Friends of Georgia State Parks: Taking QR Codes to the Park

04 February 2012

I very much enjoyed speaking to your group today! There was a lot of talk and questions afterward about QR codes. Tonight, in researching for my latest book, QR Codes for Dummies, I found this story on how Fort Smith Historic Site in Arkansas is using QR codes! It’s a great article that I think...

Jobs at Network for Good

03 February 2012

Network for Good, where I work, is hiring.  Among the positions is a business development position for those interested in cultivating corporate cause partnerships.  Next week, we’ll be posting an additional position in marketing.

Check out our job listings here.

Top 5 Words to Avoid to Achieve Messaging Awesomeness

03 February 2012

Last week on the main Nonprofit Marketing Guide site (you are reading the blog now), I published an article called, “Blah, Blah, Blah: What to Do When You Write Too Much.” In today’s guest post, Erica Mills of Claxon Marketing takes it to the next step by showing how specific words can actually debilitate your [...]

Friday Futures – Nonprofit Marketing Jobs – February 3, 2012

03 February 2012

Please post your nonprofit marketing position here — FT or PT staff, consulting or internship opportunities. NEW OPPORTUNITIES 1) Associate Director, Partnerships Marketing & Communications The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (New York, NY) 2) Cause Marketing and Event Production Specialist, Wholesome Wave (Bridgeport, CT) 3) Communications Intern, CNT Energy (Chicago, IL) 4) [...]

Brick wall redux: Practical tips for leading change

03 February 2012

Today, I finished reading John Kotter’s book, A Sense of Urgency*.  It’s full of good advice on how to spark a burning desire for your agenda.  If you are frustrated, you should buy this book and read it right away.

What I learned was complacency and “false urgency” are the biggest barriers to getting things done.  Complacency is comfort with the status quo, generated by past success or perceived success.  False urgency by contrast comes from failure.  It’s essentially unproductive panic and activity.

True urgency, on the other hand, is a very good thing.  It is the visceral, highly motivated urge to do something important, day in and day out.

So how do you create that?

The single most important thing you can do is to appeal to the heart not just the head of your colleagues.  (This reminds me of the elephant in Switch.)  As Kotter says, “Excellent information, by itself, with the best data and logic, can win over minds and thoughts but rarely increases needed urgency… A logical case that is part of a heart-engaging experience can win over hearts and minds and increase needed urgency.”

He then told the story of a corporation spending months on strategy and consultants and committees to make his point in terms both vivid and scary.

He offers four key tactics.  Here they are with my commentary:

1. Bring the outside in: Don’t just navel gaze!  Reconnect internal reality with external opportunities and risks.  Bring in emotionally compelling data, people, videos, sites and sounds.  Put front and center stories of your customers, competitors, donors and beneficiaries.  Send out scouts to experience front-line, real world circumstances.

2. Behave with urgency every day: Don’t be content - or anxious.  Show the real sense of urgency - fire in the belly for a worthy and clear aim.  Free up time in your day to think straight - because clutter and fatigue undermine urgency.

3. Find opportunity in crisis: Handled right and with caution, a crisis can destroy complacency and inspire sound action.  But remember: Crises alone don’t create urgency - in fact, they can create paralysis.  And manufactured crises create resentment.  If you have a crisis, use it as a rallying point.  If you don’t have one, don’t stand around waiting for one!  Create urgency through other means.

4. Deal with the Nonos: Remove or neutralize those who are complacent or creating destructive, false urgency.  The NoNo is ready with ten reasons why the current situation is fine, why your problems don’t exist or why you need more data before you do anything.  A skeptic is fine - even good.  But NoNos aren’t about healthy questioning.  They’re about automatically shooting down change.  Kotter says not to bother co-opting a NoNo - it won’t work.  Nor will ignoring them, because they are good at creating mischief, not to mention organizational civil war.  So what do you do?  He offers three options:

NoNo Option A: Distraction.  Send the NoNo on a special assignment suited to her skills or give them lots of other work.  Or get them riled up about something else.
NoNo Option B: Removal.  Fire the NoNo.
NoNo Option C: Immobilization.  Kotter says “lightweight” NoNos can be exposed in public and social pressures can be used to neutralize their behavior.  But calling out someone only works if they aren’t powerful or hard core.

Of course, if you do all of this, you will be successful - and generate a new round of complacency, Kotter points out.  So you have to keep working the tactics, again and again.  Urgency is needed all along the way.  Sigh.  The work of a change agent is never done, my friends!

