One of the aspect that we love about our blog is the fact that it has different voices: today we will discuss themes such as communication and reputation from the particular and singular point of view of the NGOs, thanks to Filippo Ungaro from Save the Children.

Enjoy it!

Reputation and Communication for a NGO

On 18 of February, Filippo Ungaro, director of communication that works for Save The Children Italia since 2001, were in LUISS to talk to marketing students.

Ungaro talked about the performance of Save The Children Italia and their storytelling strategy, not based on wide and generic numbers, but that focuses on the single story of a particular child.
A really important part of the inspiring speech of our guest was about reputation: in fact, as Filippo Ungaro said, reputational crisis are almost unavoidable. This is due to the fact that the causes of this type of crisis are most of the time uncontrollable, both in case of internal cause (e.g. the behaviour of a member of the organization) and especially external cause (such as political situations).

In this context social networks can be crucial tools, because they can play the role of a bridge between a company and its public, they permit a more authentic dialogue with the followers, which is particularly important for NGOs, which do not sell products but ask for a share of values: so, eventually, it’s really important being transparent and reply to followers’ doubts and critiques in a simple and direct way.

Those principles became more important since the level of trust towards NGOs has decreased during the last years. Developing a direct and transparent contact with the public or investing in communication and in the brand can be a successful strategy to earn back the trust lost.