This week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants was about getting your message through the clutter. I just came upon another creative example of how a nonprofit is getting its issue in front off its audience – in this case, state legislators.
The Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina distributed a 2007 wall calendar to the North Carolina General Assembly. This by itself is not that interesting. Lots of groups produce calendars. But what sets this one apart is the photos. Instead of happy new homeowners and small business people that you’d expect to see in a CRA calendar, this one includes photos of trashed, abandoned, and burned out mobile homes across the state. The group is trying to get the General Assembly to address the 40,000 dilapidated and abandoned mobile homes marring the otherwise lovely Carolina countryside by passing a tax on new mobile homes that would fund clean-up efforts for old ones.
The captions were also priceless: “Single Wide (SW) seeks new tenants. Meth users and vagrants considered. No credit? Bad credit? No problem! Available for walk-ins.”
It’s easy to brainstorm how other nonprofits could do the same thing on their issues — Scott Mooneyham of the Capital Press Association did so in his column, which is where I learned about the calendar.
What would you put on an advocacy calendar distributed to your state legislators?
