Nonprofit Communications

As I was looking over annual reports from environmental groups this week, I noticed that both Environmental Defense (ED) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) claimed that they were largely responsible for getting California’s law on global warming passed.

Now, I really have no idea who did what or how much, and I am sure that both organizations played vital roles. The fact that I am pitting them against each other in this post would probably send them both into a tizzy, since I suspect they work closely as partners on many issues and wouldn’t want to be viewed as competitors.

But let’s get real. Annual reports are largely about wooing donors and these two organizations do compete for funding. So who did the better job in taking claim for this ground-breaking legislation?

Environmental Defense — and here’s why.

1) They tell a better story. They describe how negotiations nearly collapsed and how their attorney “met Schwarzenegger outside the tent where the governor smokes cigars and cuts deals, and told him what was needed . . .” You can see The Governator in your head, and for anyone who knows anything about legislating, you know this is exactly how things work. It’s feels authentic, and it shows how ED has the right kind of access.

For all I know, NRDC was right there too, but they don’t say that. They talk more generically about getting lots of different interest groups in the state to support the bill. This is great work too, but it’s not nearly as compelling as ED’s story.

2) They include a great testimonial. “Environmental Defense played a pivotal role in drafting the bill and securing broad support that was critical to its passage.” — Fabian Nunez, Speaker of the California Assembly. Who better to quote on your legislative effectiveness than the Speaker of the Assembly? NRDC mentions working with the speaker and other bill authors, but that’s not nearly as good as a testimonial.

In its report, NRDC says, “It was NRDC’s reputation as honest brokers of science and the law that helped push the bill past the tipping point.” That’s great, but it would have been so much better if it came out of someone else’s mouth.

3) They give credit to NRDC by name. When special interests tried to thwart the legislation, “Environmental Defense joined with the Natural Resources Defense Council to fight back. We led an unprecedented coalition . . .”

NRDC only refers generically to working with “its partners.” Again, the ED article feels more authentic, because it includes the specific details. To be fair, NRDC does cite other partners by name, like the American Lung Association and PG&E, but note that these are not other environmental groups. Unless you read these two reports side-by-side, you wouldn’t catch this distinction. But the fact the ED names another environmental group as a leader demonstrates ED’s own confidence in its work.

I’d love to hear what you think. Here are the specific pages I’m talking about: NRDC’s Global Warming Pages | ED’s Global Warming Pages. You can get the full reports on their websites: NRDC | ED Read the pages and leave a comment on this post with your take.

This specific comparison aside, I think both groups do a good job with their annual reports. I’m preparing to publish a series of annual report reviews on NonprofitAnnualReports.net to help nonprofits better understand ways to improve their own annual reports. Both reports will be included in the reviews I’ll share later in September. FYI, subscribers to my free “Annual Reports Insider” e-newsletter will be the first to hear about these reviews, so subscribe if you want to read them sooner than later.

When Emily at the Nonprofit Blog Exchange assigned the Camp ASCCA blog to me as part of this summer’s Nonprofit Blog Exchange Virtual Event, I was excited because I had already included it as a good example of how nonprofits can use blogs in my Blogging for Nonprofits course. This assignment from Emily gave me a good reason to revisit the blog and see what’s new.

Here are few things that I love about this blog, which is about the Alabama Special Camp for Children and Adults with disabilities:

–Tons of personal stories about campers, counselors and others who participate in the programs.

–Tons of video inserted into the blog posts.

–Very well integrated with other social networking sites, including Facebook and Flickr.

–The blog’s main page functions like a website home page in that it has lots of permanent links to the pages and information people want, like applications to attend the camp. It’s a good example of how to use a blog to effectively replace your typical nonprofit website, rather than just throwing the blog on to an existing static html site as an afterthought.

–It looks like the blog has undergone a nice redesign since I last visited and it looks much more streamlined.

The only thing that I think might be missing is a bit more personal information about the staff who are posting. I assume they want the blog to be about the campers and counselors, not about the full-time staff, but I’d welcome a little something more about the staff who post regularly.

Kudos to Camp ASCCA!

