Category: communications

board, communications, messaging, planning

Your communications team is bigger than you think

Most organizations hire a communications person (or team) to handle their external communications and marketing. You know, things like the website, social media, email newsletters, the annual report, and maybe some press releases. Communications is often seen as a separate function dedicated to these traditional communication channels.

The thing is that everyone who works for your organization is a communicator – whether they like it or not. Is your Executive Director giving a speech? That’s communications. Is one of your program staff meeting with a partner? That’s communications too. Is a board member talking to a friend about his involvement in your organization? Yep, that’s also communications. When anyone associated with your organization speaks to someone about the organization, they are doing communications work for your organization.

Because they are all communicating on behalf of the organization, all staff, board members, and even volunteers should be prepared and empowered to do so. This will help them be more articulate, focused, and compelling in their communications. If they aren’t prepared, then you run the risk of muddling your messages, misrepresenting your organization, and missing opportunities to garner support for your organizations.

So what can you do to empower your colleagues to be effective messengers? You can make sure they:

  • Are comfortable talking about your organization. 
  • Understand the organization’s goals and needs. 
  • Have the tools they need to communicate successfully. 
  • Know where to go for help with communications activities. 

This will ensure they are all on message, communicating clearly, and proactive when they have questions or need assistance. 

To learn more about how to prepare your organization to communicate effectively, check out the upcoming training “Empowering Your Colleagues to Be Effective Messengers” on Tuesday, July 21st at the Foundation Center in San Francisco. Register today!

case for support, communications, fundraising, invaluable, leadership, management, planning, strategy

3 misunderstandings about nonprofits that prevent them from succeeding

It’s been six years since “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle” was published and two years since Dan Pallotta gave his famous TED talk about the financial burdens facing nonprofit organizations. Despite these widespread, articulate, and compelling calls to arms – and a plethora of research, reports, guides, and tools – the sector continues to suffer from financial struggles that have broader impacts on its progress and success at tackling societal problems. In 2013, Guidestar, Charity Navigator, and BBB Wise Giving Alliance started the campaign to end the Overhead Myth, but letters and signatures are meaningless unless we actually put words into action.

What is it that’s stopping us from taking action? Why do we continue to do things the same way when we know there’s a problem and there are solutions at hand?

It strikes me that what drives our behavior is a set of underlying assumptions and beliefs about nonprofits – paradigms that paralyze us from doing things differently. These unspoken paradigms perpetuate the funding and management practices that keep nonprofits from thriving financially and successfully responding to societal problems at scale:

  1. The Misnomer of Non-profit. We associate profit with personal gain and nonprofits with the public good, but nonprofits are businesses, and any successful business needs to earn a surplus. For nonprofits, this surplus isn’t doled out to investors but rather it’s reinvested in the growth and improvement of the organization. Without making a profit, nonprofits live under stressful conditions and cannot expand or innovate to have more impact.
  2. The Overhead Problem. We all know the story: not enough money goes to the nonprofit enterprise – the business side of things that provides for the programs and services we all love and desire, a.k.a. “overhead.” The problem is that the overhead-to-program ratio is seen as an indicator for efficiency, when in fact, it’s actually not, and varies with an organization’s business and business model. We should care less about the overhead ratio and more about important things like effectiveness, or whether the organization is actually solving the problem.
  3. The Restricted Nature of Giving. Unlike the way we invest in for-profit companies, with nonprofits we feel we get to specify how our funding should be used, because hey, it’s our money, right? Unfortunately, this restriction on spending limits an organization’s decision-making and reflects a lack of trust that the organization knows how to spend our money wisely. We should have more faith in the people who dedicate their lives to the causes we care about and the organizations we value so much. (And if we don’t have that much faith in them, should we really be giving them our money?)

There are many different efforts out there to improve nonprofits – how to write better fundraising appeals, how to use social media to attract more support, how to manage volunteers, etc. – but those efforts will only have limited success if the deck is stacked against nonprofit organizations as a whole. Until we get at the root of the problem and change the way we value and invest in nonprofit organizations, everything else is like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

For more on these paradigms – and how funders and organizations can break them by doing things differently – download a free copy of Invaluable today.

 

case for support, communications, fundraising, messaging, rationale

How to write a good problem statement

When a funder asks for a problem statement (or a needs assessment), it’s an opportunity to explain the rationale for why you need support. The goal is to explain the issues while framing the problem in a way that sets the stage for your solution.

Unfortunately, I find that many problem statements don’t do justice to the work being proposed. They either don’t sufficiently describe the problem or they don’t frame the issue so that the proposed project seems like a good solution (or they just aren’t written well).

Here are three questions every good problem statement should answer to ensure you set up a compelling rationale for your proposed work:

  1. What is the need? I know this sounds obvious, but oftentimes people don’t accurately define the problem. It’s as if every organization is a hammer, so everything is a nail. You want to think about what’s causing the situation you’re trying to remedy and why it’s problematic. Describe the situation, why it’s bad for the constituents you serve, and what the barriers are to fixing it. If you set it up right, your work will be directly responsive – overcoming barriers and tackling the causes of the situation.
  2. Why is this important? Again, this might be an obvious question, but I’ve seen many problem statements that fail to answer it well. I’m sure you care about the problem and I’m sure you think it’s important, but why should I as a funder care? Why does this problem matter to the things I care about? Think about your audience and consider the broader impacts of the problem. Another way to frame the question is “so what?” Keep asking that question until you get to a compelling reason your audience will care about as much as you do.
  3. Why now? Funders have lots of proposals in front of them, and usually a limited budget for grantmaking. There are others who will also make the case that their work is important, so why should they support your work this year and not next year? You can frame this in two ways: either state why the situation is so dire it demands action now (crisis), or state why the conditions are ripe now for action (opportunity). Either way, make the case for why your work needs to happen now (or soon) to maximize impact.

Remember that you are not your target audience – you know more, you believe more, and you probably care more. Crafting a compelling argument requires understanding your audience and using solid reasoning. And it never hurts to test it out with people outside your organization – loyal donors, committed funders, or volunteers.

Whatever you do, make certain you have a convincing problem statement. It’s the first and critical step to garnering support for your work!