Invest in the foundations
Not everything valuable comes in the shape of a campaign.
Good foundational options include:
- Investing in an external comms review (try the services of Orlo Community Partners like Darren Caveney of Comms2Point0 and Georgia Turner, for example)
- Improving accessibility across existing assets
- Updating briefing, planning, and evaluation templates
This is the work that quietly saves time and stress later.
Strengthen insight and listening
Before you say more, it’s sometimes better to listen and understand so that what you do say hits the right note with the right audiences.
More budget can support:
- Investment in listening tools
- Short pulse surveys on key issues
- Deeper analysis of feedback you already have
- Proper audience and stakeholder mapping
- Message testing before bigger activity next year
This builds confidence and reduces last-minute guesswork.
Many teams use end-of-year budgets to strengthen how they listen to and understand their communities. If that’s something you’re considering, we can show how organisations are using Orlo to support comms, policy, and leadership teams all year round.
Build skills and confidence in your team
Training is often easier to deliver than a full campaign, and it pays back both quickly and longer term. It has an impact on work, but also people’s job satisfaction and potential progression.
Useful areas include:
- Evaluation and impact measurement
- Writing clearly for digital audiences
- Scenario planning for issues and crisis comms
- Coaching for senior comms leads
- Using AI tools
- Wellbeing and mental health
This is about resilience, not just capability.
Improve tools and ways of working
Small operational fixes can make a big difference.
For example:
- Improving reporting so insight is actually useful
- Reviewing sign-off processes that slow everything down
- Trialling tools that reduce manual effort
- Fixing workflows that everyone works around but nobody has time to fix
These changes quietly reduce pressure later.
Test and learn, without the pressure to be perfect
End-of-year spend can be a safe space to try things out.
That might mean:
- Piloting a new engagement approach on a small scale
- Testing different formats or channels
- Experimenting with how you close the feedback loop
- Trying new ways to measure impact
Learning is a valid outcome, even if the test is small, and it has implications on future projects.
Create things that last
When time is tight, focus on work with a long shelf life.
For example:
- Evergreen explainers on complex topics
- Community FAQs that reduce future enquiries
- Visual assets designed for repeat use such as videos, animations, bespoke photography bank
- Content that supports frontline teams as well as external audiences
That’s a much better use of budget than a rushed one-off.
What if the budget comes from a specific department?
Sometimes the money is not central. It belongs to a service, policy area, or programme, and they want it spent on their thing. That changes the dynamic, but it does not remove your influence. You’re still the expert.
Before jumping into tactics, bring the conversation back to purpose. Just as you would with any other piece of work.
Ask What problem are you trying to solve?
- What would success look like from your point of view?
- Who needs to understand or do something differently as a result?
This keeps the focus on impact, not just activity. And it gives comms some space to shape how the money is used.
Be clear about the trade-offs and capacity. You’re not saying no, you’re saying “yes, but…”
For example:
“This is doable, but it means X will move or slow down.”
That’s not saying no, that’s professional prioritisation and it helps other departments understand the real cost of activity beyond budget alone.
It also gives you a reasoned argument to suggest alternative uses for the money that still feel tangible. These could be:
- A discovery or insight phase now, with delivery planned earlier next year
- Improving content or assets that support their work long-term
- Setting up better listening and reporting for their area
- Piloting a smaller piece of engagement to learn before scaling
This shows you are helping, not blocking. And often it could give you something that can help other campaigns/the wider business.
A note for leaders and decision makers
This end-of-year pattern is also a signal. Repeated end-of-year scrambles usually point to planning gaps, not comms failures. Better engagement happens when comms is involved earlier, when insight is built in from the start, and when budgets reflect that reality.
So, this is your opportunity to influence next year’s planning, make the case for earlier engagement and clearer communications. That could be about budgets with an earlier heads up on possible underspends.
If you’re weighing up how to use end-of-year budget and want to explore whether investing in listening and insight – or any of Orlo’s solutions – could make next year easier, we’re happy to talk it through.
No hard sell. Just a practical conversation about what would actually help.
