Again, zero to ten, zero is “I don’t believe this problem can be solved. I don’t believe you’re the organization to solve it. I don’t believe I have a role in this or that maybe these people even need help.” Ten is just the opposite. “I believe in what you do. I believe you’re making a difference. And I believe in the work and the impact of that work.”
Now, remember, the trick is if you scored one audience, let’s say donors at a five in awareness, then your score for alignment has to be between zero and five. There’s no way you can have an alignment of ten with all the potential donors and have only half of them being aware. Now, remember when we were defining audiences, we’re looking at one audience at a time and we’re looking at the total pool.
Let’s use donors this week. I’m not talking about the donors that you have. I’m talking about the donors and potential. The donor population, whether that’s in your region or based around your issue or sector of support when you think about all the donors that could possibly make a financial contribution to your organization, where would you score them on awareness? Where would you score them on alignment?
There’s a big world out there and you have a lot of potential in which you can increase your awareness in alignment. But today we’re going to talk about the third pillar which is advocacy. Zero to ten zero is okay, “I know you, I know what you do, but I am not part of the solution. It doesn’t impact me. I don’t know anybody in that situation, nor would I. There’s just it’s not in my world, not part of my world that ten is you know what? I am part of the solution, not just that you’re doing the work for a mission that I believe in, but I see myself as part of the solution to this social problem, this human issue that I’m in.”
Take those audiences that you’ve been grading and now you know that smaller subset, what percentage of donors, potential donors, and what you have would actually be able to advocate for you? We’ll say 50% of the donor population is aware of you. Congratulations. That’s pretty good. And then on alignment, you gave yourself a three.
Now as an advocate, it has to be between one and three. It’s likely pretty low. And you’ll know this because you’ll be feeling exhausted with the need to constantly explain what you do and justify it because you’re all over the board and what needs to be done is relating impact. And we’ll talk about that. But the impact is far more than just what I call a Cinderella story.
Now you can look at the right-hand area. Everything to the right of your scores is the potential. And you have three layers of communication, positioning, marketing, advertising, and branding that need to be done to grow those scores. Again, it’s awareness, alignment, and the ability to be an advocate. Take a look at those scores. Note those and we’ll continue to talk about how to raise them.
