The apology that Susan G. Komen for the Cure issued on Friday was the first step. The obligatory resignations are next. But if Komen is going to repair the damage done by its behavior last week, they have quite a few more steps in the process.

“What should Komen do next?” That’s the question many of you have asked me, and it was certainly the top question asked of me in my role as nonprofit marketing pundit last week.

Here’s what I think they need to do next:

Diversify the staff and board

The decision to defund Planned Parenthood ended up being extremely political — the topic itself is highly politically charged, not to mention the actual individuals involved. Even though Komen has apologized, supporters have little reason to trust that the current leadership team won’t make another political decision down the road, whether it involves Planned Parenthood or not (stem cell research, anyone?).

One way to help rebuild that trust, and to keep the promise about keeping politics out of it, is to openly and publicly diversify the board and senior staff so that politically progressive voices are represented, and supporters see those right-leaning and left-leaning people working together to find a cure. Except for a few leaks here and there, the Komen board has been conspicuously silent. Adding a well-known progressive (or two, or three) with some name recognition to the board (the real board, not all those advisory boards), would be a smart move.

Same goes for senior staff. This has largely been the Nancy Brinker Show, and I don’t think people are particularly fond of it right now. Might be time to switch up some of the voices, and maybe people will tune back in.

Listen to the substance of the backlash and “change your evil ways”

This isn’t Komen’s first brouhaha. If you look at all those social media comments (and Komen should be paying someone to read and categorize it all), you will see that was simply the last straw for a lot of people. They are tired of Komen bullying smaller charities and making every consumer product available pink (the pink handgun deal wasn’t sanctioned, apparently, but the fact that everyone believed it could be tells you all you need to know).

This ended up being about much more than just Planned Parenthood. And going back to the “old” Komen isn’t an option. So why not really learn from the substance of the backlash, and use it to create the “new” Komen — one that demonstrates that it can really listen to and learn from its supporters? That’s what good marketers do — they listen to supporters and critics alike, and bringing that knowledge back into the organization to make the services it provides even more valuable.

Learn how to use social media, especially Twitter

Whoever is managing the official @komenforthecure Twitter account doesn’t really get it. They keep doing these run-on tweets where they take a longer statement and break into a bunch of tweets that they send out all at once. If you read some of them independently, they don’t really make sense. Tweets need to stand on their own.

The majority of Komen’s tweets over the last week have been versions of the above, or @replies with corrections of what others are saying (No, we didn’t endorse the handgun. No, she doesn’t make that much.)  It’s a very old-school PR approach to Twitter, and it doesn’t really work. Get conversational, Komen! And make a clear point in 140 characters without requiring surrounding tweets to be read.

One of my biggest criticisms of Komen at the height of the controversy was their complete silence on social media for almost 24 hours (longer on Twitter), followed by official statements only. Even if they had simply posted something like, “We are listening. We hear you. We are talking internally about our next steps, and will get back to you soon” it would have been infinitely better than the nothing, followed by official-speak, that we got.

Twitter and Facebook aren’t just fun and games anymore. I think that should be pretty obvious given what happened the past week. We all need to know how to use social media in various situations, including a crisis.

What else should Komen do?

What else should Komen be doing now, especially on the marketing/communications side, to rebuild trust with supporters?

Would love to hear your comments!

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(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 pro-life breast cancer charity.

Let me stop right here and say this post is not about abortion per se, one way or the other, other than the fact that it is the single most divisive issue in American politics today. My personal beliefs are very clear and public. But how you feel about abortion is really irrelevant to this communications debacle unfolding before us.

This post is about what happens when a leading nonprofit jumps into a highly controversial area of public debate without a communications strategy, stays silent, and therefore lets others take over the public dialogue, perhaps permanently redefining the organization and its brand. Watch and learn, so you don’t make the same mistake on whatever hot button issues your organization might be wading into.

Here’s what happened yesterday afternoon:

The AP reported that Komen for the Cure has decided to halt grants to Planned Parenthood that were used for breast cancer screening for low-income women. According to the reports, this decision was made in December and communicated to Planned Parenthood, which urged Komen to reconsider. Komen, citing a new policy that prevents grants to organizations under investigation, said because Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-FL, is investigating whether government money was improperly spent on abortions, the  decision to pull the funding was final.

The AP story broke yesterday, and within hours, Planned Parenthood sent a fundraising email out to its network, asking supporters to replace the money that Komen had pulled for breast cancer screenings for low-income women.

Within minutes, both Facebook and Twitter were swamped with pro-Planned Parenthood, anti-Komen comments.  At one point last night, I did a quick count and found the ratio of anti-Komen’s decision to pro-Komen’s decision to be about 80 to 1 on Twitter.

