Your Message Is Being Ignored
People have changed the way they ingest information. Here’s what you can do about it.
You’ve crafted what you think is the perfect donor update. You hit send to 5,000 supporters who care deeply about your mission.
The results? Forty-eight people open it. Twelve clicks. Three responses.
Sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone.
The problem isn’t your mission. It’s not your audience. It’s not even your messaging strategy.
The problem is the way you’re writing.
The Shrinking Attention Span Problem
Research from University of California, Irvine, professor Gloria Mark shows that our attention spans have dramatically declined. In 2004, people could focus on a single screen for an average of two and a half minutes. Today? Just 47 seconds.
That’s the window you have before someone scrolls past your message.
Pair that with the deluge of information we all receive on a daily basis. You’re fighting an uphill battle.
But here’s what makes this even harder: most communicators were never trained to write for this reality. We learned to write academic papers, detailed reports and comprehensive updates. We were taught that more information meant better communication.
We have to throw out the old playbook.
What Your Audience Actually Needs
Your supporters don’t need more words. They need easy-to-digest, skimmable, scrollable information. It’s about how you structure and format your information.
They need to understand quickly why what you’re saying matters and exactly what you want them to do.
Think about the last all-staff email you received that ran eight paragraphs long. Did you read every word? Or did you scan the content, hunting for the one piece of information that actually applied to you?
Your donors are doing the same thing with your appeals. Your social audience is doing the same thing with your long LinkedIn posts. Your board members are doing it with your reports.
They’re not being disrespectful. They’re being human.
The Hidden Cost of Complexity
Every unclear message has a price:
The fundraising email that buries the ask loses donations.
The event invite that doesn’t lead with the date gets ignored.
The report that drowns insight in statistics fails to inspire.
But the cost goes deeper than metrics. Dense and confusing communication erodes trust. When supporters have to work too hard to understand your message, they start to question whether you understand your own mission well enough to communicate it effectively.
A Different Approach
What if you could transform how your organization communicates? What if your team could craft messages that:
Grab attention in the first three seconds.
Deliver the same impact in half the words.
Inspire action consistently.
This isn’t about dumbing down your message. It’s about respecting your audience enough to make every word count.
What Changes When You Get It Right
Organizations that master clear communication see measurable results:
Increased engagement. Emails get opened. Social posts get shared. Donation pages get clicked.
Stronger relationships. Supporters feel respected when you value their time. Brevity builds trust.
Greater impact. When your team communicates succinctly and effectively across every channel, your entire mission gains momentum.
And perhaps, most importantly, you stop wasting your team’s most valuable resource: time. The hours spent clarifying what you meant disappear when you get the communication right the first time.
Your Mission Deserves Better
You’ve invested in your programs. You’ve built your team. You’ve clarified your strategy.
But if your communications aren’t connecting, you’re limiting your impact.
Your mission is too important to get lost in wordiness. Your message deserves to be heard.
Ready to transform how your team communicates? We can help. Our Crisp Comms Workshop can give your team a practical framework for crafting clear, compelling messages across every channel. Let’s talk.