Raise Your Voice Read online

  CONTROLLING THE UNCONTROLLABLE

  An organization cannot always control how it is perceived, but it can control its voice. According to Marty Neumeier, “A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization. The brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.”

  Consider this perspective: “Your cause is worthy, and becomes meaningful when your audience says it is.”

  In your mind, you know your cause is worthy, and it’s important to you. It’s meaningful to you, and becomes meaningful to your audience as they begin to form a relationship with your organization.

  But there are two parts to the equation:

  At any given time, what your organization is thinking, saying, and doing may not match what your audience perceives, hears, and sees. That is why communicating with clarity is so critical.

  Over time, as your organization speaks on behalf of the cause, the audience hears its voice. It is over time that your organization is perceived as the voice of the cause, because of what the audience hears and sees.

  The cause becomes more meaningful to those who choose to follow, as what is said and heard aligns with what motivates the audience to believe. The cause becomes more meaningful to society when the audience is engaged. Through their support, the organization has resources to make its impact even greater.

  HUNGER IS NOT A BRAND

  You’re thinking:

  “But we have this great brand.”

  “But the board recommended that we re-brand.”

  “But we just finished a branding campaign.”

  But, but, but. What you’re thinking about is your organization.

  The cause of ending hunger is not a brand. Neither are the causes of education, economic development, clean water, AIDS prevention and cure, cancer awareness, human trafficking, faith, the arts, health, food and nutrition, social issues, sustainability, youth development, or social action.

  A cause is not a brand.

  Consider the circumstances of people facing cancer or advocating for cancer research, cure, and awareness: is it appropriate to consider their circumstance as a brand, or as a meaningful cause?

  To view it as a brand means that we need to position it, market it, and promote it. Viewing your cause as a brand demeans it. It’s devoid of meaning, and neither informs nor inspires.

  To a woman going through the journey of healing, cancer is not a brand.

  To a child who relies on a backpack of donated food so that she can have breakfast on Saturday, hunger is not a brand.

  To the victims of human trafficking, their circumstance is not a brand.

  To the citizens of any region of the world, economic development is not a brand.

  The cause is not a brand.

  Your organization is not a brand. It is the voice of your cause.

  Your organization is a group of committed volunteers, professionals, and ambassadors who want to achieve significant impact. Your organization is an advocate that needs to rise above the noise, motivate action, and speak with one voice. Your followers and supporters want to follow a higher purpose and be inspired.

  Your cause is not a brand.

  A meaningful cause must follow principles of communication that flow from a place of higher purpose. A cause has no mission statement or vision statement; no board, no trustees, no staff. A cause has no logo, social media accounts, or marketing budget.

  Your cause is bigger than a brand can ever be. In order to rise above the noise, your organization will have to find its voice in order to get noticed, inspire change, motivate your followers to action, and achieve greater impact.

  IT’S TIME TO RAISE YOUR VOICE

  Your organization can listen, and it can speak to the values it wants to share with its followers. It can listen and hear what values its followers are looking for. It is in conversation about the cause where supporters realize that their values align with the cause, where trust and loyalty are formed and long-lasting relationships are built.

  Verbal messages are shared through visual language, with a unique tone of voice.

  Any organization that acts and speaks on behalf of a worthy cause, becomes the voice of that cause. Through mission-driven design and clarity of communication, the audience begins to associate the organization as the voice for the cause, and experience how it communicates on its behalf. Through the audience’s engagement with the organization, the cause becomes meaningful. The audience experiences the cause through your organization’s purpose, its character, and its culture. It learns about the cause through the organization’s voice and visual language.

  This is how perception is formed. Cause communication flows from principles of higher purpose. These communication principles are a deep foundation upon which a successful organization’s voice is formed.

  Part One: Chapter Five

  Repeating the Same Conversations

  WHY IS THERE CONFUSION?

  In offices and boardrooms around the world, the same conversations are taking place every day. Most of the time, the conversations are about perceived communications problems, instead of defining what the problem actually is.

  Many organizations want to raise their voice before they understand how to communicate with their audience. Few succeed. Many struggle.

  How would you respond to these statements?

  “We need clarity.”

  “We think we need your help with branding.”

  “We need a communications road map.”

  “We’ve got this really great opportunity to…”

  “I wish my board would let me move forward without reviewing everything I do.”

  “We’ve always done it this way. It just isn’t working as well as before.”

  “The board thinks we need to re-brand.”

  “We have great programs but our target audience doesn’t know they exist.”

  “We need to tell our story.”

  “We need a social media presence.”

