Nonprofit Communications

This is the fourth in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal). Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | This is Part 4 | Part 5

The direct mail makeover by Cal fundraisers highlights the cultural contributions of alumni and asks other alumni to support the next generation of innovators, while also thanking the graduates “for being who you are.”

The brilliance of this approach is not in its originality – it rarely is. Using famous alumni is not new. Asking alumni to support future generations is not new. And yet it works beautifully. What is new is the twist on these concepts. What’s new is the juxtaposition of meaningful cultural icons that came out of Cal alumni and inviting other alumni to think of themselves as peers to those innovators.

I’m one of those slightly disaffected Cal alums who Virginia Gray, Cal’s associate director of annual giving and regional programs, is trying to squeeze some bucks out of. I enjoyed my time there and appreciate the education I received, but I feel no special connection to any particular people or places on the campus. But this piece grabbed me.

Rather than talking about all the Nobel Laureates and other Big Brains who went to Cal, the piece talks about their impacts in images and words that are relevant to me, right now. A computer mouse. Saving the planet through energy efficiency. MySpace. Apple, Inc. Dilbert. Bono on the cover of Rolling Stone. This piece of mail takes an education at Cal that happened decades ago and makes it meaningful to my life today. It makes it incredibly easy for me to see how my contribution will lead to the next great thing I’ll have on my desk tomorrow.

Remember: They started with a cookie cutter. “We tried it one way, and it didn’t work out, but we kept going. The new idea was really good, and the copywriting and graphics told a great story,” says Virginia.

I admit, my interest in this piece was piqued first by professional curiosity. When I saw the big, yellow “You” on the cover panel after getting years of canned letters from Cal, my first thought was, “OK, somebody just took some donor marketing training and has gulped down a big cup of the ‘You-Not-Us’ Kool-Aid.” But when I opened it up and read the piece, I immediately felt like I was part of this amazing group of innovators simply by virtue of being an alumna. Check one slacker alumna off your list, Virginia. I gave online for the first time since I graduated in ’91.

Virginia is new to nonprofit marketing, but she has a strong direct marketing and branding background and knows the importance of finding emotional hooks. Her focus groups told her what she already knew. Cal is huge and there are not a lot of common experiences there that create unifying emotions in alumni. But those same alumni also told her what their hot buttons were — that they weren’t cookie-cutter Ivy League graduates and yet were proud to have graduated from one of the top universities in the nation.

Did it work on other alumni as well as it did with me? We’ll see. The mailing list includes 100,000 graduates of Cal’s College of Letters & Science who are not currently donors. The list was not broken out by age or other demographics. Half got the full-color brochure and the other half got a standard business letter with similar messaging in much longer text and no graphics. See the Brochure. See the Letter.

Virginia says it takes a good two-three months before they can judge the performance of a direct mail campaign, but she will pull the first numbers at the end of November and has agreed to share them with us. By split testing similar messages in drastically different formats and comparing them to other campaigns, she hopes to determine what was more important to success: the message, the package, or both.

We’ll find out in a few weeks. Stay tuned by subscribing to this blog right now (see upper left of blog home page), so you don’t miss the results!

Coming Tomorrow: Lessons you can learn from what Cal did

This is the third in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal). Read Part 1 | Part 2 | This is Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

The creative team has gone back to the drawing board. Gone are the cookie cutter imagery and the direct language about “you, a Cal alumni” being innovative, creative, etc. Instead, the team creates a piece that finally works: On the cover, it asks, “Who are you? Cal alumni are . . .” The “you” is in big, bright yellow letters, standing out against a black background. As you open the piece and unfold it, you see a series of panels:

Movement Leaders & Story Weavers
Creators & Innovators
Educators & Crusaders
Trendsetters & Friend Seekers
Activists & Satirists

Each tag includes a clear simple image with a small blurb about an alum who exemplifies that description. With Movement Leaders, you see a bunch of asparagus, and “Alice Waters, ’67. Acclaimed chef and pioneer behind the worldwide movement to eat local, organic foods.”

With Friend Seekers, you see a screenshot of Tom’s MySpace page with 201,904,463 friends. It says “Tom Anderson, ’98. Cofounder and president of MySpace.com and first friend to every user.”