Some typical anti-Komen tweets:

Some typical pro-Komen tweets:

Adding another twist to the story, it seems that Karen Handel, Komen’s senior vice president for public policy, who was hired in April 2011, is a pro-life advocate who, when running for the Republican nomination for governor in Georgia, made her opposition to Planned Parenthood quite clear.

Now let’s look at Komen’s response . . .  which is no response (until about 90 minutes ago). As one person on Twitter put it, just crickets.

Komen didn’t post on its Twitter or Facebook feeds last night, or first thing this morning. The only Komen action on their Facebook page had been to delete anti-Komen comments, so the ratio of negative to positive looks more like 10 – 1 instead of the 80 – 1 (and even higher this morning) on Twitter.

Komen’s most recent tweet was about prostate cancer in a mummy.

On Facebook, the most recent update was about a new sponsor, Energizer.

Take a quick look at the wall posts on Energizer’s page, and I suspect Komen has one unhappy sponsor right now (how unfortunate for Energizer to be the last update on the Komen page — it would have happened to any company in that position when the news broke):

Then around 10 am Eastern today, Komen finally updated its Facebook page. As of this moment (11:30 am ET), still no update on Twitter:

So What the Heck is Going on Here?

Let’s give Komen the benefit of the doubt and assume that they made this decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood very thoughtfully and deliberately. In that case, they would surely have realized that the likelihood of the story going public was high. They may not have counted on Planned Parenthood being so aggressive in turning the Komen decision into a fundraising campaign, but even without that, it’s still a big news story because of how high-profile Planned Parenthood funding of any kind is right now. And that’s all about abortion, which is about as divisive an issue as you can get in American politics right now.

The “Try to Rise Above It and Pretend This Decision Isn’t about the Most Divisive Social Issue in America” Strategy

Yet it appears that Komen wants to desperately pretend that this decision is being made in some completely different context. By not responding at all to the overwhelming negativity being thrown their way, and continuing to pretend that this has nothing to do with a red-hot social issue, they are alienating a big part of their constituency.

It seems like they are hoping this will just blow over. It won’t. This isn’t Komen’s first branding debacle: See the Kentucky Fried Chicken incident and suing smaller charities for using “for the cure” but I’d say it’s the biggest one yet.

What Should Komen Do Next?

Earlier this month, I urged nonprofits to decide how they are different, to embrace that, and forget the rest. Previously Komen stood out as a tremendous organizer and mobilizer of women across the political spectrum who would raise money like crazy for them. They kept it nice and simple, and non-controversial. Wear that pink ribbon and raise money to fight breast cancer.   The abortion debate was nowhere in sight. It was all about the breasts, and not about the uterus. And I think that’s one thing that made them different — Komen was an organization that dealt with women’s health issues without getting caught up in the abortion debate, like most women’s organizations end up doing.

No more. They took a deep dive into the hot swirling waters head first (but apparently eyes shut). No matter what they do from here on out, they will be forced to pick sides, and that’s just awful for the Komen brand.

If they stick by their decision, they will endear themselves to pro-life women, and lose the pro-choice. If they give in to the pressure and petitions, they will win back the pro-choice women, but anger the pro-life. It’s a no-win situation that could have been avoided had they developed a communications strategy on this decision at the start. Sure, they would have still angered many of their supporters, but I believe they could have avoided this huge rift had they communicated upfront, and honestly, about the decision. They should have released it, instead of letting Planned Parenthood own the messaging.

The Branding Challenge, Part II

Now that they are full on into the abortion debate, Komen (I think) must now come out and say whether they think abortion causes breast cancer. If you look through the comment stream now, that particular question is what pro-life and pro-choice commenters are arguing with each other about. And as an organization with a mission to prevent breast cancer, I think it’s reasonable for supporters to expect Komen to make a statement about various theories on what causes it, including this one.

Let’s see how they handle that question, and whether they use it as a second chance to mend their brand, or if they fall deeper into the non-communicative abyss.

Can Komen Heal the Rift?

Regardless of how you feel about abortion, what do you think Komen could do to bring pro-choice and pro-life women back together to fight breast cancer hand in hand?

Or do you think this will all blow over with little long-term affect on Komen?

Share your ideas, and your thoughts on these communications questions in the comments.

UPDATE at 5:30 pm Eastern, 2/1/2012:

I’m quoted in this Politico story on the Komen mess.  As the day went on, and Komen continued to say nothing, I got even more annoyed with how awful they are handling all this. They still haven’t tweeted anything (and that stupid mummy prostate tweet is what people see when they check their profile). So my criticism got a bit harsher . . .   ~Kivi

UPDATE at 6:30 pm Eastern, 2/1/2012

Check out this analysis of the social media commentary by PoliPulse:

UPDATE at 9:00 am Eastern, 2/2/2012

Last night around 10 pm, after declining interviews with network news and major newspapers, Komen finally started tweeting and released this video response:

Contrast this response to what Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards did: interviews with all the major networks and this MSNBC interview:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This morning, Beth Kanter published a post including a description of my process for creating this post (if you are interested in how content gets developed and the concept of newsjacking).

