Nonprofit Communications

I read an interesting political article in Newsweek yesterday called “When It’s Head versus Heart, the Heart Wins” that has tons of parallels for nonprofit marketing.

All of the campaign gurus agree — people are drawn to candidates who “assuage fear, inspire hope, instill pride or bring some other emotional dividend.” It’s more important what people feel than what they think, thus the facts don’t really matter all that much. This explains why so many people seem to vote against their own economic self-interest.

According to the article, anxiety does push people to seek out new information about candidates. Unease moves people to find ways to feel more comfortable. If someone is anxious about terrorism, they’ll pay attention to which candidate has the best plan to make them feel safer. But enthusiasm has the opposite effect - it closes voters’ minds to new information. Their hearts have been won over, so there’s no need for the brain to process more data. Candidates just have to keep ‘em feeling good.

Katya Andresen also blogged on emotions that motivate this week when she recounted a recent post by Seth Godin. Seth contends that people act based mostly on three emotions: fear, hope, and love. Katya cautions nonprofits about overdoing the fear angle and instead advocates the hope and love angles.

Based on the Newsweek article, I’d add pride to hope and love. Can your make potential donors feel genuine pride in themselves by giving to your organization? What is it about helping your nonprofit specifically that could make someone swell and gush? If you can work it out in a way that feels genuine, you can probably chuck a lot of your fact-based marketing materials.

Personal identity is also huge in politics and in nonprofit marketing.

The article also talks about how it’s important that a voter identify with a candidate at the gut level. It made me crazy when I heard people say they were voting for George Bush because he was the kind of guy you could have a beer with, but this is exactly why. The article mentions the identity conflict for black women voters this year — do they identify themselves first as a woman (and thus vote for Hillary) or first as an African-American (and vote for Barack)? And Hillary’s choked-up moment? Women her age completely identified with what she was saying and feeling and could see themselves reacting the same way under that intense pressure. They came back around in big numbers for Hillary in New Hampshire, even though a lot of them had been in line for Obama Hope Train tickets before she almost cried.

Newsweek also mentions a study I found really interesting. Personal identity is so important to action that Asian girls who were asked to identify their gender on a math test didn’t do as well (because girls can’t do math, right?). But when they were asked to identify their ethnicity, they did much better (because Asians are good at math).

Can you tap into the personal identity of a segment of your supporters and make a firm link to your organization? Describe what it is like to be in their shoes and then see if you can find a natural connection to your organization. “I am a (describe the person’s demographics) and therefore supporting (fill in your organization) feels entirely natural to me because (explain how it reinforces the person’s identity).”

Remember that series of posts I did (here all on one page) on the University of California’s direct mail makeover? This connection to personal identity is exactly why, after getting that mailer, I gave to Cal for the first time since I graduated. The internal dialogue went like this: “I am a (creative, independent firebrand) and therefore supporting (Cal) feels entirely natural to me because (Cal nurtures and graduates innovative, free-thinking people). The fact that I’m an alumnae puts me in the target audience, but that alone was not enough to inspire me to give, because I don’t really consider going to Cal part of my core personal identity. This exercise isn’t easy and you’ll need to play around with it, but it’s worth giving it some serious thought.

And what about those people who are already enthusiastic supporters? That’s much easier. Just keep feeding their hearts, and don’t worry so much about their heads.

I’ve been using PowerPoint for years to teach workshops and while I usually get great reviews from participants, I’ve always felt like something wasn’t quite right about the way I used the slides. When I decided to launch the weekly webinar series on nonprofit marketing this year, I knew I’d be using PowerPoint much more often, and since participants wouldn’t see me, the slides had to work really well. It was time to address that nagging feeling.

I purchased two books: “Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 to Create Presentations that Inform, Motivate, and Inspire” by Cliff Atkinson and “Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery” by Garr Reynolds. I highly recommend both. Here are a few key points and my take on the strengths of each book, if you can’t fathom reading both.

While the tone of the books is very different, the authors are totally in sync on several points.