*Hat tip to birthday girl Jocelyn Harmon for giving me a copy of this excellent book!

[Feb.3 noon update: It Just Got Better] Komen’s Busted Nonprofit Brand

03 February 2012

Read the main story here The story of Komen for the Cure’s (Komen) defunding of Planned Parenthood (PP) continues to roll, and I wanted to update you before stepping back to see how things evolve. I’ll share my thoughts with you again in a few days, once I get some distance from the story. Update [...]

Komen Sucks…But So Do You

02 February 2012

Nothing Komen for the Cure does surprises me anymore. They sell deep-fried chicken to raise money to cure breast cancer. They sue other nonprofits that use “for the cure” in any variation in their name. Now, they’re flexing their muscle and shutting off the funding to Planned Parenthood. For Komen, it’s just another day being...

[Special Edition] Komen Crumbles: Busted Nonprofit Brand (Again)

02 February 2012

Great news: Komen has restored its funding to Planned Parenthood. Follow-up Update here Susan G. Komen for the Cure (Komen) has struck out again. Komen has acted imperiously and (much worse) carelessly against the best interests of its core stakeholders—women who benefit from its support of breast cancer screening, treatment and research—to please its major [...]

Logo Trends: How Does Yours Stack Up?

02 February 2012

For those of you interested in the ongoing Komen-Planned Parenthood story, I will continue to update yesterday’s post at the bottom of the original content. Today we are moving on with a new topic . . . Our resident design expert, Julia Reich, is back with the latest trends in logos. And if you are embarrassed with [...]

Lessons Learned When Your Community Revolts

02 February 2012

When you hit the brick wall before you leave your own building

02 February 2012

I get a lot of email from people who are trying to better connect with their supporters, but they encounter resistance to new approaches from within themselves or, more often, from within their own organizations.  If you’re hitting a brick wall, this post is for you.

It’s not easy to turn the focus from your own perspective to that of your audiences, but turn it, you must.

When you hit a brick wall before you even leave your own building, don’t give up.  Don’t stop pressing for taking the perspective of those you must reach.  Don’t abandon the quest to do things differently and better.  Because it’s the only way forward.

No one ever built a great organization by navel-gazing and never changing.  Ever. 

Advocate for meeting the needs of your donors and your beneficiaries and your customers above all else.  It will lead to success, I swear.  As a wise CSO recently put it to me: “Meeting the needs of the customer is always the winning hand.  Always.”  The best companies in the world get that.  And their stock prices show there is positive payback.

If you do right by your donors, the money will come.

If you do right by those you serve, the mission will come.

If you do right by the status quo, nothing will come.  And that has to be more scary than trying to make things happen.

Don’t turn back at the brick wall.  Find a way around it, over it or under it.  There’s usually a secret passageway - in the form of a different messenger, a different message, or different positioning.  And if you can’t find that, there’s always the fallback: Do it right and then seek forgiveness, not permission.  More likely, you’ll get more than forgiveness.  Perhaps even applause - because the results will be something to celebrate. 

Heroes with A Heart Grant Recognizes Unsung Nonprofit Heroes

01 February 2012

If you’re like most people, you get most of your inspiration from people who are quietly changing the world each and every day. They’re not on the front page of the newspaper, and they’re not mingling with the Gates and Buffets of the world. They’re everyday people like you and me who have shown extraordinary...

The Accidental Rebranding of Komen for the Cure

01 February 2012

(Updates to this post can be found at the bottom.) Yesterday afternoon, and continuing into today, I believe we are witnessing the accidental rebranding of what is surely one of America’s biggest and most well-known, and even well-loved, nonprofit brands. Komen for the Cure, it seems, is no longer a breast cancer charity, but a [...]

YOU Can Make These Dreams Come True (Nonprofit Blog Carnival)

01 February 2012

Martin Luther King inspired me to ask fellow bloggers to join me in the January Nonprofit Blog Carnival, to “pick any dream you have—for your cause, organization or the nonprofit sector—and share it and how you plan to make it real.” I am inspired and energized by the richness of your contributions. I urge you [...]

‘Employee Engagement’ is My New Cause Marketing Buzzword

01 February 2012

I’m trying to learn more about volunteering and employee engagement initiatives for businesses that want more than the transactional cause marketing campaigns I specialize in. These are the days when I wish employee volunteering expert Chris Jarvis lived closer to me and not in the home of terrible baseball, Toronto. The employee engagement side of...

