This is twenty-one. This is towards one of our missions. Education. You’ll learn everything about marketing - from the basics to the most advanced strategies - for free, thanks to VellumWorks.

Great marketing is great communication - clear, simple, and understood exactly as intended.

But in reality, communication is messy. Messages get lost, misinterpreted, distorted, or ignored entirely.

The Shannon–Weaver Model of Communication is a foundational framework that explains how messages are sent, received, and sometimes distorted during communication.

Created in 1948 by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, it breaks the communication process into clear steps so we can understand where misunderstandings happen and how to prevent them.

At its core, the model describes how a message moves from sender to receiver and all the places where it can break down.

This is the person or organisation creating the message.
For charities, it’s your team, your founders, your campaign creators — anyone generating communication.

Key question:
What exactly are we trying to say?

This is the tool or method you use to encode and send the message.

Examples:

Key question:
How are we packaging this message?

This is the content itself — the words, visuals, or sounds being sent.

Key question:
Is our message clear, simple, and easy to understand?

Noise is anything that disrupts or distorts the message.

There are two types:

Bad audio, a distracting environment, a cluttered design, a slow website, and low-quality video.

Jargon, confusing terms, unclear wording, cultural misunderstandings, and long explanations.

For charities, this is the #1 reason messages fail:
Too complicated. Too much text. Too much assumed knowledge.

Even as a charity, you need to ensure that the journey is as simple as possible. This is given for a business. Ensure it is easy, with minimal noise for the people who want to volunteer, donate, and understand more about your charity.

Key question:

What’s stopping people from understanding us instantly?

This is the person who receives and interprets the message.

For charities, this could be:

Key question:
Does our audience understand this the way we intended?

The final outcome or behaviour will include:

However, on the flip side, this isn’t just about charities. If you’re a business owner or marketer, you need to understand what the destination is for your project.

You need to optimise for this and ensure the journey is as easy as possible for people to do that.

Key question:
Did the communication lead to the action we wanted?

Because communication breaks down far more often than you think.

A message can fail at any stage:

The Shannon–Weaver model helps you build communication that is clean, simple, and powerful.

Especially when speaking to people who are busy, overwhelmed, or hearing from many organisations at once.

Pick one piece of communication: a web page, email, or social media post.

Check for noise:

Remove ANYTHING that adds friction.

Great communication is not about saying more – it’s about being understood faster.

Charities rely on clarity, trust, and emotional connection.

If supporters misunderstand your message or if noise distracts them, your impact drops.

When your communication becomes simple, accessible, and friction-free:

The Shannon–Weaver Model helps you build communication that cuts through the noise and lands exactly where it should.

At VellumWorks, we believe knowledge should be free. That’s why this series will guide you, step by step, through everything from the basics to the most advanced strategies in marketing: no jargon, no gatekeeping, just education that empowers.