The ten images represent a great diversity in alumni in age, gender, ethnicity, and subject area. They are chefs, writers, teachers, scientists, programmers, inventers, cartoonists, and athletes who have all had a profound impact on today’s culture. Look at a PDF of the full piece It’s flat here, but you can imagine how it would unfold in your hands.

On the donation form and envelope, it closes with these simple phrases that say it all to the alumni-would-be-donors: “Cal alumni are changing the world. Won’t YOU champion the next generation of innovators?” followed by “Thanks for being who you are. We appreciate your generosity.”

In creating the design, Amy Cranch, the piece’s principal editor, knew they had to choose between pictures of the alums or pictures of things that represented their contributions to society. “The thing is way stronger,” says Amy. “It makes a crisp design, and it’s much easier to relate to.” Most people wouldn’t recognize or know who Douglas Engelbart is, but everyone uses what he invented: the computer mouse. “We tried to be careful not to pick just famous people, but to emphasize the impact that these people have on our daily lives,” says Amy.

“Instead of ‘You are this or that,’ it became an invitation to explore the categories of people, and to feel some excitement or pride that the thing you use everyday came from someone who went to the same school as you,” says Amy. The new approach still allowed Cal to play off the original concept of not being a cookie cutter and to still use “You” directly, but without jamming in onto people. “I firmly believe that using the personal stories opens the doors for further connections with people,” says Amy. People first, organizations second. Alumni first, Cal second.

Coming tomorrow: Find out why I think this piece works so well and about the test that Cal is running.

This is the second in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal). Read Part 1 | This is Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

The fundraisers at Cal have decided to break away from their standard business letter appeal and try a bold, full-color brochure to convince alumni to become new donors to the university. From their focus groups, they know that Cal alums consider themselves unique and diverse – not like the cookie cutter graduates from rival private schools. They’ve also decided to speak directly to the audience by using the word “You” prominently in the piece. So the creative team went to work.

In early drafts, the simple imagery of the cookie cutter was meshed with too many complex messages about alumni, says Amy Cranch, a principal editor with Cal’s development communications department. It said, “You challenge convention. You have an independent spirit. You think freely.” The whole idea was that your life has been transformed by graduating from Cal, but in a way that left you your own person, explains Amy.

“It just wasn’t working,” she recalls. “There were too many disconnects, and the concept of the cookie cutter itself was a cliché and not very strong. The copy made very strong assumptions about people. It was not an invitation to agree with the ideas. It felt too forced.”

Virginia Gray, Cal’s associate director of annual giving and regional programs, agrees. “The whole thing wasn’t holding together. It wasn’t telling the kind of personal story we wanted.”

This is where many people would have given up and gone back to the standard form letter. When you are creating messages, whether they take the form of a tagline or design theme or epiphany at the end of an essay, you have to keep kneading the bread dough. At this stage, Cal had a nice lump of dough, but it was still a sticky mess. But they kept kneading it, waiting for that smooth, satiny finish to appear that tells you that you are done.

Amy’s boss had a middle-of-the-night brainstorm. Instead of telling Cal alumni what they were and sounding presumptuous – just what Cal grads hate – they would use famous alumni who are often described as innovators, free thinkers, and creators.

Everyone has the ingredients for good bread, but it takes knowing how long to knead it to produce something delicious.

Coming Tomorrow: How Cal designs a piece all about famous alumni without abandoning the “You, the Donor” ideal.

This is the first in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal), my alma mater. Read Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

The fundraisers at Cal had a problem: they needed to raise more money from alumni to support the diverse education and research programs where Cal excels, but their current direct mail program wasn’t increasing the size of the alumni donor pool. While the standard annual appeal in a letter format did a good job at renewing existing donors, says Virginia Gray, Cal’s associate director of annual giving and regional programs, the letters weren’t bringing in many new donors.

To learn more about these alumni who weren’t currently donating, Cal sponsored some focus groups. “We found that a lot of people felt like going to Cal was a big, impersonal experience and they didn’t have the same emotional connections and bonding experiences that you’d find at a smaller university,” says Virginia.

Cal must also contend with the misperception that as a state-funded school, it doesn’t really need individual donors. “At private schools,” explains Virginia, “you are educated about how the people before you are funding your education now, and that you need to give back so the school can go on. You don’t get that message at Cal.”