Impact - not ideas - should be the star of your story

01 February 2012

While I was living in Ukraine, the government tax authority launched a campaign to motivate taxpayers to stay honest and continue paying their taxes. The tax authority developed several ads. One was a cartoon illustration of a bee in front of a hive with a slogan celebrating the fruits of a collective contribution to the government. It looked like an ad for Honey Nut Cheerios with worker bees starring as the cereal mascot.  Another was a photograph of a new well and water pump where city residents could fill containers with fresh water from the well. An accompanying slogan thanked taxpayers for making the well and other city improvements possible. In one of my trainings, I placed the ads side by side and asked a roomful of Ukrainians which was more effective given the tax authority’s marketing goals. Not surprisingly, they were unanimous in their judgment that access to fresh water was far more personally relevant, and therefore motivating, than a role in building a metaphorical hive.

This example seems obvious, yet in our communication we often focus more on hives than on wells. We talk about saving the earth, ending poverty, or creating a great society. Every day, we have to remind ourselves that the hive is what we’re building; the well is what our audience needs to see.

At this week’s Social Media for Nonprofits conference, Paull Young of charity:water shared what he’s learned about digital engagement in his work over the past two years, and it reminded me of my story of the hive and the well.  Charity:water has done 6,165 water projects over the years - which is a lot of wells - and the exceptional job they do in talking about their work holds lessons for us all.

Paul shared five keys to success:

1. Be positive: Inspire and create sense of collective impact.  Don’t lead with guilt and sadness—it is not the stuff of a long-term relationship, nor the kind of content people will want to share with others.

2. Focus on stories not money: You do better as a fundraiser telling great stories about your work rather than spotlighting the dollars.  (Charity:water never asks for money on social media or in their emails.  I wouldn’t go that far but agree with the overall principle that you should focus on the good you do rather than what you get.

3. Do it wrong quickly: Try a lot of things - with the Internet economy, it’s quick and affordable to test.

4. Be personal - and that doesn’t just mean using a donor’s name.  Charity:water made videos singling out and thanking 250 supporters - each staff member participated.

5. Focus on impact - wells, not hives!  This is where charity:water shines.  They have great photos from the field, GPS coordinates for donor projects and an overall amazing donor experience.

No doubt about it - charity:water is well worth emulating.  Think about them when you’re gravitating toward the hive.

So What and Who Cares?

31 January 2012

I spoke at the AFP Triangle Philanthropy Forecast 2012 yesterday in Raleigh, NC on a panel about communications and media trends for 2012 with Gail Perry, Lu Esposito, and Todd Cohen. My first point was that integrated marketing is essential in 2012. You have to decide your messages and then coordinate how you will use all [...]

Six lessons in successful social media use

31 January 2012

I heard a great presentation yesterday from DonorsChoose at the Social Media for Nonprofits conference.  Marketing Manager Anna Doherty shared six lessons her organization - which is fantastic at engagement - applies to its social media work.

1. Join the conversation around the cause: She listens first - always a good rule for social media - and chimes in on conversations others are having about her cause.

2. Share content and collateral that’s unique to the organization.  One of the strengths of DonorsChoose is its stewardship.  When you donate more than $50, you get wonderful thank you notes from students helped by your contribution.  She posts some of the best (and cutest) notes on the DonorsChoose Facebook page.

3. Celebrating big news.  Don’t be meek about posting good news - like crossing fundraising milestones.  Give your community cause to celebrate.

4. Share staff culture.  DonorsChoose staff tweet each other messages about birthdays and other events to reflect their fun, tight-knit culture.

5. Remember the medium.  Think big picture – people on Facebook respond to different things than Twitter.  Anna tried trivia questions on both, and they were popular on Facebook but flopped on Twitter. 

6. Balance quality and frequency.  Don’t just post for the sake of posting.  Anna learned the hard way that if she posted because she felt she must and the content wasn’t meaningful, it lowered engagement levels.

Good advice.

And although this wasn’t on Anna’s list, she was doing it, so I’m adding it:

Set a goal and test and measure against it.  DonorsChoose counts conversion to donations - with followers or likes secondary aims.  That helps them know where to focus, what to do and how to measure. 

Year-End Fundraising Up in 2011

30 January 2012

Why Can’t We Be Friends? Dreaming of a Powerful Marketing-Fundraising Team

30 January 2012

Martin Luther King’s passion, focus and ability to motivate like no other spurred me to ask nonprofit bloggers to share their dreams for their cause, organization or the sector for the January Nonprofit Blog Carnival. I had no idea what my request would motivate and I’ll be sharing these passionate, additive, innovative AND doable dreams [...]