  “We need to market to donors.”

  These are excellent conversation starters. Here’s how I would respond:

  “We need clarity.” If so, are you willing to focus on your mission, and eliminate things that are distractions from your real purpose?

  “We think we need your help with branding.” Let’s do some research and find out what other people think about you. Then we’ll find your voice.

  “We need a communications road map.” Let’s not be too eager to create a map before we know what the destination is.

  “We’ve got this really great opportunity to…” How does that fit into your mission and purpose? Are you willing to take the tough step of saying no and eliminating potential opportunities?

  “I wish my board would let me move forward without reviewing everything I do.” Sounds like the board never completed the strategic plan. The board doesn’t know where the organization is headed.

  “We’ve always done it this way. It just isn’t working as well as before.” That’s called a sacred cow. Sacred cows make great steak dinners. Which of yours would you like to dig into first?

  “The board thinks we need to re-brand.” Branding is for products and corporations. Your cause is not a brand. We think you need to define your cause, and articulate your purpose, character, and culture. Then you’ll be closer to finding your voice.

  “We have great programs but our audience doesn’t seem to know they exist.” Either you are telling the wrong story or talking to the wrong audience. Or both.

  “We need to tell our story.” We think you need to find your voice before you tell your stories.

  “We need a social media presence to solve this problem.” Social media will not solve all your problems. Tell me about the relationships you’re building, and how you’re building them.

  “We need to market to donors.” All communications are donor communications. You started marketing to them a long time ago.

  “I want to articulate our values, but I am having
a hard time doing so, even though they are in my head.” Make a list to get them out of your head and on paper. Then we can explore if those values are reflected in your culture.

  Not every organization needs clarity to the same extent, but there will be at least one place where the communications gap can be bridged though a holistic approach and a series of choices designed to close that gap.

  WE JUST NEED TO DO MORE MARKETING

  The singular focus of the marketing committee of a nonprofit board is often just that: marketing.

  The board and the staff need to work together to become better communicators. The board can’t place the outreach burden entirely on the leadership or attempt to create marketing or communication strategy without the staff’s participation. Likewise, the leadership must encourage the board to provide the resources they require, including professional communications expertise. (The board may need to understand their role more clearly, and take their responsibilities more seriously for this to happen).

  For a marketing committee traveling along a tactical path (doing before planning), it’s easy to miss the full continuum of engagement, and look for easy tactical solutions without analyzing and defining the real communication problems.

  The questions asked are often the wrong questions:

  How do we reach more donors? I heard that another nonprofit did this kind of fundraiser. Maybe we should try the same thing.

  Everybody is talking about social media. We need a social media presence.

  We need a new web site. Let’s create an RFP, based on what we think we need. Does anybody know a web designer?

  From experience, you and I know the former set of questions will create a lively discussion around each topic, as opinions are shared and tactical solutions are thrown out. A subcommittee will be formed. Action will precede strategy; doing will precede thinking.

  Instead, the marketing committee should define the problem first, before attempting to seek a solution. The definitions and questions to ask might look more like this:

  Revenue from groups x and y are steady, but revenue from group z is much lower. In our market, with the type of donors we already reach, what new groups of potential donors should we seek? What are possible solutions for reaching those particular groups?

  The staff is limited to outreach on one social media platform. Should we even be on social media? Which one should we choose? How should we manage it so we can measure our return on engagement and influence?

  Let’s hire an expert to diagnose our web site, our needs, and our audience. Our web site does not allow for online donations, and we have to pay an outside firm to manage it. What is the best content management solution based on our audience’s needs, and our staff’s capabilities? How will our audience be using the web site? How will our staff be using the web site? How could we use the web site more effectively to achieve our mission and serve our stakeholders?

  Better yet, what if you disbanded the marketing committee and instead formed a communication committee? If that sounds far-fetched, read on.

  The mission-driven design perspective requires a strategy of Attracting, Informing, Inspiring, and Engaging the audience. How else will you create a culture of stewardship for ambassadors, volunteers, advocates, and stakeholders that your nonprofit needs to help advance the cause?

  KEY INSIGHTS (more at causemanifesto.org)

  Giving USA research (givingusareports.org) highlights trends in giving and philanthropy, and is an excellent resource for correlating trends in your revenue analysis.

  Hootsuite.com is an excellent choice for social media management for nonprofits.

  Twitonomy.com can help you analyze the social media data.

  Joomla! is an open source content management system that is powerful enough for even the largest nonprofit or university.

