This document discusses best practices for budgeting and evaluating communications functions. It recommends that communications budgeting be done alongside strategic planning and objective setting. Key areas to consider include agreeing on the role of communications, matching activities to objectives, and evaluating return on investment. It provides a model for evaluation that measures reach, engagement, and action of communications campaigns and outlines metrics and tools for each. The document also notes that communications planning and evaluation frameworks can help organizations track audience behavior and achievement of goals.

1. Budgeting for comms
Some points for discussion
October 2014

2. I have a dream....where communications is understood, appreciated and valued, where proper investment and recognition of interdependence on the part of my colleagues results in a properly resourced and supported communications function.

3. The golden rules
Budgeting needs to be done alongside objective setting, target setting and strategic planning
Don’t undervalue your own resources
Remebermanagement and the insidious power of “where did the day go?”
Cost everything – internally and externally and consider scaling

4. Key areas to consider
Agreeing on the role of comms
Matching activity to objectives
The tricky art of evaluation and return on investment
Putting a value on comms

5. The role of comms

6. Agreeing the role for comms
•Step 1 –define what you mean by commsand ensure all decision makers and stakeholders agree to that definition
•Step 2 –communicate the benefits and limitations of commsas a tool for delivering against your overall objectives
•Step 3 –split the role for commsinto two areas:
leading on delivery against an objective (where commsis originator and steererof strategy and implementation)
Providing a service to the lead on delivering against an objective or sharing an overall objective
•Step 4 –Deciding who delivers commsand where ownership (and budgetary responsibility) and accountability lie

7. Matching activity to objectives

8. Matching activity to objectives
Owned objectives – break down into tasks, milestones and roles
Shared objectives –do the same and agree with shared lead
Supporting other leads – do the same (for all commsrequirement not just that undertaken by the team you lead)
Don’t forget informal objectives –e.g. requests from the Chair, the pointless press release
Bread and butter duties –be anal and list out everything done under the auspices of communications
Getting stuff done -add 10% for project management

9. Putting a value on comms

10. Putting a value on comms–time and cost as the metrics
Element
approach
Activityplanning
Allow10% of time put aside for implementation
Implementation
Break down into delivery, management, infrastructure, evaluation (allow minimum of 5% of resource for this)
Bread and butter
Reviewactivity from previous year and make forecast
Informal objectives
Reviewactivity from previous year and make forecast
Thebusiness of working
allow 10% of time for the stuffof a working day (wilfing, team meetings etc)

11. Putting a value on comms
•External resource requires management –build into budget
•Consider different activity ratios for different roles –for example, we expect our most junior staff to spend 70% of their time on client work, we expect our most senior staff to spend 40-50% of their time on client work, 20% on company management and 20% on business development
•Remember bread and butter costs –newspapers, media monitoring, event attendance, staff learning and development, networking allowances etc
•Value evaluation –if you have gone to the effort of matching activity to objective, make sure you budget the time and money needed to see how you are progressing
•Don’t forget the sometimes hidden cost of internal comms–where does it sit, who pays for it?

12. Numbers on a page
•Two broad approaches:
•Start with a budget and work backwards versus price the activity and take a deep breath
•List out your fixed costs –staff salaries, bread and butter overheads, evaluation, travel etc
•Consider the gold, silver and bronze options –scaling up or down activity, with adjusted outputs and outcomes
•Slay some sacred cows through prioritisation against objective
•Allow for a contingency budget developed through SWOT analysis
•Factor in recruitment costs

13. The tricky art of evaluation

14. Forster Evaluation Model
REACH
ENGAGEMENT
ACTION
What did the audience see?
How did the audience getinvolved?
What did the audience change? Whatchanged in the audience?
Increasing levels of audience involvement

15. The Forster Evaluation Model
COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING
Clarifying objectives, audience(s), channels, call to action, competitor analysis to help benchmark goals, and ideas for activity
Set SMART
campaign goals
Establish programme milestones
Agree measurements & metrics