Storytelling is all the rage in the marketing world these days, because it works. Examples are everywhere in commercial advertising. Samuel Adams commercials feature real employees and customers talking about beer. Those Geico commercials (not the ones with the gecko or the cavemen) feature customers and celebrities telling real stories. The UPS ad executive at the white board is telling real stories.

“Stories” is the sixth pillar of effectively communicating your ideas, according to “Made to Stick” — which is, by the way, a fabulous book that every nonprofit communicator should own. (I may be the last blogger on the planet who got a review copy to actually mention the book, but that’s because I wanted to wait a few months after reading it to see if, well, it would stick with me. It did. You should buy it.)

Recent research into what works in fundraising appeals shows that a powerful story about a single individual moves donors more than general information or even stories about more than one person.
So how can you inject storytelling into your day-to-day communications? Here are ten specific examples of ways nonprofits can use stories.

1) Include a story about a real person in every speech you give. Talking to potential volunteers? Tell a story or two about a real volunteer and the difference she is making in the lives of others.

2) Turn a story into a how-to article for your newsletter. Using the first person (”How I . . .”), have someone on your staff, a board member, or a volunteer explain how to do something, based on his own experience in learning how to do it.

3) Include testimonials in your event marketing. Ask people who attended your workshop to provide testimonials about how they personally used what they learned at the event in their own work.

4) Single out one person you are helping in your next fundraising appeal letter. Instead of talking broadly about the need for low-cost childcare in your community, talk about the plight of just one single mom.

5) Use serial storytelling on a campaign blog. Hook in readers with frequent updates about a particular person, animal, or item. Environmental and humane groups use this tactic effectively all the time (e.g. tracking a particular whale’s journey — “Will he evade the evil whale hunters?” — or a dog that has been badly abused, but is now on the mend after being rescued — “Will she live? And walk again?”).

6) Give each board member at least one good story to use, and have them practice telling it. Your board members should be advocating for your organization at all times. Give them real stories they can use that will put your organization in a good light with potential donors, volunteers, community decision-makers, etc. Make time on your next board meeting agenda to learn the stories and to practice telling them.

7) Lead your next press release with a story. The media loves real stories, so use them as angles in your press releases. If you can make the real person in the story available for interviews, that’s even better.

Incorporate a story into a training session. Who do you train? Volunteers, new staff, community members, others in your field? Incorporate a good story into your next training session.

9) Add stories to your annual report. They can take the form of personal profiles, first-person accounts, or short testimonials, but include stories about real people in your annual report to reinforce the narrative about your accomplishments and activities.

10) Rotate stories on your website home page. Collect stories about specific people related to your organization and rotate them on your home page.

I plan to talk much more about storytelling on this blog. But until I get all those posts written, check out the quick primer on nonprofit storytelling by Nancy at Getting Attention.

This week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants is now up at the Bamboo Project. Michele has a keen eye for truly helpful and insightful posts, so you’ll want to grab your favorite cool drink and spend some time clicking through the Carnival.

Next week, the Carnival moves to a new host, Harold Jarche’s Blog. See you there!

Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project asked about our favorite learning resources and what gets us excited about learning new things. I get tons of great information from reading other people’s blogs, but I saw that Rosetta Thurman wrote a great post about that already, so I’ll go with another favorite learning tool of mine: playing around with new software and online services via free trials.

As I’ve explained here before, I am a do-it-yourself nut and often try multiple solutions to a single problem. Free trials help fuel this habit. (Before you recommend that I enter self-employed consultant rehab, rest assured that I am getting better about hiring others to do the really important or really hard stuff, rather than trying to learn how to do everything myself.)

Still, I’ve found using free trials is a great way to learn about the abilities and limitations of various systems and how they could impact my clients’ work and my own business. By seeing what software and services can do, you also open up new possibilities you may not have considered before. Most free trials limit quantities, but that can match up just fine with a test run of a new campaign.

Along those lines, here are some free trials you might want to try, if you are considering ramping up your nonprofit communications, while learning something new along the way.

Hobbling along with Publisher or PageMaker?

Adobe is now offering 30-day free trials of all of the products in the Creative Suite line, including InDesign, which is the far and away the best layout program out there. I hung in there with PageMaker for several years because a couple of clients used it, but I’ve told them I’m done with it and going with InDesign 100%. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it, and there are ways to get it for less (TechSoup has it right now for $60). If you want to test-drive the full CS line, which also includes DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, Illustrator and several other programs, you can get a CD for $9.99.

