How to Build Stakeholder Personas for Social Impact Communications

It’s the “if a tree falls in a forest” adage, but with a marketing and communications twist: No matter how good your campaign may be, it won’t—in fact, it can’t—be heard if it doesn’t reach your target audiences. 

 When it comes to impact communications, this rings true whether you’re running a nonprofit, leading a corporate giving initiative, or inspiring others to join your cause. It’s essential to ground plans and activities in a deep understanding of your stakeholders’ needs, concerns, priorities, psychographics, and other motivators no matter your specific goals.  

Research, interviews, and social listening can help get to the root of who your audiences really are and craft detailed stakeholder personas that inform your strategies and tactics.  

Why Stakeholder Personas Matter for Impact Communications 

When you’re working to create societal change, you may be asking people (i.e., donors and funders) to care about issues that do not directly affect their daily lives. Generic messaging about “making a difference” or “creating change” can fall flat because it doesn’t connect to your audience’s specific motivations. When you speak directly to someone’s values, lived experiences, and vision for a better world, it can inspire meaningful engagement. 

With this in mind, creating stakeholder personas can help you: 

• • Tailor your messaging to specific audience segments based on their unique needs, concerns, psychographics, and demographics 

• • Choose the right channels for reaching different groups, from social media platforms to blogs and/or events 

• • Prioritize your efforts by focusing on stakeholders with the highest potential for engagement and impact 

• • Build authentic connections by demonstrating that you understand what matters most to your audience 

Step 1: Identify Your Key Stakeholder Groups 

Start by mapping out who you would like to reach. This could include:  

• • Current and prospective donors and funders who provide financial support 

• • Current and prospective beneficiaries who directly benefit from your programs 

• • Volunteers who contribute their time and skills 

• • Community partners who collaborate on initiatives 

• • Policymakers whose decisions impact your work 

Step 2: Conduct Thorough Research 

Data is foundational to persona creation. Using multiple research methods can help make sure you don’t bias your personas on any one source of information and create more comprehensive, well-rounded, and ultimately realistic outputs.  

Research methods may include: 

• • Surveys or Focus Groups: Deploy online surveys or synthesize existing market research to collect demographic information, motivations, and preferences. If you’re designing your own questionnaire, consider asking about perceptions of the organization in additional to overall pain points and challenges. Synthetic focus groups powered by smart AI tools can also help aggregate and pressure test ideas if time and resources are tight.  

• • One-on-One Interviews: If appropriate, schedule conversations with a representative sample of each stakeholder group. These structured interviews allow you to explore topics in depth and uncover insights that surveys might miss. It’s best to conduct these conversations individually versus in group settings to avoid group think and to better assess what is a throughline rather than an outlier opinion. 

• • Social Media Scraping: Take a deep dive into what audience members are doing on social media. What are they posting about? What information do they share? What do they engage with? This can also offer insight into what they think, need, and prioritize.  

• • Peer Organization Audit: What are your peer organizations doing effectively that you can learn from? What does this mean the white space is for you in terms of how you differentiate your messaging to shared audience members?  

Once data is collected, mine it for themes. Commonalities may point to trends that are worth capturing in your personas or exploring further if needed. However, this doesn’t mean that you should automatically discount ideas that only come up once or twice. Though less pervasive, these sentiments or data points may be relevant to include as well.  

Step 3: Build Detailed Persona Profiles 

Now it’s time to bring your personas to life. Create brief (one to two pages) profiles that include but are not necessarily limited to: 

• • Demographics: Age, location, income level, education, occupation 

• • Psychographics: Values, beliefs, lifestyle, personality traits 

• • Goals and Motivations: What audiences hope to achieve professionally and/or personally 

• • Pain Points: Challenges or concerns around these aspirations 

• • Objections: Mental or tangible barriers to engaging with your organization 

• • Communication Preferences: Preferred channels, messaging tone, and frequency 

• • Behavioral Patterns: How audiences typically engage with social impact organizations 

Step 4: Put Your Personas to Work 

With your personas complete, use them to guide your impact communications: 

• • Craft tailored messages that speak to each persona’s specific motivations 

• • Select channels where your personas are most active 

• • Develop content that addresses their unique pain points 

• • Time your communications based on their engagement patterns 

• • If relevant, create personalized donor journeys that match their giving preferences 

Making Impact Communications Resonate 

Building stakeholder personas isn’t a one-time exercise. As your organization evolves—whether you’re scaling your programs or entering new communities—and as your stakeholders’ needs and awareness change, revisit and refine your personas. The investment you make in understanding your audiences will pay dividends in more effective messaging, which can lead to stronger relationships, increased funding, deeper community trust, and, ultimately, greater impact. 

When you truly know who you’re talking to, your impact communications have a better chance of resonating, mobilizing action, and creating the systemic change you’re working toward.