You won't reach the top by staying busy
7.8.26
Happy Wednesday, nonprofit communications leaders.
Over the last three weeks, we've walked through three stages of a nonprofit comms career:
The Doer, buried under someone else's priorities
The Translator, strong in a comms lane that started to feel like a ceiling
The Strategist, thinking big but still fighting to be treated like it
Today we finish with the final stage each of you can grow to, if you desire to: The CCO-Minded Leader.
So who is the CCO-Minded Leader?
It's the person who thinks about the whole picture, whether or not they hold the title. (By now you know how I feel about titles.)
This person isn't just thinking about their content calendar.
They're thinking about organizational messaging and what that message does once it leaves their hands. They're thinking through how it sounds coming out of the mouth of a reporter they just pitched, or how it reads to the stakeholder scrolling past it on social an hour later.
They're thinking about the whole message, from the first draft to wherever it finally lands.
Here's how to know if you're in it:
You think about the whole organization's message, not just the task in front of you
You follow a message past your own hands, considering how it lands with a reporter, a donor, a board member, and a brand-new follower
You're the person others come to when the messaging gets complicated or high-stakes
You factor in the organizational budget when you're making a comms decision
You lead at this level already, whether or not your title officially says so
You know you're never quite "done" growing, and you get a little uneasy when you've gone too long without learning something new
That last one matters more than you might think. What actually separates the leaders who reach this stage from the ones who stall out just short of it is rarely about talent. It's time. Or more precisely, the belief that they don't have any to spare.
I talk to nonprofit comms leaders every. single. day. who tell me exactly this. They're overwhelmed. Everything in front of them feels too urgent to step away from, even for an hour.
And I get it. I know it can feel like everything on your comms desk is on fire, especially if you're carrying policy work or a heavy load of PR and media. That work can be genuinely relentless.
But the leaders who are actually succeeding and growing have one thing in common. They MAKE THE TIME to grow. They trust that things won't burn to the ground if they step away for an hour or two each month to invest in their own career. And they're right. It doesn't burn down.
The lie you're telling yourself, and the one I told myself until I realized nothing would change unless I made it change, is that you'll get to it once things slow down.
Friend, things never slow down. There is never a perfect time to invest in your own growth as a comms leader, whether that's networking or professional development or mentorship.
So what do you do if this is you?
Get in the room with other comms leaders.
Find an in-person networking event in your city, or register for a conference built for nonprofit marketers and comms pros. A community like the Nonprofit Comms Club is another way to do it. Being around people who do what you do is often where the biggest growth happens.
Ask for help by name.
Ask a leader you respect to mentor you. Ask your boss for professional development or education assistance. Most people never ask, and most bosses say yes more often than you'd expect.
Protect the time like it's a deadline.
Put an hour or two on your calendar each month for your own growth, and defend it the way you'd defend a board-report deadline. If it lives on the calendar, it happens. If it doesn't, the urgent will always win.
You don't need permission to grow, and you don't need the perfect moment, fellow comms pros. You just need to decide that your own development is worth time on the calendar. Every strong comms leader I know made that decision a long time ago.
Welp, that's the series. We covered four nonprofit comms career stages in four weeks. Wherever you saw yourself in these emails, you are not stuck there. Nearly all of you told me in last week's poll that you feel stuck between two of these stages, and the way out is the same no matter which two. Get honest about where you are, then make the time to grow past it.
Speaking of getting honest about where you are... I've been building something for exactly that. Coming soon is a self-assessment that will help you pinpoint what kind of comms leader you are right now and the specific gaps you'll need to close to reach the next stage. Keep an eye on your inbox as I'll share it here first. But if you want to be SURE you don't miss it, add your name and email here.
Happy communicating,
Julie
Former nonprofit CCO and founder of the Nonprofit Comms Club
P.S. This is the final email in the 4-part series on the career stages of a nonprofit comms leader. Thanks for coming along on all four. If you want a question answered in a future issue, you can drop it here.