1) Remove all those bullet points from your slides.

2) Instead, fill your slides with a photo or graphic, with very minimal text (one short sentence).

3) Use storyboarding techniques to map out your presentation.

4) Treat your slides like the visual channel and your voice like the audio channel, creating one seamless presentation that feeds your participants’ minds in a more natural way. It’s apparently impossible for our brains to read text on slides while also listening to words and to process both fully. (This makes perfect sense if you think about how annoyed you get when you try to talk to someone who is reading and they refuse to stop. You know they aren’t really listening to you - because they can’t.)

5) Therefore, stop treating your slides like your presentation notes (my sin) or like handouts. The slides, your speaking notes, and handouts are three distinct items all with their own needs.

6) Both love istockphoto.com. I already purchase credits there by the hundreds, so at least I’m getting that part right.

7) Chuck the provided templates and don’t put your logo on every slide.

On to the differences in the books . . .

Beyond Bullet Points (BBP) is three times the size of Presentation Zen (Zen). It took me about two weeks to get through it, reading in bits and pieces. I read Zen in one day (yesterday, Superbowl Sunday) despite dozens of household interruptions. BBP is published by Microsoft Press and it looks and feels like a manual, including black-and-white graphics. Zen is a much more beautiful book, with full color slides, very clean design, nicer paper, etc.

BBP is better if you really have no clue how to structure a talk. The heart of the book is showing you how to use a three-act structure to create your presentation and how this structure matches up with how people learn and retain information. Even though I think the structure of most of my courses is fundamentally solid, I did pick up some great tips about how people take in information and will be making some adjustments accordingly.

For example, it’s better to have three times as many slides and keep only one point per slide than to crowd fewer slides with multiple bullet points. Some of my five-hour workshop presentations have about 60 slides and I now see how I could easily triple that, following the “one slide per minute” rule of thumb. (I do lots of exercises, so during a five-hour workshop, I’m probably only speaking two-three hours.) BBP also contains lots and lots of PowerPoint how-tos, much of which I skipped over since I’m fairly comfortable with the software. I did learn a few new tricks though, so do skim those sections.

Zen is better if you are seeking advice on what your slides should actually look like. Where BBP tells you what to do with your slides, Zen really shows you. The three chapters on design really make the book. Zen doesn’t explain how to outline your presentation in anywhere close to the level of detail of BBP. Instead, it talks much more conceptually about what makes a good presentation and leaves it up to you to decide whether a three-act structure or some other format works best for your material.

I’m glad I read them in the order that I did. BBP is more of a how-to manual and primer on how people take in data and process it. It shows you how to take your zillion bullet points and tame them into a presentation that people may actually remember.

Zen speaks at a much higher level about incorporating “six aptitudes for the conceptual age” into your presentations. These are design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. As the author says, Presentation Zen is an approach, not a method (like BBP). I really enjoyed Zen, but I think much of that has to do with just finishing BBP. I think if I would have read Zen first, I might have been left yearning for more methodology. But with the BBP foundation, Zen really helped me see how to bring my own creativity and personality into a well-structured presentation. And like I said earlier, the slide design chapters alone are worth the price of the book.

Whether you give presentations with PowerPoint to hundreds or thousands of people at conferences or to small groups of supporters or board members, you need to read these books. They will change the way you prepare for every talk you give and your audiences will be eternally grateful.

Claire Meyerhoff

Last month, Claire Meyerhoff called to interview me about nonprofit storytelling for some articles she is working on, and we ended up having an hour-and-a-half chat about how hard it is for so many nonprofits to get press coverage, even though they have such great stories to tell.

We shared all kinds of theories about why this is true, and one of Claire’s points was really on target: Nonprofits need to cut the bull! Blathering on about your wonky mission statement, the infinitely deep root causes of a problem, and the complicated system-wide solutions required just doesn’t work for print reporters who need to think in terms of hundreds of words, not thousands, and TV journalists who can give you only 30 seconds of airtime.

