Clear priorities, practical next steps: a communications audit for Underdog International
Underdog International · Comms audit and follow-on support
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In brief
A small UK charity connecting children and dogs wanted to make more of its communications with limited time and resources. The audit found the biggest answers in its own data, set three priorities, and led to a second phase of work.
The starting point
Underdog International exists to create a more compassionate world through connecting children and dogs. It rehomes rescue dogs, runs education programmes and brings trained therapy dog teams into UK primary schools. It had already passed its goal of reaching one million children and dogs.
It had a small, committed team with no dedicated comms role, so comms work happened in between everything else. With existing brand and growth plans to build on, the opportunity was to bring more coordination and measurement to day-to-day communications. Meanwhile, schools were waiting to be paired with a therapy dog, making volunteer recruitment a priority.
The audit
I reviewed the website, social channels, email platform, Google Ads and internal documents to get a sense of where things stood. The team then filled out questionnaires, and we followed up with a 90-minute call to dig a little deeper. These are some of the things I found:
Many of the answers were already in their own data. The therapy dog application form asked people how they heard about the charity. The responses reviewed pointed to Google search and word of mouth as important sources, highlighting an opportunity to make greater use of search and the charity’s Google Ad Grant alongside Facebook recruitment.
More attention could turn into action. Email was the charity’s strongest asset, with a loyal audience. Targeted emails with one clear ask did far better at generating clicks than round-ups, providing a useful direction for future communications.
There was more of the story to tell. The mission runs both ways, children helping dogs and dogs helping children, but dog adoption stories were more prominent in comms. There was an opportunity to give the schools work greater visibility and bring that duality to life more consistently.
The thinking had already been done. A brand review, a growth plan and a competitor analysis were all there. The next step was clear comms ownership and a system simple and intuitive enough for a busy team to use every day.
The report set out three priorities: give comms one owner and one simple system, make email the engine, and improve the therapy dog volunteer journey. Each priority came with a named owner, a deadline and a single first step. Alongside the report came a toolkit: a messaging framework, an audience persona, a content framework and a monthly reporting template.
What happened next
Every recommendation was written for the team to take forward themselves. Once they’d read it, they came back with a list of the areas where they wanted more support, and we agreed four weeks of work.
A marketing campaign plan. I turned priority three into a campaign plan. It set targets for trained volunteers, sized against how many volunteers the charity could assess, and used measures that matched the stages the team already tracked. It covered six channels, with a ready-to-use press release, a phased timeline and a tiered budget.
Setting the groundwork on Meta. I audited the accounts, reviewed the account set-up, and set out the steps to run the charity’s first paid campaigns.
Coaching the new comms owner. Weekly sessions with the team member now leading comms, covering marketing fundamentals and how to plan, set up and measure a Meta campaign. I also provided various guides for future reference: a plain-English jargon glossary, an example campaign funnel and campaign naming and tracking tools.
“Benjamin asked brilliant questions and challenged us in a way that was genuinely helpful, even the process of talking to him gave us more clarity than we’d had. He found things in our own data we’d been too close to see, and gave us tools the team could actually pick up and use. The audit and toolkit he delivered were fabulous.”
The takeaway
A good audit doesn’t hand you a strategy to admire. It gives you clarity, and concrete, often simple changes to the way you work. Here, the findings came from the team’s own data, the recommendations were sized for the realities of the organisation, and the toolkit became the foundation for the work that followed.
If you want the same clarity, start with an audit. If you then want help putting it in place, I can continue on a project, retainer or fractional basis.