so that others listen. She has provided strategic counsel to nonprofits since 1985 and is the author of Marketing for Mission (BoardSource, 1998). For more about Rebecca K. Leet, visit: www.leetassociates.com.