I was so impressed with Claire’s down-to-earth perspective that I asked if she’d be interested in doing a teleseminar with me. Then she told me a bit more about her history and I couldn’t wait to host this event.

If you can spare $20 for some great media training, here’s where you should spend it:

Getting Reporters to Cover Your Nonprofit: How to Tell Your Story So They’ll Tell It Too!

It’s next week’s Nonprofit Marketing Guide teleseminar (in other words, it’s a toll-free conference call) on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern (11:00 a.m. Pacific). Gather ’round the speaker phone — as long as you are all from the same organization, $20 buys training for your whole staff.

Here’s what you should know about Claire, and why I was so eager to introduce her to all of you. Claire is a communications professional who has spent twenty-something years spreading the word with no muss and no fuss. As a news writer in CNN’s Washington bureau, she took complex stories and honed them into :30 worth of copy fit for Judy Woodruff and Wolf Blitzer. She also helped the National Safe Kids Campaign make the CBS Evening News — and I’ll have her share the story about why that wouldn’t have happened if she had done what the “higher ups” wanted her to do.

She has also reported on Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath on XM Radio’s “Red Cross Radio” channel, and she wrote and narrated an award-wining video for Ronald McDonald House of Durham, NC. Simply put, Claire gets nonprofits and on Wednesday, she’ll help you get the media.

I’m calling this a “Hot Seat” interview, which means I’ll spend the first 15-20 minutes of the hour-long call peppering Claire with some good, tough questions. Then it’s your turn. You can submit questions in advance and during the teleseminar via email to ask AT hotseatquestions.com or send them in via AIM to hotseatquestions.

Get the details and register for the teleseminar now.

Have you heard the one about the breast cancer patient on Twitter and the frozen peas yet? If so, you can skip the next paragraph and move on to why I think this is such a great lesson for do-it-yourself nonprofit communicators. If not, here’s the quick summary:

Susan Reynolds gets a breast biopsy and then a mastectomy. She is an avid social networker, so she’s tweeting and blogging the experience at Boobs on Ice. She posts a photo of herself easing the pain with a bag of peas on her breasts. Long story short, the crowd goes wild, she’s got people all over the place taking photos of themselves with bags of peas, and now there is a Frozen Pea Fund that’s raised over $7,000 for the American Cancer Society. I learned about this story from Craig Colgan, who wrote a great feature for the Washington Post called “How Frozen Peas Started A Movement: Cancer Patient’s Blog Builds Web Community,” which you can read on his blog. Oh, and this all took place in less than five weeks.

The lesson here is not how social networking lets you make friends and influence them to part with cash. We’ve seen tons of examples of that working. The big lessons are instead (1) be completely human and (2) let others run with your ideas. That’s how to build an online community that actually accomplishes something.

While I have never spoken with Susan, I seriously doubt that posting a photo of herself with frozen peas sticking out of her camisole was some calculated move to raise money. Instead, it was authentic, natural, and also a bit funny. In other words, it was completely human. And that’s what people respond to. They don’t respond to monolithic nonprofit organizations with mission statements and action plans. They respond to human beings.

Then, she let it take off. People started taking the pea photos. A online friend suggested donating the price of two bags of peas to breast cancer research. Another suggested setting up an actual fund to group the donations. And another, who just happened to be doing consulting on social media and working with the American Cancer Society brought it all together. Lots of people are doing lots of different things and something tells me Susan is not chained to her computer trying to micromanage it all. She’s got better things to do, like fight her breast cancer. She doesn’t need to do anything else but what she’s been doing all along on Twitter and her blog. It’s happening, in some ways now, without her.

My guess is that the being human part will be much easier for most nonprofit marketers than the letting go part. But if you are willing to run a bit of risk of people going completely off-message, you might find they come up with something that’s way better than you ever dreamed.

Melissa Eckes, a senior at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in Wisconsin, sent me a message this week asking for ideas on how a local public awareness campaign could increase support for funding arts education in public schools. She’s writing her thesis on the importance of art education and wanted my advice, and yours, on how to create a powerful campaign message.