UPDATE at 5:30 pm Eastern, 2/2/2012

Nancy Brinker, founder of Komen, is interviewed by Andrea Mitchell.  Do you think it helped or hurt?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

UPDATE at 8:00 am Eastern, 2/3/12

Komen board member speaks to the New York Times in Outcry Grows Fiercer After Funding Cut by Cancer Group. He says this really was specifically about Planned Parenthood and not overall “grant excellence” as Brinker has claimed. The article states, “John D. Raffaelli said Komen had become increasingly worried that an investigation of Planned Parenthood by Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida, would damage Komen’s credibility with donors.”

UPDATE at 1:23 pm Eastern, 2/3/12

Komen releases an apology and states they have amended their policy that the investigation must be “criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.”

Planned Parenthood’s response to the policy reversal.

Do you think this changes anything or is the damage done to the Komen brand irreversible?

UPDATE at 9:15 pm Eastern, 2/6/2012

THANK YOU everyone for such a lively conversation in the comments! But since the majority of new comments on this post are about religious arguments instead of nonprofit communications and management, I am closing comments. I will blog more about the Komen communications issues later this week and invite you to comment on that post.

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Dave Raley of Masterworks

Today’s guest post is by Dave Raley, Director of Digital Marketing at Masterworks.  I met Dave at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in DC in March, where he took this awesome photo of a group of us on a night-time monument walk. I asked Dave to share some of his expertise on micro-engagement — all the little things you can do to engage your supporters with just a little time or effort.

~Kivi

A Guest Post by Dave Raley

Ever heard of micro-engagement? Maybe you haven’t, but I would be willing to bet that you’ve seen it in action.

Micro-engagement refers to the current trend towards “small.” In our overloaded and crazy lives, we engage with the world through micro bits of time and attention. In fundraising, people are giving very small amounts of money. The same trend is happening in advocacy, our social lives and more.

Let’s give it an official definition:

Micro-engagement — The practice of engaging constituents in communication or relationship through various forms that require only small portions of time, attention, money or other involvement.

Why micro-engagement matters
This is how your constituents and donors are increasingly living their lives. They are short on time and attention. If you are going to engage these people into the future, you need to understand the latest trends in the world of micro-engagement.

Six forms of micro-engagement
Let’s look at several different forms of micro-engagement, define each and see what they might mean for you specifically.

1) Micro-fundraising

The trend towards smaller gifts is not new, but is changing. Historically, we’ve found that $5 gifts in direct mail ultimately cost non-profits more than they are worth — they result in lower long-term-value donors, and it costs more to cultivate these low-dollar donors than they give.

But technology and scale are making micro-fundraising more promising and cost-effective than ever. Text2Give mobile donations of $5 or $10 are leading the way (though text-based giving is not without hurdles). We have a client who raised over $500,000 via text-based giving in the wake of the Haiti earthquake — primarily through free national-radio promotion.

Mobile apps continue to mature and enable other giving options. The mobile secure web is doing the same (example). New technologies powered by near field communications (NFC) are enabling platforms like Google Wallet to move us closer towards making payments via mobile commonplace.

2) Micro-volunteering

Traditional volunteering — coming to the office once a week, serving on the food line at the local shelter, etc. is difficult for large numbers of people who would give their time and talent if it could be on their terms.

Networks like Sparked (and apps too) allow people to volunteer wherever they want, whenever they want and in very small amounts of time.

Non-profits need to rethink how they engage volunteers and expand what they allow volunteers to do. Technology can enable all this in ways never before possible.

3) Micro-advocacy

Tools and technology like online petitions and virtual call center apps are making it easy to advocate for a cause. At an even more basic level, we all have seen friends ‘advocate’ for a cause online by updating their avatar with a ribbon or retweeting an advocacy message.

There’s value in the number of impressions and reach this type of advocacy drives. But the real value is in higher engagement of the person doing the advocating. People are more likely to increase their involvement with an organization after telling their friends about it.

4) Micro-connections

When people post via social media today, they are generally not targeting that message to anyone in particular. This creates dozens (or hundreds or thousands) of small personal-relationship connections that often the author is not aware of.

Non-profits are taking advantage of this new form of connection as well. For example, I love seeing a non-profit post a message on Facebook and seeing people comment very personal experiences and feelings in return. You can literally watch people becoming more bonded with an organization or cause.

