Superbloom is proud to be part of a community that actively contributes to the responsible development of technology. There are lots of people like us out there: small teams and organizations, lots of us nonprofits or open-source projects, all of us working different angles to improve and diversify the tech landscape.
While we don’t have a large marketing budget, we do want to deliver quality communications and be noticed and understood and get the work into the hands of the people who need it.
At Superbloom, we work with nonprofits working to strengthen their tech and strategy offerings. In collaboration with the Open Technology Fund’s Learning Lab, we’ve made a collection of resources for small tech and activist organizations who are undertaking communications projects. We like to share the tools we use ourselves. These are also the tools we use when we work together with other organizations. And we hope they’re useful to you as well.
We’d like to spotlight two parts of this communications toolkit that we think are particularly applicable to civic and nonprofit tech projects.
Can you do this in a month? Check our scoping guide
First, we’d like to show you our Communications Project Scoping Guide.
There is plenty of great communications advice on the internet. But how do you turn advice into deliverables? And how do you turn deliverables into a plan (and a budget)? That’s why we wrote some sample project plans for you to pick from and use.
As a small organization, we know that before you start a project, you need to resource it. What’s the budget, where’s the expertise, and what timeline are you working with? If you don’t have much familiarity with communications projects, this lack of planning information could stop you in your tracks. Our scoping guide removes that blocker. We aren’t afraid to get specific: we tell you what you likely need (and what you don’t), and approximately how long we think it should take to complete.
Design with your community, not just for them - here’s how
Next, we’d like to point you to our Guide to Participatory Approaches in Communications.
A lot of communications advice is about “getting your message out there.” What if you don’t know what your message is? And what if you’re not sure about the best way to say it? We can’t answer those questions for you. But there are people who can guide you: your community.
As human-centered designers, we start a project by involving people affected by it. Our guide to participatory communications processes gives you some starting points for bringing stakeholders together in co-design workshops. This doesn’t apply to every type of communications project – your community doesn’t need to help you with your invoice letterhead – but especially for projects around how to project your image externally, some well-structured workshops with your community can be an enormous source of insight and inspiration.
Now, your community isn’t a source of free labor; don’t expect them to design you a logo or write you a pitch deck. You still need to take responsibility for driving and completing the project. Think of your community rather as a group of wise, trusted mentors. They likely see you more clearly than you see yourself. They can help you emphasize the right points, get the most out of your communications efforts, and avoid messaging missteps. Just remember to respect their time, open your mind to their feedback, and give them credit when you launch.
When you coordinate your communications, branding, and identity, it doesn’t just help your organization – it helps us all. People can find us all more easily, understand what we’re trying to do, and engage with our work.
Is this toolkit helpful to you? We’d love to hear how.
Is there a resource you’d really like us to create or add? Tell us that, too.
Would you like to work together on a communications project? Our mailbox is open. Say [email protected].
Credits
Project Contributors: Ame Elliott, Veszna Wessenauer, Abhishek Sharma, Georgia Bullen, Laura Gaetano, Molly Wilson.
With support from Open Technology Fund Learning Lab.