Nonprofit Communications

I’m hosting another free webinar: Getting Ready to Write Your 2007 Annual Report.

As the end of 2007 draws near, nonprofits need to begin thinking about their annual reports for the year.

– What information do you need to compile?
– What decisions should you be making right now?
– What can you put off for a few more months?
– Do you really need an annual report?

Get the answers to all of these questions and more during this free webinar on Wednesday, November 28 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern (that’s Noon Central, 11:00 a.m. Mountain, and 10:00 a.m. Pacific). Register Now.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I hosted a free webinar on brochures last month using GotoWebinar. This time I’m trying ReadyTalk. I’ll report back a comparison of the two services after this annual reports webinar for any of you who may be considering a cost-effective webinar solution for your organization.

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.

When I was a young federal employee back in the early 90’s, I was all about the process of preparation and planning. Now that I’ve been self-employed for going on a decade, I lean more toward the “just do it” camp. By necessity, lots of nonprofit communicators are there too, because they don’t have the luxury of time to carefully plot out a strategy before acting. They need to leap into it and try to make something happen. Getting by with a half-way decent solution is better than no solution at all.

But sometimes, “just do it” is a really bad idea.

Last week, I met a bright-faced young man who was an outreach coordinator for a drug and alcohol rehab center. He asked me if I thought it was a good idea to do a newsletter. His boss had asked him to do one, so he was working on it, but he wasn’t sure it was the way to go.

I asked him who the audience for the newsletter was, and he said he didn’t really know. So I asked him who was on the mailing list. His reply: “Well, that’s the problem. There is no mailing list.” Yikes.

So here we have a young staff member, trying to do what his boss says, writing a newsletter for nobody. A very scary waste of time.

Even if you don’t have the time or resources to do a complete communications strategy, you simply MUST take 15 minutes to answer some basic questions before launching any new communications program. A good communications strategy answers about 10 different questions, but at a minimum, you need to answer three for everything you do:

1) Who is the audience?

2) What is the message?

3) What’s the best way to deliver the message?

I talked with the outreach coordinator about what his goals were (getting more referrals to the center) and who in the community could be helpful in meeting those goals. We talked about two categories of people specifically (law enforcement and parents). I explained how he should chat with some of the people he knew in these categories to get some ideas on what they cared about, so he could refine his messages to them. Then he could decide whether a newsletter was really the best approach. We talked a little bit about email newsletter mechanics, assuming that, in fact, would be a decent way to communicate with at least part of his target audience.

Even in the Nike commercials, all those “just do it” people still take a few minutes to sit down and put on the shoes. Sit down and take a few minutes to think it through before you launch your next big marketing idea.

Independent Sector has just released Principles for Good Governance and Ethical Practice, after three years of discussion on the best ways to encourage self-governance and self-regulation in the nonprofit sector. If you receive any foundation funding, you can bet that those funders will insist you adopt these practices and work toward their full implementation.

Several of the 33 principles included in the guide relate directly to your communications and marketing work. I’ve copied those below and added my comments in parentheses. You’ll note that several of these are similar to the principles I highlighted earlier this month from the NC Center for Nonprofits, which other state associations also advocate.

“7. A charitable organization should make information about its operations, including its governance, finances, programs and activities, widely available to the public. Charitable organizations also should consider making information available on the methods they use to evaluate the outcomes of their work and sharing the results of those evaluations.”

(The report specifically mentions nonprofit annual reports and nonprofit websites as two ways to implement this principle.)

“11. The board of a charitable organization should include members with the diverse background (including, but not limited to, ethnic, racial and gender perspectives), experience, and organizational and financial skills necessary to advance the organization’s mission.

(The report mentions that many nonprofits strive to include someone on their board with “public relations and marketing” experience.)

“27. Solicitation materials and other communications addressed to donors and the public must clearly identify the organization and be accurate and truthful.”

(I found this statement particularly interesting: “Descriptions of program activities and the financial condition of the organization must be current and accurate, and any references to past activities or events should be dated appropriately.” Too many nonprofits rely on really old accomplishments in their fundraising and outreach materials and this clearly discourages that kind of behavior.)

“28. Contributions must be used for purposes consistent with the donor’s intent, whether as described in the relevant solicitation materials or as specifically directed by the donor.”

(I also found this one interesting, because many nonprofit communicators focus on one particular project in their materials, but funds raised with those materials are often put into the general operating fund. You’ll need to carefully word your solicitations and supporting materials to comply with this one.)

“29. A charitable organization must provide donors with specific acknowledgments of charitable contributions, in accordance with IRS requirements, as well as information to facilitate the donors’ compliance with tax law requirements.”

(Yes! Someone is finally requiring a thank-you note to donors! The report also adds: “Regular updates to donors on the
activities they support is another way to build trust and loyalty.” Right on.)

“33. A charitable organization should respect the privacy of individual donors and, except where disclosure is required by law, should not sell or otherwise make available the names and contact information of its donors without providing them an opportunity at least once a year to opt out of the use of their names.”

(This is why nonprofits should be using an automated email delivery service — my favorite is iContact — and not Outlook or other personal email programs, to send email newsletters and blasts.)

As I continue to write about best practices on this blog, I’ll try to remember to link them back to these principles where relevant, so you can use them to help justify your work to the higher-ups.