Do have any thoughts you can share with Melissa? Leave a comment on this post if you want to help. You’ll find my suggestion below.

Here’s what Melissa says about the benefits of arts education:

“My idea is creating an public awareness campaign for art education in the Milwaukee school area. A lot of the research I have been doing is finding articles and interesting facts about the benefits of art education. How it helps you be creative and teaches you self-discipline, which is important to many careers today. I understand that when schools are in money troubles, the first thing they cut is art programs. I’ve found that there’s only national advertising for saving art education, and I want to do something local to be more effective.”

One idea I shared with Melissa is to use the power of the unexpected. If you are are talking about art education in schools, use adults instead of kids and more left-brained imagery (less artsy) than right-brained (more artsy). I suggested using images of analytical professionals with tag lines that talk about how arts education helped them get where they are today.

For example, an ad could picture a surgeon with text like “Top brain surgeon. Moves a scalpel with precision. Learned to control his hands that way with a paintbrush in fourth-grade art class.” Then you could include a stat or two about the value of arts education, followed by a strong call to action — whatever the campaign wanted people to do, whether that’s asking the school board to restore funding for the arts or whatever.

What else could Melissa’s arts education campaign try?

Nonprofit tagline writing can be a tough business. It’s a bit easier for short-term campaigns, but when you are picking the handful of words that will be next to your logo for years on end, it’s a rather daunting task.

Before I spout off about a few nonprofit taglines that grabbed my attention recently, I strongly encourage you to participate in Nancy Schwartz’s three-minute survey on taglines, if you haven’t done so already. I’m really looking forward to Nancy’s report and forthcoming advice. It should make this process a bit easier on all of us.

Now, on to my two cents on some current nonprofit taglines, followed by a few rules of thumb to use when creating your own.

“Doing the Most Good” by the Salvation Army

My five-year-old and I did a one-hour shift as bell ringers this year, in support of the soup kitchen the Salvation Army runs in our little town — in other words, don’t send me ugly mail about Salvation Army bashing, because I do support them. But I really don’t like this tagline.

My first reaction is that it sounds like the Salvation Army is saying that it does more good than anyone else, which is not the way a Christian organization should position itself, IMHO. When I looked into it, I see the tagline is meant to convey that the Salvation Army does the most good that it can with the donations of money and time it receives. In other words, it’s meant to be more of a claim of organizational efficiency and effectiveness than a comparison to other organizations. But, if I have to Google a phrase to understand its intended meaning, that tells me it’s not as clear as it should be.

“Finding Cures. Saving Children.” by St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital

Love this one. I instantly know what they do and all of their marketing materials reinforce this tagline. It’s simple, direct, and memorable. As a donor, I can see how I too can help find cures and save children. I’m slightly less enthusiastic about the “Thanks and Giving” tagline they use for their annual campaign, because it requires a slightly clunky explanation — Give thanks for healthy kids in your life and give to those who are not — but overall, I think it works.

“Bringing Innovations in Health and Learning to the Global Community” by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

This tagline is too heady, but what else can we reasonably expect from a foundation founded by America’s top geek? This is an example of taking part of your mission statement and using it as a tagline, which is not really the best approach. It’s better to come at tagline writing from a conversational perspective, and “innovations in learning” is not chatty or memorable.

“There are No Limits to Caring” by Volunteers of America

Even though it’s in passive voice, I like this one, because it says to me that if I volunteer, there are no limits on the good that I can do with my time, which is a great motivator. It’s more about the volunteers than about the organization itself — another good audience-driven tagline.

“Teachers Ask. You Choose. Students Learn.” by DonorsChoose.org

Another action-oriented, audience-driven tagline. Love it.

A Few Tagline Writing Tips

–Shorter is better. It’s easier to remember that way.

–Action-oriented is better. Verbs are very powerful conveyors of meaning.