The alumni in the focus group also shared how they viewed themselves as a very diverse group and that the Cal experience enhanced that diversity, unlike other private institutions of similar caliber that churn out cookie-cutter graduates (the staid professionals that graduate from rival Stanford, for example, come to this Golden Bear’s mind).

The cookie-cutter imagery stuck with Virginia and her colleagues as they pulled together a creative brief for a new direct mail campaign centered on a full-color, multi-panel, graphic-laden brochure. While Cal had tried colorful brochures before, it would be the first time they had tried something as bold as they had in mind this time.

Coming Tomorrow: The cookie cutter concept falls apart, but an even better concept comes together.

Are the copy and images in your nonprofit marketing materials drugging readers into ignoring you and your issue entirely? It’s a process called narcotization.

Here’s how it works. People were shown pictures of gum disease. One group saw photos of a mouth just a little rotten. The second saw photos of moderately rotten gums. The third saw horribly blackened mouths. The impact on dental care? Group one did what they always had. Group two did somewhat more flossing and brushing. Group three gave up entirely and stopped taking care of their gums and teeth. The idea is that if you think a problem is inevitable and overwhelming, you shut down and stop trying to fix it.

I read this example in Chuck Palahniuk’s book of essays called Stranger than Fiction while on vacation recently. In an essay called, “Dear Mr. Levin,” Palahniuk describes narcotization and then goes on to show how author Ira Levin beat the process by charming people into thinking about complex and difficult social problems through his incredible storytelling, way before the issues were a mainstream concern. Rosemary’s Baby, published in 1967, is about abortion rights. The Stepford Wives, published in 1972, is about the backlash against feminism. Sliver, published in 1991, is about electronic voyeurism.

These varying levels of information and our responses to them reminded me of the research that shows a powerful story about one person works better in fundraising than stories about multiple people. I talked about this recently in 10 Ways to Use Storytelling in Your Nonprofit.

Here’s how I see the connection between the two. Using a bunch of statistics about your issue is like showing a mouth that’s just a little rotten. It doesn’t motivate people to change at all. Showing them the suffering of large groups of people is like the blackened mouth. It’s just too much to take and people throw up their hands and don’t see how a donation to you will make a difference. But talking about a single person’s plight is like the moderately rotten gums. It’s bad enough to motivate people to want to help, but not so bad that they feel helpless.

So what can nonprofit communicators learn from Mr. Levin? Palahniuk says he uses metaphors that slowly reveal the issues and solutions without blatantly hitting us over the head with them. He uses humor to charm and worst-case scenarios to scare (Against a woman’s right to choose? Well, what would you do if you were pregnant with the Devil’s baby??) Says Palaniuk of Levin: “You created a fable to get our attention and inoculate us against the fear by creating a metaphor, a character that models the wrong behavior . . . That method gives the reader the moment of realization, the emotional moment of ‘ah-hah!’ And teaching experts say that unless we have that moment of chaos, followed by the emotional release of realization, nothing will be remembered.”

We may not be capable of writing some of the best-selling suspense novels of all time, but we can certainly apply some of these concepts in nonprofit communications. Bring your potential supporters along through your story. Build up to that “ah-hah” moment. Show that one donor what he can do to help, without making him feel helpless. Use anecdotes to let your volunteers learn from the mistakes and successes of others.

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.

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.

As I copyedit text supplied by my nonprofit clients, I am constantly removing jargon. While phrases like “capacity building” and “fostering innovation” may mean something to your foundation funders, these terms usually have no meaning to the people you are serving with the grant the foundation gave you.

Never cut and paste your grant application language into a marketing brochure for a program and expect it to work as is. You are speaking to two different audiences who need to hear about the program in different words and ways. What is meaningful and memorable to a foundation project officer will not work for a busy, low-income single mom who needs your services. Write for your audience at all times.

I recently stumbled upon this list of foundation/nonprofit jargon terms. While the explanations about why each term is bad are rather long-winded, they will help you appreciate the problems with these phrases.

So how do you get the jargon out? After you find it, replace jargon with words that are more specific or include an example that illustrates the reality behind the term.

A Postscript: This post was picked up by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.