The Communications Advantage: How Strategic PR Partners Strengthen Your Fundraising Team
December 2, 2025
By Kacie Escobar, MBA, APR
Major fundraising campaigns are transformative moments for nonprofits. They mobilize teams, stretch organizational capacity and require absolute clarity about the future you’re building. They also require complete alignment between the teams shaping donor strategy and the team’s shaping your organization’s public presence:
- Development staff and fundraising counsel (the donor-strategy engine)
- Marketing and communications (the public-strategy engine)
Yet, in most nonprofits, these groups struggle to remain in sync.
When these teams move in lockstep, donor strategy, organizational narrative and public visibility align, and campaigns accelerate as a result. When they don’t, campaigns stall. That’s where strategic communications becomes the connective tissue.
At Curley & Pynn, we partner with development leaders and campaign counsel to build the environment that makes donor strategy work. We don’t cultivate donors or manage solicitations. Instead, we strengthen the messages, visibility and organizational alignment that allow your fundraising team to perform at its highest level.
Here’s what that partnership looks like.
1. We align messaging to strengthen donor conversations.
Fundraising counsel and internal development teams guide solicitation strategy, case development and gift sequencing. But those strategies only work when everyone inside the organization can articulate them clearly.
We build message discipline across leaders, staff and board members to ensure your team speaks with confidence, clarity and consistency.
The takeaway: When your internal messengers are aligned, donor conversations feel sharper, more credible and more connected to a larger vision.
2. We shape the public narrative while allowing the experts to lead donor cultivation.
We’re smart enough to know what we don’t know and stay in our lane. While your development team manages donor relationships and campaign counsel guides cultivation, we focus on activating the broader audiences who influence donor confidence: your community, press, stakeholders, partners, digital followers and internal staff.
Our work includes:
- Storytelling and content
- Media strategy and amplification
- External partnerships
- Executive visibility
- Internal communications
- Reputation management/risk mitigation
- Visibility for major initiatives and milestones
The takeaway: Donor strategy performs better when the ecosystem around it – including your public reputation, relevance and visibility – signals strength.
3. We manage campaign communications beyond the top donors.
It’s no secret that high-capacity prospects drive most campaign fundraising. But broader audiences determine momentum, legitimacy and long-term trust.
We manage those audiences so your development team can stay focused on leadership-level donors.
This includes communications to:
- Staff and internal stakeholders
- Volunteers and board members
- Community leaders and partners
- Media and the broader community
The takeaway: Campaign climate matters. When every audience hears the right message at the right time, donor strategy has room to thrive.
4. We elevate leadership visibility to complement donor strategy.
Fundraising counsel advises leaders on donor interactions. We prepare them for the public arena.
Through thought leadership, public speaking, media engagement and narrative positioning, we ensure executives show up as credible, future-focused leaders.
The takeaway: Executive visibility isn’t PR vanity; it’s a strategic asset. When leaders appear confident and mission-driven in the public eye, donors take notice.
5. We convert campaign milestones into compelling stories that sustain momentum.
Every campaign has defining moments: leadership gifts, groundbreaking announcements, early wins, community partnerships.
Fundraising counsel sequences these moments for donor impact. We translate them into compelling stories that expand awareness and deepen trust.
Examples include:
- Gift announcements
- Web and email content
- Milestone videos
- Media outreach
- Digital engagement campaigns
The takeaway: Milestones shouldn’t be one-off updates. When managed well, they create momentum that carries your campaign forward.
6. We monitor the external environment and advise on campaign risk.
Together, we keep an eye on the full landscape. While your fundraising team monitors donor readiness and philanthropic trends, we help track the external environment, including:
- Media attention and narratives
- Community sentiment
- Policy shifts
- Competitive landscape
- Digital and conversation trends
The takeaway: Campaigns don’t operate in a vacuum. When something shifts externally, you need to know quickly and adjust messaging before it becomes a problem.
7. We bring structure, rhythm and coordination to communications.
Campaigns require discipline. We build a communications rhythm that works in tandem with your fundraising counsel’s meeting schedule and your internal team’s workflow.
This includes:
- Biweekly syncs
- Monthly scorecards
- Quarterly strategy reviews
- Clear alignment around milestones, timelines and approvals
The takeaway: Coordination eliminates surprises, reduces friction and keeps your campaign’s strategic center of gravity strong.
The Bottom Line
Bold visions don’t fund themselves. They require donor strategy and a compelling communications engine to support it.
Adding a communications partner to the team isn’t “adding another agency.” It’s filling a structural need for your campaign. Without a communications partner, the burden of narrative-building and public engagement falls on internal teams who are already stretched thin, or on fundraising counsel, whose success depends on a strong public narrative but whose scope isn’t designed to build one.
Our role isn’t extra; it’s essential. We reduce workload, strengthen donor confidence and give your campaign the communications engine it needs to move forward with clarity and momentum.
Fundraisers lead donor strategy.
We lead the communications that unlock your fundraising potential.
Together, we create an environment where donors feel confident, informed and inspired to make bold, transformational investments.