–Audience-focused is better. Tell your supporters what happens when they work with you.

Katya Andresen spoke at the NC Center for Nonprofits conference today, which I was completely thrilled about for two reasons: (1) because it was a sure bet that she’d have great tips I could pass on to you, and (2) because it meant that I got to have coffee with one of my blogging buddies face-to-face. Katya didn’t disappoint in either case!

Katya started teaching before she even put on her microphone. In the minutes leading up to the session, she walked up and down the aisles, personally introducing herself and speaking to people one on one. What was she doing? Getting to know her audience by actually talking to them as individual people. It’s a lesson that all of us in nonprofit marketing preach (know thy audience, know thy audience) and Katya showed us what that means before she even officially got started. As she moved through her points, she was able to refer to the people she had met in the audience, turning your typical staid concurrent session into a more friendly and personable workshop atmosphere.

You can find her slides here on her blog, along with a new white paper from Network for Good called “Wired Fundraising: How Technology is Making Fundraising ‘Good to Go’” so I’m not going to cover her advice point by point. Do go view the slides, because she has four easy questions you should always ask and three actions you can take to delve into Web 2.0 if using social media is a new or scary idea for you.

Instead, let me recount just a few of the examples from Katya’s talk that drive home her points about reaching your audience based on their EXISTING values.

Take Katy’s employer, Network for Good. Their old home page was the typical “about us” text heavy home page. Their new home page is all about the audience — donors who want to give online to nonprofits through a single site. And nonprofits who want to be listed in their directory simply need to click on the bright orange “Are you a nonprofit” button to get to the info they need.

The AWARE Foundation wanted to reach teenage girls about health issues. Instead of creating the typical sterile, doctor’s office health site, they created a site that immediately appeals to teenage girls at TeenHealthTalk. The design is casual and a little messy (not unlike a teenager’s room) and by using the word “talk” in the domain, they’ve picked up on the #1 hobby of teenage girls. The language is also very casual and teen focused. Something tells me that “Why Are My Boobs Lopsided?” isn’t wording you’d find so prominently featured on most health-oriented sites. For example, it’s not on the AWARE Foundation’s main site. TeenHealthTalk goes where teen girls are, so they’ll be in a comfortable spot, and thus much more willing to receive the information the organization is giving.

CARE’s donor base was people in their 70’s, and the nonprofit wanted to move that average age down by a few decades. To appeal to women in their 40’s, CARE latched on to a value that many women in this age group are familiar with: wanting to feel like you have some control over your life and the power to do what you want with it. So rather than pitch all the merits of their programs, CARE is pitching that feeling of power. Donors are powerful, and the people donors help through CARE are also powerful. Poor people have the power to change their world and you have the power to help them do it.

Kiva (which was also mentioned yesterday) is another shining example of an organization getting out of the way and making it all about the people they serve, in this case, people who want to lend small amounts of money and the entrepreneurs in developing countries who use that money to lift themselves out of poverty. Kiva could have a home page all about the merits of microlending programs, but that’s deeper down in the site. The users are front and center.

In closing, here are a few great nuggets of wisdom from Katya:

–When you hear yourself saying, “if people only knew about our issue . . .”, stop right there. People don’t need loads of information. They need a personal connection to the issue. It’s your job to find that connection.

–”Marketing” is not slimy, so get over your fear of the word. Marketing is about being persuasive, which all nonprofits need to be. Marketing when done right is actually very respectful of people, because it’s about a conversation, understanding your audience’s perspective and speaking to it.

–If you are trying to make a new friend, you don’t run up and get in their face, introduce yourself, tell your entire history, and ask “Will you be my friend?” That sends people running away. Instead, you engage in a conversation where you get to know each other over time. You guide your choice of topics and words based on what this potential new friend is saying back to you. Use the same approach when seeking new friends (donors, volunteers) for your nonprofit.

–The values of your donors that you choose to use to connect with them (like CARE using power) will often have nothing to do with your cause. This is perfectly fine!