5) Micro-blogging

The poster child for micro-blogging is Twitter. 140 characters at a time. But Facebook, Tumblr and others are also micro-blogging platforms.

As busy people, we may not have the time to read a non-profit’s full-length newsletter, but we will engage with a brief status update, a single picture or a short video. Micro-blogging enables non-profits to build relationships with constituents, one small interaction at a time.

6) Hyper-local (aka location-based or geosocial)

As with most new industries — location-based services (LBS) like Foursquare and Gowalla are just the early-stage pioneers. The masses don’t use them or find much utility for them, but over time they are paving the way to whole new forms of engagement based on location data. In fact, there are a growing number of people talking about how location based services and these other micro-engagement trends are creating what they call a “game layer” on top of the world — essentially, that the historical mechanics from the video games are manifesting themselves in our everyday lives.

So what’s a non-profit to do about micro-engagement?

1) Recognize that micro-engagement is a new cultural and social reality. It’s a core part of the world we live in.

2) Only bite off what you can chew. These forms of engagement are not equally important, and for your non-profit some of these may not make sense for you right now. But you should at least be aware of the trends so you know when to jump in.

3) Go and do it! Don’t let excuses stop you from diving in!

Dave is the Director of Digital Marketing at Masterworks — a marketing and development agency that works exclusively with faith-based nonprofits. He blogs and tweets and you can also reach him at draley@masterworks.com.

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Today I’m live blogging parts of the 2011 Millennial Donor Summit, a virtual conference.

This session is called the Microvolunteering Revolution, presented by Jacob Colker of Sparked.com (@jacobcolker on Twitter)

Most volunteering still happens offline, of course, but there are significant barriers to it. It can be hard to find the right opportunity, you might have to be interviewed, you have to schedule it, get there, etc. Sometime you enjoy it, sometimes you don’t. Nonprofits often have a hard time taking advantage of skills like marketing, or languages, in the offline volunteer model.

73% of Americans don’t volunteer, often because it’s just too time-consuming or the opportunities don’t fit into their overbooked schedules. But the reality is we all have lots of spare time — but it comes in chunks of minutes here and there, not big blocks of time we could schedule to meet in person with a nonprofit. Think of all that time watching YouTube videos, for example. There’s great skilled help out there — writers, translators, designers, marketers, IT, etc. — but the cost of in-person volunteering to skilled professions is too high.

What if you could take 30 minutes on your own schedule though?

That’s the idea behind Jacob’s company, Sparked.com. Nonprofits post “challenges” and microvolunteers accept them. Big companies are partnering with them to offer their skilled employees (e.g. LinkedIn employees will help with social media problems, for example). This is a worldwide service, so you can tap into experts from around the globe. Same goes for nonprofits — you can help nonprofits all over the world too. The service is free for nonprofits; they get paid by corporations who want their employees to be able to participate as experts, and they have a unique experience on the site that the public doesn’t see.

Ronald McDonald House in Cincinnati used Sparked.com to get  documents translated into Arabic. They got about $1500 of translation services for free. One volunteer did the translation, and two others verified it. Surfrider Foundation got their business cards redesigned. The Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest had their website hacked and as a result pulled from Google’s search results. Volunteers helped them figure out why they kept getting hacked and fixed the problem. More examples here.

Jacob says letting employees do microvolunteering on the job helps them feel better about work — it’s almost like a break. The site is very social, with commenting and rewards built in. Multiple volunteers can be working together on the same challenge, much like you have multiple people commenting on a thread in Facebook. It’s interactive and collaborative.

Jacob does wish nonprofits would be a little more engaging with the system. A nonprofit asked for design help, and a volunteer did this great job for them, and the nonprofit didn’t respond. Turns out the staff person posted the challenge and then went on vacation! Be there, and be responsive with your challenges and the volunteers that take it on.

Individual staff members in a nonprofit can post challenges and have those accounts linked, so your development, program, and IT people can all post challenges. They have also just launched a local element, so volunteers can connect with local nonprofits and vice versa if that’s important. They are also partnering with Network for Good, so a fundraising element will be added to the site, but the volunteering is the core.

A few more tips from Jacob . . .

• Don’t post massive requests, like “build us a website,” however.  Break it down into two-hour chunks of work, at most.
• Think creatively about ways to use this kind of talent. Ask them to vet a proposal or design before you pay a consultant big bucks to implement it, for example.
• Use Sparked.com in concert with Twitter and Facebook fans. You have these people who love you already, so let them know about your challenges.
• Don’t share really sensitive login information in challenges.

Some additional blog posts from other MDS11 bloggers . . .