  IMAGINE A BETTER WAY TO COMMUNICATE

  Imagine that your goal is more than marketing. Instead, imagine that your goal is to build relationships, through engagement, to arrive at stewardship.

  Marketing is too often a one-way, short-term, transactional exercise. Relationships are built through conversations and interactions to engage your audience. Marketing may tend to drive one time interaction; relationship building encourages long-term engagement and stewardship. Marketing can be superficial; engaging people over the long-term helps to develop deep and meaningful relationships.

  The goal is not marketing; the goal is communication leading to stewardship. Your communications need to be redefined and evaluated with this goal in mind. This is where the board and leadership begins to understand that in order to build affinity for the cause and loyalty for the organization, each and every touch point along the continuum is specific to and has a purpose for the intended audience. It’s not a short-term process.

  We can map engagement to a continuum, where audience and messaging are matched to the medium (this is sometimes referred to as a Media Matrix or Media Box Model).

  When you view engagement as a continuum, you will find that marketing will need to decrease while relationship building will increase. Marketing will be seen as a tactical, short-term approach to promoting events and attracting new supporters, and that communication will support long-term relationship building. It will be the understanding of each board member that their role is to serve as an ambassador for the organization and an advocate for the cause. Through their leadership and management, the board will empower and equip the staff with the resources and funding necessary to advance the cause through design and a long-term, comprehensive communication strategy.

  That may mean that the board will have to get more engaged with fundraising, because for many boards, marketing is the first expense to get cut, and the last to get reinstated.

  It’s a crucial shift in thinking for those board members who are in corporate positions, especially if they are marketing or communications professionals. Instead of talking the language of sales, marketing, and value propositions, the language in the nonprofit space is of outreach, engagement, relationships, and impact.

  AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE

  Very few corporations or small businesses invest less than 1% of their budget in marketing and communication planning. Marketing and public relations investments are measured against sales revenue and company growth.

  It’s common in the nonprofit sector for the opposite to occur. According to survey results reported in The Communications Toolkit, 60% of nonprofits spend less than 1% of their budget on design and communication. Yet the board expects disproportionate returns on such a small investment.

  Funders and nonprofit boards often share the perspective that design and communication are overhead expenses, and not program-related investments.

  Nonprofits, fearful of rejection during the grant seeking process, are hesitant to include design and communication planning as part of their funding requests. Donors expect that their gifts will go to program support, and have not been educated to expect that design and communication are part of the program delivery.

  The engagement continuum is made up of communications components (or touch points, the points where your communications touch your audience), donor engagement, and donor management. Marketing is just one of many components that begins with the organization’s strategic plan (and the strategies and tactics associated with the goals). Additional components include board outreach and advocacy, a strategic communication plan, mission-driven design, donor relations, fundraising, and other advancement objectives.

  Engagement begins with understanding the cause, the organization the board represents, the culture of the organization, and the complexity of the cause or issue.

  It’s imperative that board members believe in the cause and the organization that they represent. It’s critical for everyone to be able to articulate key elements of the organization’s mission and reasons the organization is well positioned to address the cause.

  Yet there are some funders, donors, and enlightened boards whose thinking
has ascended, and who recognize that better design and communication choices lead to more sustainable nonprofits. They see the big picture, and are making funding, design, and communication choices to support the mission.

  Will you be one of them?

  Part One: Chapter Six

  You Are Here: the Cause Quadrant

  Think of all of the causes with which you are familiar (and with which your organization competes for funding and resources). In the broadest sense, causes fall into two categories: those in which your audiences are interested emotionally (what inspires us with compassion, what appeals to our hearts) or rationally (what informs us, speaking to our minds).

  There are many reasons that motivate your audience’s interest in your cause; it’s rarely one extreme or the other, with many personal nuances in between. We’re informed by what speaks to our minds and thoughts; we’re inspired by what appeals to our hearts.

  AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL FOR SELF-EVALUATION

  The path to clarity in your communication starts with a general understanding of where the cause and the organization fit into the context of other tax-exempt entities.

  The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) Classification System (http://ow.ly/qI5V0) classifies nonprofit organizations based on the organizations’ primary functions, and was developed by the National Center for Charitable Statistics. Organizations such as GuideStar and the Foundation Center use these codes as part of their classification criteria for evaluation, grants, and grant seekers. Coincidentally, the categories in the quadrant are similar to those reflected in Giving USA studies.

  This taxonomy can also be used to position and gain perspective of your organization within the context of other meaningful causes and supporter motivations. It can be a useful reference point for evaluating the mix of inspirational and informative messaging in your design and communication planning.