Should We Put Out a Statement?

(Photo by iStock/Tero Vesalainen)

“Should we put out a statement?”

If you’re a nonprofit communications professional, you’ve heard that question many times, often the day after some major news event. Since the October 7 massacres in Israel and subsequent war in Gaza, many nonprofits have struggled to decide whether and how to respond publicly.

That decision is more difficult if there are passionate disagreements about the issue among professional teams, boards, funders, and community partners. It’s often impossible to talk about public advocacy without inflaming internal disagreements—and that’s scary. When passionate ideological divisions arise on a team, they can be painful, time-consuming, and damaging to organizational culture. Understandably, employers often try to avoid workplace conversations about divisive topics.

Norms that prevent needless and unproductive arguments are great, but reluctance to touch controversy often goes too far. If everyone is too nervous even to mention that people in the organization may hold divergent views about a hot-button issue, that’s a recipe for enormous tension if and when the subject becomes unavoidable.

With the 2024 presidential election looming and the possibility of unforeseen controversies constant, this problem won’t go away. Organizations shouldn’t wait to think systematically about how they approach divisive and high-stakes events—knowing these conversations are often as much about internal disagreements as they are about public statements.

Internal Clarity First

Before deciding whether or not the organization should speak, or what to say, you have to know what the organization stands for and what it’s trying to do. But that’s harder than it sounds! In 13 years as a nonprofit communications professional, one challenge I have seen repeatedly is that these “day after a news event” conversations often get confusing. Emotions run high and many layers of problems arise at once. People may talk past each other because they’re each trying to answer different questions, like:

• What is the organization’s stance?
• What should it be?
• Who decides the organization’s stance, and with what process?
• Should the organization publicly advocate on this issue?
• If so, with what advocacy strategy?
• What communications tactics (content types, platforms, channels) best serve that strategy?
• How should we respond to outside pressures about this issue from important stakeholders?
• How should we manage internal disagreements and tensions—perhaps even in this conversation?

These vital questions can’t entirely be separated from one another. But they must be answered distinctly, with everyone understanding which you’re answering at a given time—or conversations will run in circles.

Stance, Tolerance Range, and Advocacy Strategy

For any issue, your organization has a stance—whether you publicize it or not. “We believe A” is a stance. “We believe Z” is a stance. “We believe G through R are valid” is a stance. “We are neutral about the alphabet” is also a stance.

Similarly, for any issue, your organization has a tolerance range—whether implicit or explicit. Tolerance range is related to stance, but distinct. In the alphabet controversy, your tolerance range might be “We believe C, but we respect all opinions.” Your tolerance range might be, “Any position besides C is absolutely unacceptable.” Or your tolerance range might be “We believe C, and we’re willing to partner with organizations who proclaim A-S, but we will not engage with anyone who advocates T-Z.”

Tolerance range has an external aspect—whom do we platform, whom do we serve, with whom do we partner, whose donations do we accept—and an internal aspect—what kinds of speech or actions by team members, board members, or vendors do our policies tolerate. Please note, many aspects of tolerance range have legal implications; this article is NOT legal advice, so consult your lawyer. The point is simply that a tolerance range is distinct from a stance.

Finally, for any issue, whether intentionally or accidentally, every organization has an advocacy strategy. Two organizations with the same stance and the same tolerance range might still use different advocacy strategies. Advocacy strategies include:

• We advocate reactively and inconsistently on this issue, based on the recent impulses of the CEO and/or vocal board members and staffers.
• We advocate on this issue the minimum amount necessary to avoid important stakeholder criticism—i.e. to keep funders and coalition partners happy, we affirm our stance whenever a news event makes that feel mandatory; otherwise, we stay quiet.
• We never advocate about this issue.
• We continually advocate to change minds among this target audience who currently disagree but are persuadable, so that they will take this target action.
• We continually advocate to activate this target audience who already agree, so that they will take this target action.
• We advocate about this issue opportunistically—i.e. usually not, but we advocate if and when unusual circumstances present an opportunity for a high-value win.

These are not the only possible advocacy strategies; there are countless more. What’s important is to craft a deliberate strategy instead of falling into one by default. Jumping directly from “seeing big news” to “drafting a statement” is a common way to fall into this trap; statements and other tactics should be downstream of a smart and explicit strategy.

Normalize Ideological Diversity

It’s easy to intend to get this right. We may intend to approach hard conversations with calm and curiosity, clarity, and charity—clarity about our stance and charity toward those who disagree. But old habits and strong emotional reactions can disrupt those intentions. To set ourselves up for productive dialogue when we passionately disagree, we need practice. We need to set an explicit goal for our organizations to build a culture of respect across differences in deeply held beliefs, and plentiful, practical opportunities to make that culture real.

How, exactly, to achieve that deserves an article (or a whole library) of its own. But in a world of political upheaval, culture wars, and literal wars, the health of our organizations depends on doing this work well. If we neglect the skills of working together across important differences internally, our organizations will be in enough trouble that what we say or don’t say in public will be the least of our concerns.

Read more stories by Seth Chalmer.