10 Absolutely Essential Truths about Social Media by Katya Andresen

Live blogging from the 2011 Millennial Donor Summit: Successfully Going Mobile by Amy Sample Ward

What I learned about Trust in 10 minutes from @Julien at #MDS11 by Nonprofit Nate

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Putting aside for a moment whether we should call them “target audiences” or not, it’s always good to remember that, as a nonprofit communicator or fundraiser, you are very rarely the kind of person that you are trying to communicate with. Even if you match the demographics, the fact that you are employed by your cause sets you apart in major ways from those who are not. Therefore, what you personally think about your fundraising letter, or your e-newsletter’s design, or what so-and-so wants to put on your nonprofit’s Facebook page is not nearly as important as what the people on the receiving end will think about it.

Always, always, always do your best to put yourself in their shoes. It’s tough. It takes research, and listening, and practice.  But you can do it. And when you have people around you who are a closer match than you are to that kind of supporter, listen and trust your peers, even if they have less nonprofit experience than you do.

Take, for example, the case of a small nonprofit that is thinking about hosting a fundraiser that will appeal to younger African-American women, as this is a demographic that the group would like to be able to connect with more for numerous reasons, including advocacy, education, and fundraising. This particular organization is blessed to have younger African-American women on its board of directors who are chairing this event.

Now, there are several others on the board who are not members of this target audience, primarily white men and women of various ages, most significantly older. Some are questioning whether this event makes sense at all. Will anyone come? Are we charging the right amount? Does the program make sense? In a nutshell, they are worried, because they can’t see themselves or anyone they spend much time with attending this event. They are afraid.

Should that matter? Should it affect the decisions that are made about the event?

All too often, I think it does end up mattering, and entirely too much. I think well-meaning but ultimately culturally clueless people end up squashing the marketing and fundraising ideas of people who are actually much closer to those target audiences — ideas that could work really well were they given the full support of the organization.

In this case, I would argue (and have in the real life version of this scenario) that it’s better to trust the judgement of people who are closest to the target audience to make the big decisions. Certainly there are lots of tactical and logistical questions where age and experience are extremely helpful, and those words of wisdom should always be shared. But on the big, core decisions about an event or a marketing campaign, I’d say empower the people who are most like — or who have invested enough of themselves to truly understand — those you are trying to reach.

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The American Red Cross wants every household to do three things: to build an emergency kit, to create a communication and evacuation plan, and to be informed about the disasters that are common in their communities. Fair enough, but how are they going to make it happen? By working the basics of a good marketing strategy: Defining their audience, creating a message that resonates with that audience, and delivering the message through channels their audience already trusts and uses.

Yesterday I spoke with Mark Ferguson, who manages the “Do More than Cross Your Fingers” campaign and other corporate partnerships for the American Red Cross. He shared some of the back story behind what you’ll see at www.redcross.org/domore, which officially launched yesterday.

Defining the Audience: Moms with Kids at Home

Mark says that historical research and experience shows that moms with kids under 18 living at home are especially receptive to messages about disaster preparedness. No surprise there — if anyone is going to care about the nest and the babies in it, it’s mom. But some recent research also shows that 82% of moms say they drive household purchases. So if you are trying to get a family to organize a disaster preparedness kit that will most likely require some purchases, reaching out to the people who decide what to buy makes sense.

Creating the Message: Testing the Campaign Slogan

But what do you say to a busy mom to get her to make this a priority?

Mark says that it was important for the Red Cross to come up with a message that spoke to moms but that also had broader appeal to the American public at large. Even if moms were the target, the message needed to be appropriate for a much wider audience as well.

It was also important, says Mark, for the message to start from where people are now and to help them move forward with their family disaster planning, regardless of how much they may have already done. Through their research, they knew that about 80% of families had taken one of the three key steps (getting a kit, making a plan, or staying informed) and this campaign was about moving them to take another.

To come up with the right message, the Red Cross hired the firm Catchword Branding which specializes in naming. They provided 1,000 possible slogans to the Red Cross, many of which were simple variations on one idea. Using a cross-functional team (marketing, development, disaster preparedness, field staff, etc.), the Red Cross whittled the list down to the best five. Those five were then tested through an online survey with Harris Interactive to find which one resonated best both with moms and with the public at large.

Of the five options, says Mark, one was in the form of a question and one played on the “heroes” theme that the Red Cross has used successfully before. Another one was deemed too snarky or too clever (survey respondents said it just didn’t sound like the Red Cross). The chosen theme, Do More Than Cross Your Fingers, stood out among the five with both moms and the public at large. “It was fresh,” says Mark, “but not in any way offensive.”

I think the message works for two reasons. First, it meets the stated goal of starting where most people really are, which is crossing our fingers. Second, it urges us to take action, to “Do More” and not so subtly points out that finger crossing is not really a valid approach, but without being pushy or preachy about it.