16. Forster Evaluation Model
REACH
ENGAGEMENT
ACTION
What did the audience see?
How did the audience getinvolved?
What did the audience change?
General perception / brand awareness
Media coverage
Social media
Website
Partnerships and stakeholders
Events
Public affairs
Fundraising
Increasing levels of audience involvement

17. METRICS
Reach
Engagement
Action
TOOLS
Audience attitude / behaviour
Change in perception, attitude
Become members
Increase or decrease in number of people purchasing something / doing something
Audit/benchmarking survey pre and post campaign: ComRes / Ipsos Mori / YouGov / Britain Thinks
Organisation’s own channels/activity –look for ways to find information out
Media coverage
Opportunities to see through target media
Key messages portrayed in target media
Tone of coverage in target media
Percentage of coverage with a link to website
Specific, identified media targets
Length of pieces e.g. percentage of pieces over 300 words
TURF analysis (using TGI data)
Comments on online articles
‘Shares’ on social media
Letter responses in media
Contact from target audience as a result of media coverage
Cuttings service
TGI data
Website
Number of unique users
Number of visitors to a particular page/campaign page
Google ranking
Proportion of people from certain traffic sources
Downloads of a document
Sign ups to a database
Desired audience journeys on a website –track journey and drop offs?
User generated content
Completion of quiz / questionnaire
Data capture
Google analytics

18. Social media
Number of followers
Influence of followers Number of ‘likes’
Number of ‘shares’
Retweets
Number of people using #
Number of comments @
Postive comments in online conversation
Analysis of the online conversation, rating comments as positive or negative
Number of shares
Engagement with identified individuals
Follower Wonk
Simply Measured
Klout
Kred
GorkanaRadar
Sprout Social
Partnerships and stakeholders
Number of partnerships or strategic alliances established
Materials distributed through partners (e.g. mentioned on website, in a newsletter)
Extended relationship with partner as a result of project
Changed perception of client as a result of working in partnership
Events
Number of events held
People sharing information about event
Number of volunteers/regional reps holding events
Number of volunteers/regional reps downloading packs
Public affairs
Meetings arranged with identified people
Identified people attending events
Identified people reading relevant emails
Issue mentioned in Parliament (meaning identified people have engaged)
Issue mentioned in a policy document or a speech
Number of signatures on petition
A legislation change
A change of opinion
ComResparliamentary poll to gauge opinion before and after
Fundraising
(Via other methods listed e.g. media coverage)
Data capture (via newsletter/event)
Donations
Number of members/supporters
Client’s CMS system
Internal
Communication to staff e.g. newsletter
Involvement with organisational events/initiatives
Changed perception of organisation
Acting as ambassador for organisation

19. Forster Evaluation Model
Immediate Impact
Legacy Metrics

20. Electrical Safety First –protecting toddlers
•Our overall aim was to reduce the growing number of toddler burns from hair straighteners
•We created a hard-hitting video using the image of a melted doll’s face and the sound of a baby crying that would resonate with parents and encourage them to take action
•Campaign reach: Over 324 million opportunities to see were generated by securing around 160 pieces of media coverage in target media, and the campaign video accrued over 115,000 views
•Campaign engagement: Over 200,000 viewings were achieved on Facebookwith additional traffic driven to the charity’s website
•Campaign action:
Over 6,500 people contacted the charity to request one of the 500 free heat proof pouches to protect their children
Two manufacturers are now also changing their product as a result of the campaign

21. Communications planning
•Our evaluation model is a key part of our communications planning services, helping clients to track audience behaviour
For example:
•We worked with Practical Action to create an evaluation framework to support all their communications activity, underpinning the achievement of the organisation’s business plan
•We have created Groundwork’s first public facing campaign and the evaluation framework to measure involvement from internal audiences, corporate supporters and the general public

22. Visit the CharityCommswebsite to view slides from our past events, see what events we have coming up and to check out what else we do. www.charitycomms.org.uk

23. Workshop
22 October 2014
London
#CaseForComms
Making the case for comms: unlocking the purse strings