Nonprofit Communications

Volunteering is a significant part of the identity of Generation Y - people in their 20s - because they grew up doing it. Service learning has been fully integrated into many high schools and college-bound teens know that admissions officers love community service.

Volunteering is so well ingrained in the Gen Y culture that a recent Deloitte Volunteer IMPACT survey found that more than half of workers in their 20s prefer employment at companies that provide volunteer opportunities and 70% believe that companies should use volunteering as a professional development tool.

If you are interested in recruiting people in this age group as volunteers for your nonprofit, keep in mind a few tips from Sam Davidson of CoolPeopleCare. Sam will be the guest speaker during the May 7 Nonprofit Marketing Guide webinar on “How to Connect with Generation Y.”

Don’t ask for long-term commitments. For most of Gen Y, life is usually about trying lots of things and then committing to those things that really knock your socks off. “If I want to learn more about your organization and how I can help, and the only option for me is to commit to 8 hours next weekend or an hour a week for the next 12 weeks, I may just skip it,” says Sam. Instead, offer quick but meaningful opportunities to lend a hand.

Let friends volunteer together. Gen Y is a very social set that prefers to shop, eat, date, and hang out in groups of friends. Volunteering is no different. “We’re not afraid to tackle a big project, as long as we can do it together,” say Sam, who notes that his is the first generation to grow up in schools that required working collectively in groups in nearly every subject. (We would have HATED that, wouldn’t we have, my independent Gen X brothers and sisters?)

Spread the word through friends. When reaching out to 20-something volunteers, forget direct mail, and for email to work, it has to be really good. “Tell me quickly why it’s important, because I’ll be scanning/listening to/reading your pitch while I do six other things, so it needs to stick out,” advises Sam. Instead, Sam says to play your local equivalent of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game: If you want to reach a group of 20-somethings, talk to their friends and friends of friends and have them spread the word.

“If you’re soliciting me directly, let me know the connection to the opportunity, whether it’s because my friend volunteers there or the issue affects me in some way,” says Sam. ” Or, better yet, if you’ve created a low-commitment, team-friendly experience, I’ll hear about it naturally from one of my friends anyway, so by offering something I’ll actually think about coming to, it should market itself.”

Learn more about marketing your nonprofit to people in their 20s during next week’s webinar, How to Connect with Generation Y on May 7, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, 11:00 a.m. Pacific. Registration is $35 per connection. Get the details.

I’m reading “Message Matters: Succeeding at the Crossroads of Mission and Market” by Rebecca K. Leet. I’m about halfway through it, and here are some of the tips that I found most interesting.

When creating a message that works, you need to start with the action that you want others to take. Unfortunately, lots of nonprofits take the easy (lazy) way out and say that they want people to “be informed” or “be aware” of their issues. But that’s not really a good goal for your communications. What is it that you want people TO DO after they are aware and informed?

In the book, Rebecca says that Mothers Against Drunk Driving could have had educating people about the dangers of drunk driving as a goal, but that would not have been nearly as effective as asking people not to drink and drive and to pick a designated driver instead. Clear actions make all the difference and add an incredible amount of clarity to the process of creating your messaging.

After you create your core message, you should create a few subset messages that more directly address the specific desires of particular segments of your target audience. For example, if you have one core message about early child education, you might have one subset message for parents, one for pediatricians, and yet another for day care providers.

I know the idea of creating multiple messages has created some heartburn for nonprofits I’ve worked with before (and for me too) — Won’t it be confusing? What if one target audience sees the message intended for a different target audience? How can we figure out who gets what message?

Rebecca says not to worry, because the reality is that people only tune into messages that appeal to them personally and pretty much ignore everything else. So as long as your subset messages don’t contradict each other and support the core message, it’s OK if the day care providers also get the parents’ message. In reality, a day care provider may also be a parent, and may be interested in both perspectives, reinforcing your core message.

I’ll share more tips when I finish the book. But I can say that I definitely recommend it. In fact, I’ve asked Rebecca to speak during an upcoming Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com webinar called “How to Create Nonprofit Messages That Motivate” on June 19. She’s agreed to boil down the best of the book into a one-hour webinar with plenty of time for your specific questions (although you should still buy the book too!) Learn more now.

I just got a sneak peek at the slides that Jeff Brooks of Donor Power Blog will be sharing during this Thursday’s (5/1/08, 3:00 ET) webinar: What Do Baby Boomer Donors Want from Your Nonprofit?

Jeff says the good news is that Baby Boomers are the wealthiest and largest generation in U.S. history. The bad news is they are much more demanding than their parents’ generation. So what do they want from you? Control over their relationship with your nonprofit, for one thing.