Delivering the Message: Going Where Moms Are and Using Voices They Trust

With a message in hand, the next decision was how to get it out to moms. “We know that moms are really active online,” says Mark, quoting a Nielsen survey this year that said that 20% of the active online population are moms aged 25-54 with at least one child living at home. Thus the campaign centers on redcross.org/domore and all of the other online and offline tactics will point back to that page.

The Red Cross also wanted to emphasize that each family is different and so what’s in their emergency kits should be different too. Thus one of the key components of the website is a game called Prepare 4 that helps you build your own personalized kit.

“One of the goals is to make disaster preparedness simple and interesting,” says Mark, “Not just a brochure or ho-hum shopping list. We wanted something interactive and friendly.” During the game, you answer questions that help you build a kit that’s customized for your family, right down to including something fun for the kids to do while the power is out. At the end of the game, your list of items in emailed to you so that you can go gather up the items from around your house and go shopping for what’s missing.

You can also share what you are including in your personal kit with others in the My Kit section, as spokesperson Jamie Lee Curtis has done on the site via video. The selection of Curtis as the spokesperson is another move that connects well with moms.

The Red Cross’s social media maven Wendy Harman has been reaching out to  Mommy Bloggers (one of the biggest forces within the blogosphere) who have blogged about disaster preparedness before. They are also pursuing coverage in traditional print magazines focused on women and parenting. Cause marketing partnerships with Clorox (a brand many moms use daily) and FedEx (many moms also run small businesses and FedEx is already reaching out to NASCAR moms with the preparedness message) round out the campaign channels. FedEx is distributing disaster preparedness brochures and Clorox is sponsoring a radio media tour.

Measuring Results

Mark says that the Red Cross will use its annual fall survey with Harris Interactive on how well prepared American households are for a disaster to help measure the effectiveness of the campaign, including a survey later this month. They’ll compare those figures to a baseline survey completed in August.

No matter how big or how small your nonprofit may be, going through these basic steps in creating your strategy is always a smart approach. Just like with disaster preparedness, you have to do more than cross your fingers with nonprofit marketing too!

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On Tuesday, August 4, Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies and Kevin Gottesman of Gott Advertising will present a webinar for us called Beyond Viral: Building Your Email List through Paid Marketing. If you are wondering how the leading nonprofits in U.S. expand to their email prospect lists to hundreds of thousands of people, Alia and Kevin will let you in on how it’s done.

I asked Alia to share some of her lessons learned about capitalizing on media coverage. Just how do you turn those viewers and readers into members of your mailing list? Read on, and register for the webinar.  Here’s Alia . . .

Growing an email list is a crucial element for nonprofits to build their movements, cross-promote their social media, and raise more money. Every email list member is a prospective activist, volunteer, donor, and sneezer – someone who can help spread the word on your behalf.

Typically, any surge in media attention, regardless of subject matter, causes a surge in related web traffic.  So for instance, when your organizations’ report on Iraqi refugees launches, you can expect two things to happen:

• More people will visit your website;
• More people will search on Internet search terms such as “Iraqi refugees,” “Iraq war refugees,” “Iraqi resettlement,” etc.

Generally, both of these secondary effects of media coverage are short-lived. Unless the report really takes off, the media coverage will peak within 3 or 4 days.

Our experience is that as the media dies down, so will the traffic.  The challenge therefore, is to use the window of opportunity – roughly 100 hours –  created by the earned media spike to convert as many visitors as possible to list membership – which is the gateway to participation with your organization.

The current industry-standard best practices for doing this would include:

The following is an excerpt from the Marketing Sherpa Landing Page Handbook, considered the bible in the field:

“We suspect some marketers truly believe that if their outbound campaign is good enough, the creative will pre-sell prospects on the offer no matter how lame the landing page is. In other words, many marketers think the outbound campaign is doing the heavy lifting, and the landing page exists simply as a passive collection cup for all the sales or leads generated by the campaign.

The exact opposite is generally true.”

General guidelines for a good landing page are well-documented and include:

• Suppression of global navigation
• Minimal choices
• Collection only of information viewed as appropriate by the visitor

Conclusion

Many organizations fail to maximize the 100 hours of PR opportunity in converting traffic to leads.

It is critical that your organization work across the “departmental divide”  – meaning communications, marketing, programs, advocacy, and fundraising work together to anticipate media spikes and create integrated marketing plans to convert those spikes into real live leads.

It’s Kivi again . . . pretty good stuff, eh? Join us on August 4 for more in-depth advice like this, along with real examples from Alia’s and Kevin’s work.

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Photo by Tanya Ryno on Flickr

UPDATE: I’ve added two new articles to this post at the bottom.