Still pondering an email newsletter?

If aren’t sending out an email newsletter yet, simply because you are afraid of the tech side, relax. It’s really quite easy these days. I use iContact for clients and some of my own newsletters. They have expanded way beyond e-newsletters to offer RSS feeds, surveys, autoresponders, and the like. Their free trial is for 15 days and you can send 1,500 messages to up to 250 subscribers. That’s plenty of room to test drive a new e-newsletter. Just make sure that you have your list together before you start the trial so you don’t waste free days.

I’ve also used ConstantContact and know several people who like their service, even though I’m not using it anymore (because I like iContact better). But since we are talking free trials, why not sign up for this one too and figure out what you like best? They offer email newsletter and survey services. They’ve got a 60-day trial offer.

Looking for a way to manage online photo galleries?

Of course, if you are simply looking for ways to share photos online, I recommend Flickr. But if you want more control over how your images appear in a gallery and you want that gallery integrated into your own website, I like Shozam, which I wrote about earlier this week.

Forget photo galleries — Do you need actual photos?

I highly recommend that you use photos everywhere, but especially on your website, in your print newsletter and in your annual report. My favorite site for stock photography, and it seems I use it almost daily lately, is iStockPhoto. They don’t have a free trial per se, although you can browse and download comps (photos with their logo on them) for free. You can purchase credits for as little as $12, so it’s close to free.

Considering a postcard mail campaign?

I use VistaPrint for business cards and also for postcards. They give away lots of free samples, customized with your logo, etc, including 250 business cards, 10 note cards, 100 postcards, one pad of post-its, and a rubber stamp. You pay shipping and handling. Why not get the postcards and run a small trial mailing for a campaign you’ve been considering? You could match it up with that new email campaign your test-driving too!

OK, that should keep you busy for awhile!

One last tip on the free software downloads . . . be sure to keep track of what you install and uninstall anything you decide you don’t want. I ended up with five different photo galleries on my computer and it was a mess to clean up.

I’ve played around with lots of different photo galleries, both free and for a fee, for both clients and for my personal blog, where I keep my far-flung family happy with lots of kid photos. I’ve decided that I like Shozam the best (formerly Web Gallery Wizard) and here’s why.

It gives me complete control over how the photos appear and offers several nice templates for the photo galleries. Some of them are a little cheesy, but most are tasteful templates that can work well with many website designs. It’s got a step-by-step process (Steps #1 - 6) that’s really easy to follow, so you don’t get lost in the process of moving your photos from your camera to the web. I don’t have to do anything to my photos before placing them into the program. It takes care of all the sizing, rotating, creating thumbnails, etc. Adding captions is simple and you can also add audio and video clips.

I also like that it comes in several different versions, allowing me to pick the version with the number of tools I needed, and not pay for the ones I don’t. I bought the advanced version for $99.99, and it’s the mid-range version. The Lite version (the most basic version) is $24.95. Naturally, I recommend that you start with the free trial. It will let you test drive the various options before you spend the cash, which is always nice. It took me awhile before I coughed up the money, but after trying several of the free or cheap solutions and being really unhappy in the end, I’m glad I spend the bucks to get the product that works for me.
If you know of a program that does all that Shozam does for the same price or less, let me know by leaving a comment.

I’ve just released my new e-book, “How to Write a Nonprofit Annual Report” and am offering you, my blog readers, a $5 off coupon, if you download the e-book by August 31, 2007. Here is the coupon code you’ll need: 329855

The e-book is compilation of practically everything I have written to date on nonprofit annual reports. It’s a clear, practical, and easy-to-follow guide that will help you produce the best annual report possible for your nonprofit.

It will answer all of these questions for you, and more:

It’s $29.99 ($24.99 with the coupon) and available for immediate download at www.NonprofitAnnualReports.net. Here’s the coupon code again –329855 — which you’ll need when you get to the checkout page.

P.S. Want some additional hand-holding as you create your annual report? Sign up for my annual report e-course and you’ll get a copy of the e-book, a workbook, access to a private bulletin board, and my feedback on your questions and ideas.