Developing a
clear and consistent communications policy for your NGO will contribute
to the fulfillment of your annual financial plan. Considering that
contacting donors for general enquiry, updates, and day-to-day
clarifications is vital to your NGO, it is important that the ways in
which members of staff make use of available means of communication is
constantly monitored and recorded.
Ideally your office will be provided
with a telephone line, fax, and a fast Internet connection. Accordingly,
employees and volunteers will make use of said means of communication
to carry out their daily activities. A successful policy will ensure
that all the communications are made in a cost effective way to cut on
unnecessary expenses. Below you will find useful tips to develop your
own communications policy.
1) General guidelines.
Telephone calls should be limited to your local area. In fact,
long-distance calls could be extremely expensive and, often,
unnecessary. Instead, state in your policy document that the
preferential means of communication shall be considered the e-mail.
Donors and potential stakeholders are normally easily reachable via
e-mail. In case of long-term working relationships with someone based
abroad, make sure to agree with your partner to communicate via e-mails.
In doing so, you will ensure that they will consistently check their
inbox. If you are interacting with someone living in a different time
zone, account for the time gap when sending your e-mail and in order to
estimate when is realistic to expect to receive an answer (keep this in
mind if you need an urgent answer to your queries). Consider asking to
existing partners whether you could contact them via Skype. In fact, it
could be quicker to talk to them and, by using Skype you won’t incur in
expensive telephone bills.
If you need to contact a potential donor
or collaborator, look up for their e-mail address and ask, at the end
of your mail, whether they would rather be contacted in other ways to
ensure that you are meeting their communications policy. However, always
state that your preferential means of communication is electronic.
Fax should be used to send important
documents when electronic submissions are not possible. Keep the length
of faxes at minimum when possible.
It could be necessary to dispatch
parcels with documents or other material for dissemination or
advertisement campaigns. Make sure to research
your area and to find the cheapest courier. Establish a long-term
working relationship with them and ask whether they offer special rates
for returning customers.
2) Monitoring and regulation of the access of staff to existing means of communications.
Once you clarified the preferential ways in which your NGO shall
contact people and institutions make sure to clarify ways in which the
office staff will use the office equipment. First of all, it should be
made clear that, in general, no private calls shall be made from the
office. Prepare a form to be placed near the telephone in which each
call must be recorded. In doing so, you will find it easier to monitor
the usage of the telephone line and also, private calls shall be
highlighted and paid for at the end of the month. If staff needs to make
calls when working outside the office, provide them with credit for
their mobile phones or pre-paid telephone cards. In doing so, you will
ensure that nobody is taking advantage of the NGO financial resources.
It is also important that all the
electronic communications relevant to ongoing projects are filed in a
shared folder that is made available to everybody in order to keep all
the office updated.
Source: