Crafting an organizational audience profile
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If your land trust has discussed or begun to explore the goal of “diversifying your audience,” climate change communication is a smart approach to building relevance and authenticity with non-traditional conservation enthusiasts who may not have otherwise engaged with your land trust.
© 2021 Land Trust Alliance, Inc. All rights reserved.
Crafting an organizational audience profile
Climate change has become a mainstream idea that is quickly rising above partisan politics. Older, white conservative landowners may not use the term “climate change” but they cannot deny the impacts of changes to their land and communities. Young people and people of color demonstrate a greater readiness to communicate about and support organizations tackling the climate crisis.
Many land trusts have set goals to engage with a higher number of young people or people of color in the next five years. If your land trust has discussed or begun to explore the goal of “diversifying your audience,” climate change communication is a smart approach to building relevance and authenticity with non-traditional conservation enthusiasts who may not have otherwise engaged with your land trust.
Before you seek to build a messaging slate to communicate your work on climate, it’s important to determine who you’re communicating to. Each audience may connect with or be motivated by a different aspect of climate change and resilience. Evaluate and build audience profiles for your current and future audiences. Work with your team to clearly define who currently supports your organization and who you would like to recruit as supporters in the next 2-4 years.
This activity only works if you’re honest with yourself and your team. If your core supporters are 65+ white, wealthy, urban, birders — that is an important item to note. Being honest about where you are currently will help set and track realistic goals to achieve into the future.
Check out this example of an audience profile that was developed for an urban land trust in a wealthy, educated region of the Southeast United States. The staff concluded that the current land trust supporter represents a small and homogenous population of the coverage area and is not representative of the entire population in counties they serve. They will seek to broaden the appeal of community-based land conservation to audiences outside of their normal reach through segmented climate communications messaging.
Current audiences
Donors (predominately white, 55 and older, moderate to liberal, politically engaged, financially well-off)
Current landowners already connected to the organization
Actions for current audiences
Invite to events either in-person or online
Highlight personal stories of donors and landowners
Make the case that conservation action mitigates the challenges brought by climate change
New audiences to grow
Younger Generation X and older Millennials (ages 30-40 in 2020)
People of color, particularly Black and Latinx
Legislative policy champions
Actions for new audiences
Cultivate legislative advocates for key policy issues
Recruit social media ambassadors to support content creation
Make the case that supporting conservation action is the best way to channel their interest in climate issues
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