In my various online marketing trainings this year, I’ve been saying that within six months, somebody from the Obama campaign will write a book about how they used texting and social media to build the campaign into something the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Just as the nonprofit sector learned all kinds of lessons about online fundraising from Howard Dean in 2004, so will we reap similar lessons from the 2008 campaign.

But until those books are written and interviews given, let’s look at what we’ve gleaned so far.

A linguistic analysis of the Obama and McCain websites by 7 Billion People found that they were preaching to the choir and missing opportunities to win independents over. They say: ”McCain’s site talks about risk avoidance, “trusting your gut”, and is organized very procedurally driving visitors down specific messaging and paths. Obama’s website focuses on hope and change, speaking to people that prefer to be thought of as a group, driving consensus. His site also offers a more varied set of navigation paths, emphasizing choice.” The sites feel good to the base, but do little to move new people in their direction. 

Makes me wonder, how many nonprofit websites are giving their existing supporters what they need, but also answering questions that skeptics may have?

Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog has some questions for you if you are wondering how your nonprofit can learn from the Obama campaign’s fundraising successes:

“Is your organization a Barack Obama? Are you unlike all the others, or are you one of several similar organizations — distinguishable only by experts and insiders?

Is there urgency built in to everything you say?

Do you have the ability to reach out, grab people by the heart and actually make them feel differently from how they felt before they encountered you?

Are you fighting an enemy? (It needn’t be a person or people.)

If you can say yes to all those, then you can ask:

Are you really nailing your online fundraising techniques?”

In other words, says Jeff, your “offer” is more important than your “technique.”

My brilliant friend Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention provided a great summary back in September of what she saw as the lessons in how to do good email marketing, based on what she saw from the campaigns, and more recently criticized the Obama campaign for not listening to what their supporters really wanted. Nancy is also looking forward to seeing what Barack Obama does with his massive online network, regardless of how things turn out tonight.

Advertising Age published “What Marketers Can Learn for the Obama Campaign.” The three take-home lessons are Simplicity, Consistency, and Relevance.

Ragan Communications has published “What the 2008 Campaign Taught Communicators,” with 15 lessons including Social Media Is Here to Stay, The Person Who Tries Something New Wins, and Write for the Sound Bite.

If you really want to be the first to know how all the election lessons shake out, follow Colin Delany’s blog at e-politics. He has even more posts for you to mull over on his Election Day summary. See the Essential Background section in particular.

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Who is Your Nonprofit’s Target Audience? Figure it out during Thursday’s webinar: Forget the General Public! How to Define and Reach Your Target Audience Photo by practicalowl on Flickr

We chant it together in my in-person nonprofit marketing trainings: “There is no such thing as the general public. There is no such thing as the general public.”

If you are spending time and money trying to reach the general public with your nonprofit’s message, you are wasting it. All of it. OK, maybe just 95% of it. But don’t you want to do better than 5% success?

I’ll show you how to define, research, and yes, target, the people who matter most to your organization’s success during this week’s webinar:

Forget the General Public! How to Define and Reach Your Target Audience

Thursday, October 23, 2008
1:00-2:00 pm Eastern (10:00-11:00 am Pacific)

$35 per connection (everyone squeezing around the speakerphone and computer monitor is fine with me)

I’ll walk you through several examples and give you plenty of tips and resources during the webinar, but if you can’t make it, here is a quick-and-dirty approach that’s far better than going for the “general public.”

Think about the change you are trying to bring about through your work. Then visualize someone taking an action that helps you bring about that change. What does that person in your mind’s eye look like? Where are they? Who are they with?

Now try to think about demographic characteristics that could help define who this person is, such as gender, age, ethnicity, income level, education, employment, hobbies, family status, religion, affiliations, and geographic location. Where would this person get information? How would she spend her free time? How would he spend his disposable income?

Now think about some of the values that would be important to this person. Values can include everything from time, money, sleep and convenience to adventure, power, status, fun, and more. Add those values to your demographic description.

Next, you need to match your message (what you are trying to communicate and the action you want someone to take) to those values. The way you describe volunteer opportunities to a 17-year-old girl will be quite different from how you describe them to a 65-year-old man. They are different demographically and they value different things. Your messages should be customized accordingly.

Learn more about how to make this work for your nonprofit during Thursday’s webinar. Register now to reserve your spot!

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Guest Blogger Rebecca Jamison

Last week I wrote a post criticizing the Special Olympics’ decision to use a movie boycott to launch a campaign against the use of the word “retard.” The post was picked up by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where it received quite a few comments on all sides of the debate (some obviously from Special Olympics insiders, though they did not identify themselves that way). I asked Rebecca Jamison, a big movie buff, a big sister to a Special Olympics athelete, and one of my best friends, for her take on the issue. Here’s what she has to say about the use of movie boycotts as nonprofit advocacy and about this specific boycott of Tropic Thunder by the Special Olympics.

