Working with words in a promotional capacity (as opposed to a literary one) makes one quick to respond and latch onto new turns of phrase. Fundraisers, audience development teams and marketeers typically enjoy a healthy connection with language: when you successfully ride the wave of popular terminology, content lands well. The right phrase, rewarded through social media shares and retweets, helps messaging to resonate and attract audiences to both work and organisational purpose – irrespective of whether the ‘audience’ is a grant giving body or those who’ve paid to see, hear or participate in a creative production.
A year of new messaging
It’s not often that the most popular words and phrases fail to get likes and shares across socials, nor do they usually originate from the unlikely source of science and medicine rather than twitter or Instagram. But that’s where we are right now. you would have to have been under a rock for much of last year to escape the use of ‘pandemic’ ‘unprecedented’, ‘social distancing’ and ‘lockdown’ in 2020’s wider media and sector marketing and messaging.
Working in development, fundraising and marketing roles can create a hyper sensitivity to language that can lead to a state of near-paranoia – even under normal circumstances!
Those working in these roles can spend hours deliberating on how best to respond to negative social media and minimise the risk of misinterpretation. and it’s equally tricky to strike the right balance between amplifying engagement and celebrating without seeming excessively hyperbolic. But 2020 was a year unlike any other. the challenges of the year were played out as much in communications, as elsewhere.
Change through global crisis
But the role of marketing, audience development and fundraisers goes far beyond language use. these critical roles are also organisational barometers: providing both the evidence and litmus test of how organisations are perceived.
It’s taken a global crisis to have us look squarely at environmental disaster, societal disadvantage, the routine disregard for people doing vital jobs all around us, and the casual, systemic and everyday racism that millions of us are subject to daily.
The shockwave of the pandemic threw us into one of two camps: in March 2020, sector workers either found themselves firefighting like never before, or newly freed from business as usual, and committing wholeheartedly to new purpose – advocacy. If you were not in a position to save an organisation, chances are you were redeployed to champion for its survival. Messaging to donors required expertise that balanced uncertain futures, high anxiety and the need to keep givers on board – but not to ask too much of them.
Fundraising teams were glued to leadership in a need to secure financial support to keep freelancers afloat, and organisations viable. We suddenly realised the precarity of freelance working – despite the fact that the majority of the sector is freelance.
Misfiring communications
The second shockwave struck hard at those teams whose purpose is engagement, promotion and development. the ubiquitous black square of support around Black lives Matters was one of the most painful misfiring of communications that the sector has ever experienced collectively. and it had a direct impact on audience development and marketing teams in particular because of the additional work required to defend reputation, communicate commitment without centring white lived experience, and without over-or under promising action for positive change.
The jury’s out whether we’ve achieved this as a sector yet, but it’s clear that there is a massive, and genuine groundswell of commitment to ‘get anti-racism right’. there’s a huge amount of work to be done across all organisations before we can collectively re-connect with ethnically diverse audiences in a way that is both authentic and with integrity.
The self-reflection and commitment to action around anti-racism isn’t new. What’s new is that it’s a fresh round of leaders who are committing to the changes some have been asking for over decades. organisations like culture reset, eclipse, act for change and many more have been producing research, sharing recommendations and celebrating inclusive work – building on the advocacy that’s been happening ever since the birth of the British empire.
Because we genuinely want a sector that is inclusive for all and allows everyone to work at our best irrespective of background or circumstance, there are some clear actions that marketing, fundraising and development teams can do to take positive anti-racist action.
01. Get your language right
If you’re struggling with whether to say ‘bipoc’ or if ‘people of colour’ is an offensive term, if you’re not confident about how you refer to East Asian people or whether you can call people a ‘minority’, it will show in your audience engagement strategy, and in your marketing content. it will signal to the most astute funders that you’re not yet up to speed on how people with lived experience of racism prefer to be referred to, and which term is right for which occasion. it won’t land well with ethnically diverse audiences online or elsewhere. there’s a clue in the last sentence – but there’s more here in #BAMEover, a statement on use of terminology, created by those most affected by the acronym.
if you think about why you’re grouping people together and speak to that rationale with integrity and respect, not only will you have confidence in flexing between terms, but you’ll also start re-thinking your assumptions about people – and sow a seed from which anti-racist action can flourish.
02. Go beyond tokenism into authenticity
We can’t achieve systemic and lasting change without a shared commitment to collective care, and joint execution of goals. if you’re engaging with others to serve a purpose that works for you, then you may be creating a harmful, tokenistic outcome. for those who’ve experienced marginalisation, being on the receiving end of awkward tokenism is almost as painful as erasure and exclusion. if you celebrate your role in championing your engagement with other voices, you may not get the results you hoped for. nobody likes a blow hard.
03. Diversify the team
How can we successfully build diverse audiences, and market productions that centre marginalised and under represented perspectives? how do we encapsulate in our marketing the heart and soul of the production, as well as the nuances, when that landscape is also new to us? there are a number of national touring productions that are often held up as exemplars of diverse audience engagement. But amongst that number there are a couple that almost fell below the promotional radar: the all-white marketing teams of receiving houses attempted to promote productions which they didn’t quite understand because the productions celebrated African and Caribbean stories. it was only when the pr and marketing team was shared with diverse marketing professionals that these shows grabbed headlines and returned record-breaking diverse audiences.
#BAMEOver outlines the preferred terms of reference for people in the UK
But don’t just save them for the ‘diverse stuff’. as a matter of routine, ethnically diverse marketing and fundraisers work within predominantly white teams and organisations, and within predominantly white societies. They’re already flexing between different communities with ease and full agency, deploying a full range of language slide, nuance, range and tone. they also have insights into communities that can make messaging hit the right note for those tuned in, bringing more diverse audiences to all your production output.
Organisations that only employ ethnically diverse development teams for ethnically centred productions are missing a trick. diversifying your marketing team can bring significant returns to your development goals – bringing new audiences to all of your programme.
04. Be accountable: personally and strategically
I was asked recently to support a funding application where the grant giving body specifically stated that preference for funding would be given to organisations with ethnically diverse leadership, because of the under representation and disadvantage this cohort typically experiences.
Whilst the organisation in question would be working with people with lived experience of racism, the delivery team, and the fundraising team was not.
I asked the lead fundraiser, ‘why would an organisation apply for a fund that is earmarked for those facing disadvantage?’ I was told that ‘as fundraisers we have to take every opportunity to secure funding even if it’s an outside chance’. the fundraiser then proceeded to explain that they’d be able to package the application to emphasise engagement to mitigate for the lack of ethnic diversity in the leadership delivery team – and that might just be successful.
If you are committed to anti-racist action, don’t be like this fundraiser. Think strategically about what you apply for – but not just from the perspective of your own organisation. if you deliberately set out to frame a case that if successful would reduce opportunity which has been specifically earmarked for others, then you are not taking active anti-racist action, you are leaning into your privilege.