Crisis Communications for NGOs: What to Do When Things Go Wrong
Crisis Communications for NGOs: What to Do When Things Go Wrong When a crisis hits your NGO, the first 24 hours decide whether your organisation emerges with its reputation intact or spends years rebuilding donor confidence. Having worked through security incidents in Northeast Nigeria, I can tell you bluntly: how you communicate during a crisis […]
How to Tell a Beneficiary Story Without Exploiting Them
How to Tell a Beneficiary Story Without Exploiting Them Ethical beneficiary storytelling means showing impact without stripping people of their dignity. The short answer: get genuinely informed consent, frame people as agents of their own lives (not victims), and let community voice shape the narrative. Done right, this builds donor trust, not less of it. […]
Why Your NGO’s Social Media Isn’t Getting Donor Attention — And What to Fix
Why Your NGO’s Social Media Isn’t Getting Donor Attention — And What to Fix If your NGO posts consistently but donors scroll past, the problem usually isn’t reach — it’s relevance. Most NGO feeds read like activity logs: “We visited a school today.” Donors don’t fund activities. They fund change they can see, measure, and […]
Why NGO Communication Teams Must Stop Thinking Like “Support Departments”
In many NGOs, communication teams are still treated like support units. We are often brought into projects after everything has already been planned. Sometimes after implementation has already started. Then suddenly, the communication team is expected to “create visibility.” But communication in today’s development sector is no longer just about visibility. It is about influence, […]
Best Affordable Communication Tools for Small NGOs in Nigeria
You do not need a big budget to communicate well. You need the right tools and a plan for using them consistently. Here is a practical guide to the best free and low-cost communications tools available to small NGOs, community organisations, and social enterprises in Nigeria right now. Most small organisations in Nigeria run their […]
What Donor Visibility Actually Means, and Why Most NGOs Get It Wrong
By Nelson Asoh | Communications for Development There is a poster I have seen many times in programme offices across Northeast Nigeria. It is well-designed. The photographs are strong. The messaging is clear. But in the bottom corner, where the donor logo should sit, there is a generic flag icon that looks nothing like the […]
Why Most Communication Updates Fail and How I Fixed Mine
Building Your Communications Framework for 2026
If you work in communications, you know the feeling. A shiny new plan lands in the shared folder every January, carefully formatted, full of big ideas, and by March, no one can find it. It exists, technically. But it was never really used. That’s the problem I kept coming back to while developing the communications […]