And my favorite tip of the presentation:

–Have a general idea who your audience is, but not a clue what their values are? Do some Robin Hood Marketing and buy a bunch of magazines that your audience reads. Tear out all the ads and paste them on the wall. What are some of the common themes? How are these advertisers trying to make the readers feel about their products? What emotions and values dominate? Those are the values you should try to link your organization and its issue to. Madison Avenue spent millions figuring it out and you spent $30 on magazines!

Thanks Katya for a great presentation and a great chat afterward!

This afternoon at the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits Annual Conference, I attended another great session called “Social Media Technology: How to Raise Money, Recruit Volunteers, and Spread Your Message” by Chris Meade, COO of NPower, Charlotte Region.

NPower is a nonprofit consultancy that helps other nonprofits with technology. It has 13 affiliates around the U.S. Chris did an amazing job covering a huge topic in a little over an hour.

He opened the presentation with some general definitions and examples of what social media is and how it differs from traditional, linear communication. After going over some of the implications of using social media, Chris reminded everyone that social media is not a replacement for traditional forms of communication, but an add-on.

He broke down the field into four categories: Communications (podcasting, vlogs, blogs, rss, listservs), Organizing and Networking (event management, mapping, aggregators), Knowledge and Collaboration (wikis, bookmarking, discussion forums), and Hybrids (mashups, social shopping).

He then described the three ways that nonprofit can use social media.

(1) Raising Money: Friends asking friends for donations (sponsors for a 5K run), affinity shopping

(2) Recruiting and Engaging Volunteers: Friends getting others involved, self-service scheduling and participation (invitation management, meeting handouts), where knowledge is the volunteer’s contribution (support groups sharing stories and creating a body of experience and knowledge), training for staff, volunteers.

(3) Spreading the Message: Campaigning and advocacy, marketing and storytelling about mission and programs.

Next he shared some specific examples.

Komen effectively uses the “Friend to Friend” fundraising model for its walks/runs/events. You as a volunteer can use their template to ask friends to support you and you can chart your progress, including an honor roll of givers. You set a limited goal and your personal relationships help you meet it. They also do a ton of affinity shopping (all those pink products, the Garth Brooks Pink CD, etc.)

Kiva, the microlending network, lets donors lend to specific entrepreneurs in the developing world in very small amounts. At end of the loan period, you can get your money back. Default rate is less than 1%. It’s a very good way of taking wealth and helping other people on a one to one basis. The social media technology allows these very personal investments and connections to be made between people who are worlds away from each other. Volunteers have created a whole community around microlending.

wikiCancer — Allows people to create and edit the content of the site with stories and “what to do when diagnosed” tips. Wikis allow you to bring others in and compile resources and the latest thinking on an issue. You don’t have to wait for someone else to tell you the answer, because you are creating the answers yourself as a group.

Volunteermatch — A match-making site for nonprofits and volunteers that has grown into an online community, so you can hook up with other people who are interested in the same things you are.

NPower uses Sharepoint as a portal for its board, so they can share documents, calendars, etc. You don’t have to mail that board packet if everyone can easily access it online. Npower also uses Sharepoint as the CMS for their website.

Greenpeace is doing great work with viral videos on YouTube. (The hotel wireless blocked YouTube, so Chris couldn’t show the videos he wanted in the session, but I found them.) Share your message in 1-2 minutes. Well-linked videos allow you to dig deep and explore.

In closing, Chris offered these questions for nonprofits who are thinking about social media:

Is your audience online? More and more people will be, so it’s good to start now, even if your audience isn’t really there yet.

Are you willing to let others shape and morph your message?

Are you willing to share the “secret sauce?” You have to be willing to share strategy before it’s fully baked.

Do you have the time and interest to seed the process?

Chris suggests experimenting with social media as a new means of communication or volunteer engagement before using it as a fundraising tool. Move in slowly. Explore the various free sites, then procure and explore paid tools and technology that you can manage, once you have a good feeling for how it can work for you.