And what does that really mean and what do you do about it? What impact does it have on the way you communicate with your donors? You’ll have to get those answers straight from Jeff. Register for the webinar ($35 for whoever can fit around the monitor and speaker phone) and you can ask all the questions you want about Baby Boomers and your nonprofit. Jeff will answer as many as he can during the hour.

Please welcome Claire Voyant — a new guest blogger here at Nonprofit Communications. Claire (whose last name is actually Meyerhoff) sees things others don’t! You’ll be able to find all of Claire’s posts in a new category on this blog called Claire Voyant.

~ Kivi

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By Guest Blogger Claire Voyant

Here I am, Claire Voyant, . . . and I see a trend, people! Actually, it’s Kivi who sees things clearly by highlighting the Humane Society’s spin on the meat mess. By focusing on kids, not cows, the Humane Society got great publicity for their organization.

This is a twist on what I like to call “tag-along” publicity – hitching your nonprofit to someone else’s wagon. When I worked for the National Safe Kids Campaign in D.C, we wanted to publicize accidental poisonings. Sure, we did press releases and fact sheets. No coverage. Then a policy person mentioned that D.C.’s “Mr. Yuck,” based at Georgetown Hospital, was about to lose it’s funding – and it’s home.

With just a few phone calls, I learned the details about their money troubles, rounded up a local family that had a good outcome because of a call to Mr. Yuck, and a TV reporter interested in the story. The next evening, the story, including an interview with a Safe Kids expert, led the local ABC’s 11pm newscast.

We also wrote an editorial that landed in the Washington Post that we got some more coverage. Eventually, the National Capitol Poison Center found a new home and affiliation with George Washington University Hospital.

If you think your organization’s mission is a story in itself (“but we do such great work!”), think again. Unless you’re making news, find some news that you can “tag-along,” team-up, and pitch your story that way.

Most nights I watch the NBC Nightly News and last night I saw two stories with interesting nonprofit marketing angles. They provide two great examples of how to create story hooks that are so enticing that the media simply can’t pass them up.

Lesson #1: If your point isn’t quite compelling enough, it’s OK to elevate a secondary point that is.

The first story was the massive beef recall, the largest in American history, that was based directly on an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States. I used to freelance for the HSUS, so I’m familiar with many of their undercover investigations over the years. They always reveal truly disgusting behavior by human beings against animals — this time forcing sick cows to their feet with electric shocks and bulldozers, since the animals are supposed to be healthy enough to walk on their own to slaughter. As disturbing as this story is, I don’t believe it would have been near the top of the broadcast without this secondary hook: much of the meat went into the National School Lunch Program.

Americans who might otherwise turn a blind eye to exactly how low we humans will go as we turn cows into steaks suddenly get interested when it’s little kids, many of them poor, being served hamburgers made from cows too sick to stand. The HSUS very wisely turned this into more than a story about tortured cows. It became a story about what the federal government is feeding kids at school, and they got massive exposure as a result.

In fact, the HSUS contacted school officials directly in 36 states on January 31 warning them about the beef, well before the USDA forced the recall this week. It’s a great case study in public advocacy — directly connecting animal rights and human health — and also great message development. If you are a big meat eater, you may not care how a bunch of sick cows are treated, but it’s hard to ignore children being fed beef that’s much more likely to carry mad cow disease and other contamination.

Lesson #2: A simple, real, personal story drives home a point better than statistics.

Toward the end of the broadcast, we learned about how U.S. government aid is supporting a foster home and school in Uganda that takes in children whose parents have died of AIDS. Many of the children are HIV positive as well, and our aid pays for their anti-viral drugs. It’s a heart-warming story, but the hook that opened and closed the story really drove home the point.

The founder of the foster home had been asked by a prostitute several years earlier for some poison. The prostitute was dying of AIDS and rather than orphan her two small daughters, who would have surely been forced into prostitution themselves, she wanted to kill herself and them.

Instead this woman took the two girls home with her and started the foster home. Today the two girls are healthy young woman, with a bright future ahead of them, because of the generosity of not only this one woman, but also the U.S. government. The story opened and closed with the foster home founder talking specifically about the two girls.

No matter what issue you are discussing, you are much more likely to capture the media’s interest if you can put an actual human face on the story. A so-so story about U.S. aid to Africa becomes riveting when you introduce the painful past and hopeful future of these two real girls.

If you aren’t getting the kind of media coverage you’d like, apply these two lessons to your media pitches and maybe one evening Brian Williams will be talking about your good work.

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.

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.

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?