 The very first conference presentation I ever gave in the nonprofit world—at a very early NTEN gathering nearly 25 years ago—was called “Branding Through Websites.” The idea wasn’t new then, and it still holds up: everything on your site shapes how people understand your organization. Not just your visuals, but your words, your stories, your tone, and the choices you make about what to include.
This month, I’m excited to share an article from my friend and colleague Paul Sternberg, who walks you through brands from a holistic perspective: ​Building Your Nonprofit Brand: A Place to Begin​. He digs into what a brand really is and how to shape it across channels, including your website.
There’s a common thread with both brand strategy and website strategy. Both begin not with colors or taglines or nifty features, but with an unglamorous first step: defining your audiences.
As Paul puts it, “Your audiences are the people you work with, partner with, and work on behalf of.” That sounds simple, but inside many nonprofits, assumptions about audiences drift quietly over time. Leadership may be thinking about funders. Program staff may be thinking about participants. Communications teams may be thinking about the general public.
None of these views are wrong, but if you don’t align them, your website ends up trying to serve everyone equally. Which, in practice, means it serves no one particularly well. Defining audiences lets you give each group what they need instead of assuming a single version of your content will work for all. (Assuming is generally not a good content strategy.)
Here’s a simple way to define and prioritize your audiences together:
- Gather key stakeholders. This conversation works far better live—on Zoom or in a real room—because people react to each other’s assumptions in helpful ways.
- List every possible audience. Capture them somewhere visible, like Miro, Google Doc, or a white board. Put everything on the list before you narrow it.
- Make sure your audiences are people. “Foundations” aren’t surfing your website; they’re organizations with many types of staff. “Foundation program staff” is probably who you mean. For policymakers, you may need two groups: “legislative staff” and “legislative decision-makers,” each with different needs and attention spans.
- Prioritize together. With a small group, you might be able to just talk it through. With a larger one, ​dot-poll​ voting works well: give everyone a few votes and see which audiences rise to the top.
- Create tiers. Rank them in order and group them into a top tier (often 1–3 audiences) and a secondary tier (another 2–4). This is important! If everyone is top priority, nothing is.
Why this matters: Imagine you’re pushing for policy change. Advocates need clear actions; legislative staff want background materials; legislators need a concise one-pager. Same issue, different needs. You can include all of these, but giving them equal weight on the homepage won’t work.
Once you’ve clarified who you’re targeting, you can think about what those audiences need and how your site can meet them where they are. ​Paul’s article on branding​ offers smart next steps to shape how your organization is perceived by these audiences.
Clear audiences make every website decision easier—from navigation to messaging to homepage design. A short conversation now can prevent months of debates and mysterious priority shifts.
Dive Deeper
Building Your Nonprofit Brand: A Place to Begin​ | Paul Sternberg
A grounded primer on what a brand really is—and how nonprofits can intentionally shape it. Paul highlights how mission, values, audiences, and experiences work together, and offers simple ways to strengthen your brand through clarity, consistency, and choices that make people feel something real.
​Benefits of defining your audience​ | University of Wisconsin–Madison Web Strategy
A short, practical article that clearly lays out how defined audiences lead to better navigation, clearer writing, stronger content decisions, and a site that’s genuinely easier for people to use. It’s especially helpful for readers who want a succinct “why this matters” explanation to share with colleagues.
​Brand strategy: Building a System that Brings Your Story to Life​ | Briteweb Like Paul’s article, this guide looks at what a brand is and how you can define it. It’s another take on how to define and structure your brand strategy so you can bring it to life consistently, across every channel.