Communications Audit Guide: How to Optimize Your Strategy
Written by niki juhasz
what’s in the Blog
Is your messaging actually driving action, or are you wasting time on the wrong platforms? In this post, Forthright Advising Vice President Niki explains why a communications audit is the most powerful tool for any organization looking to scale its impact. By analyzing data and auditing existing materials, you can move from guessing to a high-ROI strategy.
Key Takeaways for Audit Success:
Clarify Your Core Messaging: Learn why your boilerplate language must pass the grandmother test to ensure donors and stakeholders know exactly how to take action.
Audit for Consistency: Discover how to align your logo, fonts and mission across every platform – from Instagram to annual reports – to build long-term audience trust.
Maximize ROI via Data: Stop chasing trends like TikTok if they don't reach your specific audience. Use Hotjar data, click rates and impressions to cut low-performing tactics and refocus on what works.
By conducting a thorough communications audit, you can simplify your workflow, save time and ensure every piece of content serves a strategic purpose.
I’m the first to admit it: I’m a nerd for data.
If something is going wrong – I want to know why, so I can fix it.
If something is going well – I want to know why, so I can keep doing it.
That’s why I love a good communications audit. Here’s why you should join me in my nerd-dom and hop on the communications audit train. (Get it? Cause trains are nerdy, too.)
what’s a communications audit?
Simply put, a communications audit tells you two things:
What’s working about your strategy.
Where there may be opportunities to change up your tactics to better reach your specific audiences, at the right time, with the right messaging, in the right place.
In a nutshell: a great communications audit tells you how to win. I’ve led many of our audits throughout the years, and they’re one of my favorite client projects to do.
Here are the questions I typically start our client audits with:
Is your messaging clear and easy-to-understand? I would argue that your messaging is the absolute most important part of your communications. If people don’t understand what you do – and why it matters – they won’t be compelled to take action. After reading your key messaging, I should be able to understand three things:
What you do.
Why your work is critical.
What action I should take, from making a donation to writing to my local city council to enrolling my child in your school district.
Pro tip: send your core messaging (or your boilerplate language!) to your grandmother – or a friend who knows nothing about your work. Then, ask them to describe back to you – based solely on what they read – what your organization does in 2-3 sentences. Can they do it? If not, it may be time to simplify your messaging.
Are your communications materials consistent? We see this all the time. A nonprofit may have one set of messaging on their homepage, then a different, outdated mission on their Instagram page, and branding that doesn’t match… well, anything, on their annual report. This can hurt the trust you have with your most important audiences. During your communications audit, ensure your materials are consistent across ALL of your platforms. We like to check for:
Messaging, including taglines, mission and key call to action
Logo
Colors
Fonts
Overall look & feel
Are you focused on the tactics that lead to the most ROI? Are you on TikTok when your audience doesn’t have internet access? Then you’re likely wasting your precious time on a tactic that likely isn’t leading to a high ROI. We’d suggest cutting it, and refocusing your efforts on a postcard campaign. During a communications audit, we like to look at the stats to decide what to focus our energy on. Think impressions, clicks, Hotjar data that maps where people are focusing their eyes on a website. We pinpoint your most successful strategies, recommend cutting the rest, and overall prepare you to solely focus on tactics that WORK.
What does this look like in action?
To see how a communications audit changes your strategy, let’s look at a fictional nonprofit, The Green Canopy Initiative.
Before the Audit: Jargon Abounds
Mission Statement: Our organization leverages multi-sectoral partnerships to facilitate the mitigation of urban heat islands through the strategic implementation of arboreal infrastructure to bring down the ambient temperature for our local familial dwellings.
The Tactic: Posting technical white papers to TikTok three times a week.
The Result: High effort, zero engagement and confused donors.
After the Audit: Clarity Wins!
New Messaging: We plant trees in city neighborhoods to keep families cool and healthy.
The New Tactic: A direct mail postcard campaign to local families and grandparents with a Tree Map and a QR code that directs new families to the website.
The Result: A 30 percent increase in local donations and 50 new volunteers in one quarter. (It’s my example, so I get to make it as successful as I want!)
How do we get buy-in for an audit?
Okay, so you know you want to do a communications audit.
Now, you want to build buy-in with your board! Here’s a starting point for a message you can easily tweak and send to your board leaders to share what you’re doing and why:
We’re proposing a strategic communications audit to ensure our messaging is clear, and our outreach is delivering a meaningful return on staff and time investment. Think of it like a health check-up for our communications program. The audit will help us:
identify which communications tactics are actually working,
cut the ones that aren’t, and
streamline our staff’s time.
Our goal is to move towards an even more data-driven strategy that builds deeper donor trust and maximizes our budget's impact.
[Then, you’ll insert your specific next steps and ask here.]
This short message respects your board’s time, while also giving them the most important information.
Ready to dive in?
I guarantee your communications will take less time AND be more strategic when you’re done.
You’ve got this.
About the Author
Niki is a senior strategic communications expert with over a decade of experience driving high-impact campaigns across the nonprofit, healthcare and education sectors. Niki specializes in communications audits and capacity-building strategies that empower organizations to reach their audiences effectively. Her data-driven approach and proven track record – including placing questions about child poverty in presidential debates – make her a leading authority on optimizing organizational messaging for real-world results.
