You have a meeting with your board in an hour. You’re presenting at a conference in a month. Your executive director has a local news interview tomorrow.
And you’re staring at a blank page, trying to figure out how to condense years of work into a three-minute segment.
Talking points help you bridge that big-picture vision (the deep work! the passion!) with the specific moment you’re in, the audience you’re talking to and your goals.
Here’s how we do it.
Read MoreWe send a client survey every year, but this time, after a tough 2025 for all of us, the results hit differently.
What we found was that, in a year marked by twists, turns and uncertainty, you valued our steadiness and trusted our strategies. Our results showed we were the steady hand our partners could rely on.
I’m also incredibly proud to share that our Net Promoter Score jumped 11 points this year. We remain way (way) above the industry standard. But, as always, I want to show our work and dive deep. So here’s a closer look at what we learned from you in our survey this year.
Read MoreToo often, we overlook the people who already know us, love us, and can help us accomplish our goals.
It takes an intentional plan to mobilize these champions. As always, we’ve got you.
We’ve included your step-by-step guide for activating your champions at every phase of your campaign below!
Your team is (understandably) dragging.
You can feel them losing sight of your “why” amidst the chaos and changing priorities.
Team meetings are downbeat and everything feels… hard.
You’re not alone. We’re hearing it from organizations just like yours across the country.
That’s why we designed a special menu of 2026 trainings that naturally foster team connection and positivity.
The ultimate success metric is that your team walks away feeling energized, hopeful, and clear on their priorities and vital role in the organization’s future.
Here are a few options for a morale-boosting team training. (Psst – don’t worry, if these don’t feel quite right for your particular team, we can design a custom training just for you.)
Read MoreYou know those conversations you find yourself having over and over again?
Here’s a key question that’s spinning on repeat (across various clients) here at Forthright:
“Where should we focus our efforts to influence child-and-family focused policies? Should we concentrate on the federal, state or local level?”
It’s a great question, especially in the Year of Our Lord 2026.
Let’s dive in.
You’ve heard me say it a million times: at Forthright, data is queen .
Now in an ideal world, you’d have thousands to invest in focus groups, interviews and robust surveys to help you answer our question. But for most child and family focused nonprofits, that’s simply not possible.
The good news? You don’t need a five-figure budget to get high-quality feedback. You can move away from guesswork by using the experts you already know: your community.
Here are three ideas that won’t break the bank!
We’ve all been there. You’re in an interview with a candidate who has a stellar resume. They have the skills. They have the experience. They say all the right things.
But you walk away wondering: Do they actually get it?
Will they understand the nuance of your advocacy work? Do they have the empathy to tell stories that honor your partners?
At Forthright, we believe that mission alignment is just as important as technical skill. But you can't just hope for it. You have to interview for it. Here’s our guide for how to do it.
Read MoreWhen we get fellow advocates, board members, families, business leaders, faith leaders, and youth themselves involved in a cause, we’re unstoppable. But our partners and fellow advocates are BUSY. Like...eat some guac, chips and an apple for dinner and call it a well-balanced meal kind of busy. (It's me. I'm fellow advocates).
That's why to get partners involved, we need to make group advocacy easy. That’s where communications toolkits come into play.
Here are some questions and tips to get you started.
I’ve heard it so often throughout my career: an organization that works with children and families is getting ready to launch a big initiative “just in time for Back to School!”
Eek.
Whenever we’re working on big announcement launches for clients — be it a new advocacy campaign, a report or fresh research — we specifically avoid launching during the last few weeks of August and early September.
Why?
Because the already-crowded media market gets so much worse for our clients during back-to-school season. Every organization and their brother, mother and sister is putting out news, striving to get that front-page placement or attention for their work.
Read MoreWe all have our favorite stats. (Okay, maybe not all of us. But at Forthright, we have our favorite stats. We’re nerds.) One of mine is about what it takes for people to REALLY remember your message. It’s called the Marketing Rule of Seven, and it’s pretty simple.
A person has to see or hear a message about seven times before it starts to resonate. Add to this number (say… 14 times) if your topic is particularly tricky, such as infant mental health or adolescent brain development.
Today, we’re including tips to make sharing that same, powerful message easy.
Read MoreBy popular demand, we're re-opening our training opportunities for 2026!
Our trainings have been called “an excellent investment." Also: “polished and downright perfect."
Here’s a (sampling of) what we’re offering starting in January.
We know how hard you work to keep your mission moving. Most of you are running on lean teams with zero capacity to spare.
The search for a comms leader is super high-stakes…
When you don’t have the right teammates, progress stalls. You miss opportunities to connect with funders or supporters. You lose momentum on critical advocacy campaigns. And the burnout on your existing team starts to creep up.
Here’s how to get those birds chirping peacefully again.
Read MoreI’m not the first person to tell you that more change is coming.
We need to take all the skills we’ve developed over the past few years and be nimble.
Right now, we’re telling most of our clients to create a three-month communications plan instead of an annual plan.
Simplify by breaking the work into quarters and be honest about what’s realistic with your capacity.
Here’s how to make it happen.
Read MoreY'all, I can't believe we're already staring down the end of 2025. It's been a ride (as always).
Our team has been heads-down planning for 2026, and I am SO excited about what's coming next. We're growing, we're learning and we're getting even more focused on how we can best support the entire child-and-family space.
As part of our community, I wanted to give you an insider heads-up on a few big things we're launching.
Read MoreCoalitions are often powered by passionate people squeezing this work in on top of demanding jobs.
This brings me to the real secret of coalition building. A coalition is only as effective as its internal communications. How we communicate *internally* creates the trust and alignment needed to win *externally.* Here are our tips for communicating well within coalitions.
Read MoreSomething felt off… I was reading the latest newsletter from a health group I’ve admired for years. While I’ve always felt connected to the leader whose expert voice I trust, this time, her voice was gone.
The warmth and personality were replaced by sentences that felt a little too perfect, a little… familiar. It was the unmistakable voice of careless AI.
That icky feeling was a reminder: When our writing sounds like it could have been written by anyone, our audiences lose connection.
Here’s how to manage using AI to write, while still connecting with your audiences.
Read MoreLately, we’ve seen an influx of nonprofit clients who are coming to us ready to turn their beloved programs into profit centers for their organization. Clients who are taking programs that have historically been paid for by foundations, and instead of solely relying on funding, figuring out ways to make them replicable, accessible and cheaper.
They are rethinking their income streams. While doing that, they are reclaiming their own self-sufficiency.
Ready to reclaim your non-profit’s power and become a yes-for-profit? Here are four phases and some questions to get you started.
Read MoreBefore I joined Forthright, I worked at a DC nonprofit for several years. In my role, I focused on our policy initiatives and external communications. But I also partnered closely with our talented development team. (Hats off to them – that work is not easy.)
While it’s been nearly a decade since then, the key best practices I learned have stood the test of time.
I’m sharing them with you here as many of us gear up for Year-End Giving season.
Read MoreStarting my career in policy, I loved the long and winding wonky road. I believed more detail meant more credibility, and my early training taught me to love a 10-dollar word instead of a perfectly perfect 10-cent word. Our most important job, especially in 2025, is to be generous with our audience's time. That means doing the hard work of making our message simple. Here’s how to make it happen.
Read MoreYou are ambitious.
You want everyone to know your organization – you want the front page of the paper, the brightest billboard in Times Square, every celebrity endorsement.
You need to ensure you have a strong, consistent brand message. Yet you’re a small nonprofit., so (of course) you’ve got caviar dreams on a tuna fish budget.
You know what we say to that? Keep dreaming big.
Here’s our guide to making a big brand splash with a small team.
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