Sample Climate Communications Plan

Creating a strategic communications plan can help guide your organization’s communications efforts by helping to identify your priority communications goals and audiences and outlining a framework for understanding and implementing your communications strategy.

This short guide is meant to help professionals — in particular, those at nonprofits and mission-driven organizations — represent people in an inclusive and ethical way across external communications and branded content.

When crafting and choosing your messages, it’s important to make them both effective and tailored to your audience. How to best do that? This guidance shares how to know your audience and speak to them.

In 2021 the Upper Saco Valley Land Trust began the process of reviewing and

revisioning its 10-Year Strategic Conservation Plan, last updated in 2011.

While each strategic land conservation plan will be unique, there are certain topics that should be included in all plans. Each of the suggested outline topics is accompanied by a general estimate (high, medium or low) of the intensity of resources (time or money) that the topic requires from the land trust. Items that the land trust has already created or can easily generate in-house are rated as low intensity.

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.

It is important to be intentional with your climate messaging. A climate communications strategy can be built into your current plan or a newly developed organizational communications plan.