One of the easiest ways that nonprofit communicators can go green in their operations is to use recycled paper all the time — in your office equipment and office supplies like folders and when you buy print. Long gone are the excuses about paper quality and, for the most part, price (or at least they should be, if you shop around a bit.)

There’s just one small problem. Lots of nonprofits like to include “Printed on Recycled Paper” on their documents to promote their environmentally sensitive behavior when they, in fact, have no idea what that phrase really means and aren’t actually using 100% recycled paper. Let me explain.

According to the Federal Trade Commission’s Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims, which were published a decade ago, if you claim that your document is “Printed on Recycled Paper,” you are saying that it is printed on paper containing 100% recycled fiber. However lots of the office and printing papers on the market today only contain 30% recycled fiber. If you are using those papers, you should say, “Printed on Paper with 30% Recycled Fiber” or something along those lines.

I personally buy and highly recommend Staples® 100% Recycled Copy Paper, so I can include “Printed on Recycled Paper” in my documents without further details. To be technically correct about this particular paper, I could say, “Printed on 100% Post-Consumer Recycled Paper,” which is even better from an environmental perspective.

When something is called “recycled,” that material can come from two sources: Pre-Consumer, which is manufacturing scraps, and Post-Consumer, which is all the paper that we put in the recycling bin at home and work. Manufacturers commonly recycle their own discards for economic reasons, so that recovered paper isn’t as important for consumers like us to focus on as the post-consumer material. The post-consumer material is the paper that we are trying to keep out landfills and incinerators and want to be made into new products; therefore, we should look for post-consumer content when we buy recycled products.

When you are buying office paper or talking to your printer about paper choices, ask for the total recycled content and the highest amount of post-consumer content that you can, too. If price is a concern, look for paper that is 100% recycled, with 30% post-consumer content. Interested in learning more about environmental paper choices? Check out the Conservatree website.

This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day.

The North Carolina Center for Nonprofits (one of the leading state nonprofit associations) has just published Principles and Practices for Nonprofit Excellence: A Self-Help Tool for Organizational Effectiveness. Several other state associations have similar guides for their members.

You’ll find several communications and marketing best practices included in the NC guide and most others:

– “Fundraising communications should include clear, accurate, and honest information about the organization, its activities, and the intended use of funds.” (from the Fundraising Section)

–”A nonprofit should regularly communicate with donors regarding its activities and should make such information available through multiple outlets.” (from the Fundraising Section)

–”E-mail accounts for staff and staff usage that comply with CAN-SPAM regulations for broadcast emails.” (from Information and Technology section)

–”A nonprofit should share the results of its evaluation with all interested stakeholders.” (from Evaluation of Results section)

–”Information provided to policymakers, the media, and the general public becomes a matter of public record. Therefore, a nonprofit should ensure that the information is timely and accurate and that the social and political context of the information is clear in order to avoid misunderstanding or manipulation of the message.” (from Civic Engagement and Public Policy section)

–”In serving the public trust, a nonprofit should produce an annual report that contains information regarding activities and financial and programmatic performance and results. The annual report should include:
-an explanation of the organization’s mission, activities, and results;
-an explanation of how individuals can access its programs and services;
-overall financial information, including income and expense statement, balance sheet, and functional expense allocation; and
-a list of board members, staff, and donors.” (from Transparency and Accountability section)
–”Nonprofits should have crisis communication plans that can be implemented expeditiously by staff and/or board members.” (from Transparency and Accountability section)

Yesterday I replied to the arguments made by people who want to reprint blog posts or RSS feeds in full, often without proper credit.

Let me be clear: I have no problem with others excerpting or discussing my posts – I wholeheartedly encourage that. That’s part of the natural beauty of the blogosphere. My problem is with people who reprint the entire post and pass it off as their content, without my permission and without proper attribution and links, or who use my content without my permission to improve their own standing with their readers or with the search engines.

So what’s the right way to republish an RSS feed or blog post? I suggest four guidelines:

1) If you want to reprint an entire post on your site with the purpose of populating your domain with good articles or sharing an interesting or useful article with your readers, simply ask permission first and always include a link back to the original post when permission is granted. If you need good content and don’t want to ask permission, go to a free articles directory; don’t poach articles from blogs.

2) If you want to discuss or respond to a post in an original post of your own, feel free to cut and paste snippets here and there, or to summarize the post in your own words, and always include a link back to the original post. This is extremely common and encouraged in the blogosphere. You can find examples of how others have used my posts in this way at Philanthropy Journal’s Give and Take, which I approve of 100%.

3) If you want to excerpt a post without any original writing of your own, feel free to use the first paragraph (or a small amount of teaser text — usually not more than 50-100 words) and then include a link back to the full, original post. Again, this is extremely common and generally encouraged.

4) If you want to use RSS to automatically add content to your site, like many news aggregator sites do, set up your pages to take only headlines or a limited number of characters or words from the top of the article. And yes, always include a link back to the original post! This is what Ogilvy PR does with my feed and the feeds of many others in our sector.

I’m not suggesting we stifle conversation. I am suggesting that if you want an online presence, you do the work of content creation yourself and not rip off your digital neighbors.

Do these guidelines make sense to you? Leave a comment and let me know.