When We Only Speak to Ourselves: Rethinking Relevance in Social Impact

Across the charity and advocacy world, a quiet pattern has emerged:
most organisations speak almost exclusively to people who already agree with them.

Their language, values, and assumptions often match the thinking of the audiences they already know — people who share the vocabulary, the politics, and the moral framing. Inside those familiar circles, the work feels righteous and urgent.

But there’s a cost.
When the conversation becomes too small, movements lose reach, relevance, and the capacity to influence people outside their own networks.

This isn’t a problem of intentions.
It’s a problem of communication.

When Agreement Becomes the Audience

Echo chambers disguised as impact

In commercial settings, targeting the “warm audience” makes sense.
But when charities adopt the same approach, they unintentionally build echo chambers rather than communities.

We see it often:

  • DEI events attended almost entirely by people who already support DEI

  • neurodiversity events filled with those fluent in the language

  • anti-racist conversations held mostly among self-identified allies

Because the audience already shares the conclusion, very little gets explored.
Nothing gets examined.
Nothing evolves.

The work stays important — but it stops expanding.

Understanding the “Prism”

People enter conversations with different motivations, pressures, and incentives

During time spent in new professional spaces — from leadership networks to informal business meetups — one thing became clear:

Everyone sees the world through their own prism.

Investors, HR teams, marketers, entrepreneurs, public sector leaders — each group is shaped by different considerations:

  • risk vs responsibility

  • innovation vs stability

  • duty vs practicality

  • reputation vs experimentation

Different motivations.
Different pressures.
Different reasons to enter — or avoid — a conversation.

Charities often overlook this.
They communicate within their own prism, assuming others share their emotional language or sense of urgency. But when communication doesn’t account for difference, it doesn’t travel.

When Pain Becomes the Primary Strategy

A trauma-aware look at how messages get shaped

Many changemakers enter the work because of a personal experience of injustice or exclusion. Their commitment is real and deeply felt.

But when pain becomes the main driver of a message, the communication shifts.
It can unintentionally:

  • demand agreement rather than invite dialogue

  • create defensiveness instead of curiosity

  • signal urgency in a way that others interpret as accusation

Pain deserves space — but it needs support, not a spotlight.
Without that support, communication can become reactive rather than strategic.

This doesn’t build bridges.
It creates distance.

The Limits of Identity-Based Silos

Why “allyship” frameworks often shrink the conversation

Across DEI, anti-racist, and neurodiversity spaces, allyship is often used as a signal of inclusion.
But allyship frameworks also carry an unintended message:

If you’re not an ally, you’re outside the circle.
This can create:

  • insiders and outsiders

  • informed vs uninformed

  • acceptable vs problematic

Instead of growing the field, the work becomes narrower.
Curiosity becomes risky.
Questions feel unsafe.
People hesitate to engage.

Movements begin to mirror the very exclusion they’re trying to address — only with different language.

A Reflection from the Neurodiversity Space

When shared language becomes a barrier

In earlier neurodiversity work, it became clear how easy it is to build a community that is unified but inward-facing.

The focus was on:

  • people who already knew the terminology

  • those who shared the lived experience

  • those who agreed with the starting assumptions

There wasn’t enough space for:

  • newcomers

  • people who were simply curious

  • people with different incentives or working cultures

  • individuals who wanted to understand but not join the cause

The result wasn’t wider transformation.
It was a closed moral circle.

Where Can People Actually Learn?

The missing ingredient: psychologically safe spaces for inquiry

In many charity-led spaces, the most common questions are quietly whispered outside the room:

  • “Where can I ask something without getting it wrong?”

  • “Where can I challenge an idea without being judged?”

  • “Where can I learn without already knowing the script?”

The sector rarely answers these questions, because many spaces aren’t designed for learning — they’re designed for alignment.

We create spaces for agreement rather than exploration.
For affirmation rather than understanding.
For emotional expression rather than shared interpretation.

Without spaces for genuine inquiry, we repeat the same messages to the same people, expecting a different result.

Why Speaking Only to the Converted Doesn’t Create Change

When organisations speak only within their own prism:

  • resentment grows

  • trust declines

  • misunderstanding increases

  • systems remain static

  • polarisation deepens

The irony is that in trying to build a more inclusive society, we risk reproducing the same separation — simply with different labels.

If Impact Is the Goal, the Conversation Must Widen

Real change requires speaking to people:

  • who are unsure

  • who aren’t convinced

  • who have different pressures

  • who are motivated by different values

  • who are outside the emotional centre of the work

These individuals are not obstacles.
They are essential collaborators in system-level change.

If we want to shift structures, we need to understand — and speak to — the full spectrum of people within those structures.

This is the harder work.
The braver work.
And the work most organisations have forgotten how to do.

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