Restructuring communications to drive strategic and cultural alignment

About the organisation

A well-established Indian non-profit with nationwide presence, working across natural ecosystems restoration, watershed management, climate resilience, rural livelihoods, and community empowerment. The organisation works at both policy and grassroots levels across multiple states, with strong field operations and significant impact footprints. It has impacted close to 2.5 million people in over 2000 villages, with significant water storage capacity creation (~4 billion litres), land treatment (~15000 Ha) and water saved (~1.7 billion litres). It supports 37 FPOs and 7175 SHGs across India, and has affected a 25% increase in non-agricultural income.

Project background

The organisation, realising the need for a more structured communications approach, brought in Robin, our founder. The mandate was to initially manage social media, but it quickly became clear that the problem was not limited to that medium. There was a deeper issue: weak content pipelines from the field, gaps between field teams and management visibility, and an absence of strategic communication planning.

Recognising the broader necessity, Robin proposed — and was entrusted with — expanding his role to handle the entire communications function. The task ahead was to build a professional, self-sustaining communications system for a large, distributed organisation that had never fully invested in comms strategy before.

The challenges

Lack of strategic direction
Communication efforts were largely ad-hoc, with no structured annual plan, thematic focus, or tie-back to the larger organisation positioning. Internally, communications was seen more as execution support, not as a strategic enabler.

Resource constraints
The team was limited in terms of human resources, funds and tools that stymied effective, regular communications.

Siloed teams and fragmented communication
Content teams and Audio Visual teams worked independently, often reacting to last-minute demands without coordination. There was no central ownership, and no proactive content pipeline connecting field realities to organisational priorities.

Internal culture gap
Field teams did not understand the strategic role communications could play. They needed to be convinced that the team was working in their (and the organisation's) interest. Practically speaking, it meant that stories from the field were sent ad-hoc and without structure - impacting overall efficacy.

Building self-sufficiency in communications

Our framework, The Method, consists of gap identification, strategy development and leadership alignment, embedded execution and transition enablement. Every non-profit operates uniquely and we adapt this framework to its culture, structure and goals. Here are some specifics of what was done for this organisation.

Developing a strategic communications plan and roadmap
Robin developed the organisation’s first formal communications plan, with a clear articulation of its brand, key messages, and positioning. The plan covered a 2–3 year horizon and was presented to the management and board. Overcoming initial scepticism was crucial — the plan’s phased, practical approach helped secure buy-in.

Internal restructuring of teams and processes
After having a thorough understanding of his resources’ abilities, Robin would go about the restructure to make it practical and effective (this was based on the Hersey-Blanchard model for situational leadership). The existing Audio Visual and content teams were integrated under a unified communications function, with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and workflows.  A system was set up where all content and communication requests were routed centrally through Robin, eliminating the previous chaotic, ad-hoc model. Daily stand-up meetings, project planning tools, and tracking systems professionalised delivery.

Setting up planning and editorial systems
Once day-to-day stability was achieved, the communications team moved to thematic annual planning — identifying a core theme or strategic focus for the year. Campaigns, content calendars, and reporting structures were all aligned to these themes. This created cohesion and consistency - and allowed management to look at certain business goals through the lens of communication. 

Constant upskilling 
Once the basics were in place, the team worked on improving the team's ability to tell better stories. For this, it worked with expert independent journalists and video makers. New recruits to the communications team were given a strong orientation. The functions capacity was further built through Learning Saturdays, an initiative wherein alternate Saturdays were used for self or group learning.

Improving resourcing
The team advocated for and helped secure better resourcing. This included stronger writers with field experience, better English skills, improved hardware, and professional software tools such as visual storytelling platform Shorthand. Strategic hiring was done: individuals with journalism/reporting backgrounds were onboarded to enhance storytelling and media relationships. The standards of the communications team had also increased - anyone wanting to join it had to go through a battery of tests to check both skills and values.

Expanding execution bandwidth
As the internal team’s capabilities matured, external agencies were brought in to handle volume-heavy execution work (design, video editing, social media management). This allowed the core team to focus on higher-value activities like storytelling, experimentation, and campaign ideation.

Robin left after a point where the internal team had the capacity, structure, and mindset to drive communications independently — the goal all along.

The results

Self-sufficient & internally-recognised communications function: The major outcome was, of course, a robust, independent communications function. Structured documentation, regular reviews, content calendars, and annual planning processes became institutionalised practices. This included processes for creation of major content types such as social media, the annual report, films and newsletter. All this also led to a greater evangelisation of the communications function internally, and a greater sense of internal purpose. The project teams, once distant from communications, began proactively approaching the team to showcase their work — a major cultural shift.

Improved external media visibility: Senior hires and better storytelling directly led to more media mentions and stronger relationships with journalists.

Stronger vendor network: The organisation developed a documented network of vendors hosted on the cloud to manage assignments and credibility better. This included editors, film-makers, writers and more.

Increase in relevant digital metrics:

• Active users (traffic) to the organisation’s website increased by 101% over 3 years.
• Email subscriber base increased by over 100%.
• Email newsletter open rates improved to 29.1%, and click-rates to above 2%.
• Social media followers saw an overall growth of 188% across nearly three years. 
• Average engagement rate on LinkedIn stood at 18.9%, significantly above the industry benchmark.
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Stronger & better blog creation capacity: With the team’s purchase of Shorthand and improvement in processes, it was able to publish 89 blogs in 2023-24 (128% increase), and over 100 the following year. Importantly, blogs contributed 37.8% of website page views in 2024-25, a 541% increase over two years. This allows the team to significantly enhance storytelling as well. In fact, Shorthand, would use a couple of the organisation’s own stories as an example of great storytelling.

Taking on a larger mandate: The communications team conceptualised and managed the organisation's first large donor engagement event and conclave in Mumbai (January 2025), which saw participation from over 50 large donors and over 275 participants.

Positive feedback from donors: Donors started recognising improved communications outputs — from better reports to field stories — creating a virtuous cycle of trust, visibility, and partnership-building. In fact, the organisation’s output was showcased as examples of how non-profit communications should be created.

Better incoming talent: The quality of those who applied - not just for communications but ourother functions - improved substantially, helping future plans.

Highlights during our association

Thematic focus on donor recognition
One year’s communications strategy centred around recognising key donors.

Campaigns were developed to put donors at the heart of narratives — including videos, case studies, and event coverage — moving beyond traditional education-focused storytelling.

Key learning

Communications can be a strategic enabler for the organisation. In many ways, Robin’s task was to get the function itself as well as the rest of the organisation to see communications contributing to the organisation's goals and larger mission.

This was understood early on, and Robin would take several steps to bridge this gap. The relationship between project and communications teams drastically improved. The former started seeing the latter less as providing tasks, and more of providing guidance and recognition. Their work was amplified by communications and subsequently praised by donors. Eventually, it reached a point where members of the programme team would proactively seek communications input. 

This is a great example of the un-glamorous, getting-in-the-weeds work that Wordmatter does. It's not about a flashy campaign or new tool implementation - it's really about fostering a culture of communications and getting teams to work with each other.