~Kivi

When I first heard there was a boycott called by the Special Olympics against Tropic Thunder, my first thoughts went back to two previous film boycotts – the late 1980s boycott by religious conservatives of The Last Temptation of Christ and the 1990s boycott by gay activists of Basic Instinct.

Now I guess the boycotts achieved something in that I remember them, but not in glowing or effective terms. The Last Temptation boycott seemed very ill advised to me at the time and I was a junior in a Kansas Church of the Brethren founded college! This was a Martin Scorsese film adaptation of a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, the same guy who wrote the beloved Zorba the Greek. I read the book and found it moving and helpful in interpreting the life of Jesus and appreciating all the more what he may have faced, experienced as a mortal man asked to fulfill an incredible destiny. The Devil, as described in the Matthew, Mark and Luke, did tempt Jesus. Why a dramatization of another temptation was wrong or should be banned, I never understood.

It reminds me of the sentiments that led to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. For in his Booker Prize winning novel, Satanic Verses, Rushdie envisioned the Prophet Mohamed also dealing with the Devil’s temptations. Many Americans thought that the reaction of Iranian followers of Islam was absurd. Interestingly the fatwa and the Last Temptation boycott were both in 1988-89.

And Basic Instinct, what is there to say about that boycott? Do folks now even remember there was a controversy? Leftist liberals in San Francisco took exception to gay characters being represented as serial killers. They’d had enough of it, with earlier films such as Cruising with Al Pacino, The Eyes of Laura Mars with Faye Dunaway, and The Fan with Lauren Bacall to name a few. Gay=killer in too many films and the 1990s boycott was against this stereotype.

However, the Basic Instinct boycott didn’t work; it did not curtail the movie’s box office or derail the career of its two stars, Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas. Ironically, Sharon Stone is now a huge gay icon. If anything I think it increased interest in “alternative” lifestyles. I am probably one of five people who remember there was a boycott.

So Kivi asked me to contribute to this debate on Tropic Thunder because I have a brother who is mentally and physically challenged, and has several Special Olympic gold and silver medals adorning his bedroom wall. Terry has a rare disorder that is yet to be defined as familial or non-familial dysautonomia. The genetic test is at the lab as I type.

Has he ever been called the “R” word? Not in my presence. How would I feel were he were called that? Livid of course. But my thoughts would then steer to the uneducated, unenlightened status of the person wielding the insult, not to the disadvantaged person who received it, be it my brother or someone else. I don’t like the “R” word, but I personally do not think it historically or socially is equal to the “N” word.

And then there is Tropic Thunder. I watched this film in a New York City Upper East Side movie theatre, a bastion of intellectual liberalism if there is one, except perhaps LA from where most of the characters in the film hail. The NYC audience laughed at the “R” word’s usage between Robert Downey, Jr. and Ben Stiller as they discussed why Stiller didn’t win an Oscar, let alone got a nomination–Because he went “full r-tard” whereas other winners only had versions of the disability.

The audience around me laughed — I didn’t but I was watching, critiquing for this write up. Otherwise, I might’ve laughed. Why? Tropic Thunder is a satire, which all too often Americans just do not get. It seems too French or something. Satire is, and I borrow this definition from the Random House Unabridged Dictionary: the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc. [emphasis added].

The characters use of the word in Tropic Thunder demonstrated how utterly stupid, shallow and callous they were, not only in using it but in the approval of others from their community, e.g. Hollywood or the film/theatrical community in accepting its use. The use of the “R” word in Tropic Thunder was meant to point out that even in liberal Hollywood or New York, where people trip over their leftist sentiments, some words and ideas are still, wrongly, accepted, like the “R” word. The whole film is a critique of the ludicrousness of the Hollywood lifestyle and its’ values.

Now as to Kivi’s point that the boycott was perhaps ill advised. I now have to wonder, was it? I originally saw her point of view recalling the two other films mentioned earlier and was dismayed at the vitriol of the comments she received to her column questioning the efficacy of a boycott. But here we are talking about the use of the word. And that generally is the most a boycott can realistically expect to do-get us to talking.

Maybe, just maybe Ben Stiller who has been working on this project for 10 years wanted us to do that all along-see Hollywood for how insufferably frivolous it is. And to stop idolizing the idiotic people who work there. Or is that giving him too much credit? Let’s just be thankful its out in the open and we can now proclaim the use of the word Retard is obnoxious for everyone be it LA or New York or Kansas.

So denounce the word– not a satiric movie or Kivi for raising a question. Because if you have done the latter too, I’m afraid you’ve missed Ben Stiller and Kivi Miller’s points entirely.

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