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The most common version of this question sounds like this: “We are not big enough yet for PR. We will think about it once we have more traction.”
It is an understandable position. It is also, in almost every case, backwards.
The organizations that show up most effectively in public did not start doing publicity once they had an audience. They built their audience in part because they were doing publicity all along.
The common assumption
Many organizations treat publicity as a final step.
Something you do:
That approach creates a problem. By the time you are ready to go public, you have already missed the opportunity to shape how the story unfolds.
There is a version of “ready for PR” that most organizations are waiting for that does not actually exist.
They are waiting until they have a bigger budget. Until the product is fully built. Until they have a few more wins to point to. Until the messaging feels tighter. Until there is a major announcement worth making.
The problem is that all of those things are harder to achieve without a public narrative supporting them. Donors are harder to attract when no one has heard of you. Partners are harder to bring on when there is nothing to show them. Talent is harder to recruit when your organization has no public presence. Media coverage is harder to earn when you have no prior coverage to reference.
Publicity does more than communicate the work. For many organizations, it is part of what makes the work possible.
The key insight: Publicity is not a reward for growth. For most organizations, it is a condition for it.
Publicity at an early stage does not mean a massive media campaign or a full-service firm on retainer from day one. It means making deliberate, strategic choices about how your organization shows up publicly, and being consistent about them.
That might mean a clear, well-articulated public narrative that everyone in the organization can communicate consistently. It might mean two or three strong media placements in the right outlets, rather than a hundred in the wrong ones. It might mean a social presence that reflects the organization’s positioning accurately and builds a record of credibility over time. It might mean one or two journalist relationships that are cultivated deliberately, not just reached out to when there is an announcement. The organizations that have strong communications infrastructure when they need it most are the ones that built it before they needed it.
The key insight: Early-stage publicity is about building the foundation, not filling the room. That foundation is what makes filling the room possible later.
There is no single threshold that signals it is time to invest in publicity. But there are patterns that suggest an organization is at a point where strategic publicity is no longer optional.
You are about to do something significant. A launch, a fundraising campaign, a policy push, an event, a partnership announcement, or an expansion into a new market. These moments have a short window to generate momentum, and that window is almost always better used if the communications infrastructure was in place before the announcement, not built in response to it.
You are trying to shift how your organization is perceived. Reputations are easier to build than to rebuild, but both require sustained, strategic communications effort. If your public narrative does not accurately reflect what your organization has become, that gap will not close on its own.
You are operating in a competitive or scrutinized space. If there are critics, competitors, or political opponents who have an interest in shaping how your organization is perceived, waiting to invest in your own public narrative is a gift to them.
Your credibility is part of your operating model. For organizations whose ability to raise money, form partnerships, attract talent, or influence policy depends on public trust, publicity is not optional.
The key insight: The right time to start is before the moment you need it most.
The consequences of waiting too long to invest in publicity are usually not dramatic. They are slow, cumulative, and easy to attribute to something else.
The journalist who wrote the story without calling you because you were not on their radar. The grant that went to a better-known organization. The partnership that did not materialize because the other party could not find enough about you to feel confident. The content creator who didn’t tag you because your social presence is either non-existent or looks like a bot account. The crisis that became harder to navigate because there was no baseline of public trust to draw on.
These consequences are the direct result of not having a publicity strategy. But they often are.
The organizations that build public credibility early have a reserve to draw on when they need it. The ones that wait until they need it are always starting from behind.
The key insight: The cost of starting late is rarely visible until the moment it hits you like a truck.
For most organizations considering publicity for the first time, the first step is not a retainer agreement or a full campaign. It is a conversation about where you are, where you are trying to go, and what your public narrative needs to do to support that.
That conversation should clarify a few things. What the organization is trying to be known for. Who the key audiences are and where they are paying attention. What communications infrastructure already exists and what is missing. And what the most important public moments on the horizon are that deserve preparation.
From that clarity comes a scope that actually fits the organization’s stage, goals, and capacity. That scope might be a focused project. It might be an ongoing relationship. It might be a combination of both.
What it should not be is vague outreach activity in the hope that something lands. Publicity works when it is strategic. The question of timing is really a question of whether the organization is ready to approach it that way.
The key insight: The first step is not a campaign. It is clarity about what you are trying to build and who needs to know about it.
If your organization is trying to figure out whether now is the right time and what the right scope looks like, we’re ready to guide you. Let’s chat!
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