10 New Year Resolutions for Non Profits and Cause-Related Organizations

This time of year it is not uncommon to write down resolutions for the next year – things that we might do better, do differently, or just plain do. As you consider your organization, whether it be a non-profit, cause-related community, or a for-profit company with a socially responsible initiative, here are 10 resolutions to consider making as you head into 2009. They’re in no particular order, number ten isn’t the least and one isn’t the most important. But all will add to your ability to make a significant difference in the important work you do.

[NOTE: If your organization excels at any one of these let me know. I'd be happy to highlight your work in an upcoming blog.]

1. Competitively define your mission.
   Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead said it best, “You don’t want to be considered the best at what you do. You want to be the only ones doing what you’re doing.” How is what you do unique, special, and essential. If there are too many providers of the same thing, people will see most of them as unnecessary. What is it that only your organization does? What will the one big thing that your organization will do in 2009 that sets you apart as different from all the other causes?
   
   
2. Showcase your success stories, not just your needs.
   Consumers expect that non profits have needs and that cause-related organizations are usually scarce on resources. It’s okay to ask for things, but make sure that you also showcase your successes. What is the outcome of the work you do? What is the outcome of that? Sure you may serve meals to homeless, provide medication to the poor, or even find childcare for single parents who need to work. But what happened because you did all those things? Showcase the outcome of your work – what happened because you did all those things you do – and give consumers a bigger picture of your organization’s performance.


3. Create single-shot service opportunities.
   According to ASAE, Americans devote more than 173 million volunteer hours each year - time valued at more than $2 billion - to charitable and community service projects. But for as much as that amounts to, there are untapped millions of hours still available. Create opportunities for service that don’t require more than an hour, or a particular task. Let people dip their toe in the water before you ask them to dive in to the deep end.


4. Create ways for your entire community to engage in conversation.
   Technology has changed the way we interact with one another. Twitter grows by an estimated 3-5 thousand new users each day, there are an estimated 70 million blogs, and 8 billion text messages are sent every day. Not participating in this online conversation leaves your organization out in the cold. It’s not so much that you get reporters talking about your organization, you need to get every day people talking about you. Your organization needs to find ways to connect the various constituents with each other – beneficiaries to donors, board to public, staff to public, public to donors, etc. Create ways for conversations to happen and let them happen. No control, no micro managing. Just get people talking and then listen.


5. Investigate relevancy.
   So much is lost and wasted by well meaning non profits because the person writing the gift request letter didn’t make it relevant to the recipient, or the Web site home page is targeted to the wrong demographic. Make 2009 the year of getting to know your community members inside and out. Research your audiences and write profiles for each group, what makes them tick, what they like, don’t like, what they respond to and why. Find out what’s important to them and validate it. Relevancy drives meaning in communications and credibility in relationships. It also drives response rates to your messages.


6. Glocalize.
   Boundaries have little meaning anymore. Technology enables connectivity between once-kept-apart groups. Thus, your cause related organization can now operate with a global mindset, tapping into peoples and organizations around the world. But in doing so, as you take your message beyond your borders – whether they be community, city, state or even country -- But in doing so, find ways to translate your messages and outcomes into relevancy. Make your cause real to those new groups by linking it to their world, their community, and their issues.


7. Fight mediocrity.
   In non-profits it’s easy to get into the mindset that doing well is good enough. That the long hours, the people served, and the low pay should free you from responsibility of any sort of mistakes or poor performance. Jim Collins’ wrote, “Good is the enemy of great.” Make sure in 2009 to raise the standard and strive for being great.


8. Deepen relationships.
   I wrote in a blog entry earlier this month about the need for non profits to build relationships with people prior to asking for a donation, and this notion ties in to the resolutions for relevance and engaging in conversations. Deepening the relationships with all your constituents is the cornerstone element for increasing your capacity to do the good you do. Your for-profit counterparts collectively spend several billions of dollars each year trying to establish the level of emotional intimacy that your organization could very easily tap in to. This should be such an important part of your efforts, you might even consider adding it to your strategic plan and creating metrics around this initiative.


9. Build out your infrastructure.
   Lately I’ve come across a few online conversations where contributors have decried the failure of non profits to appropriately build out their technology and operational infrastructures. I strongly believe that given the sparse resources in most organizations available dollars should go to people and not process improvement. But I also believe that with efficiency comes effectiveness. Taking time to build out your infrastructure can pay huge dividends down the road due to decreases in wasted time, increased effectiveness and clarity, and more powerful tools applied to your cause.


10. Train the next generation.
    Rarely do I find an organization that is working not only to reach current donors and volunteers, but the next one as well. What could happen to stem the desperate needs of the world if important messages and service opportunities were generated and sent down the pipeline to youth and young children? How much more could your organization accomplish in ten, twenty, or thirty years if you worked today to train a new generation of savvy and capable contributors to you cause?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Balanced Scorecard for Non Profits

Many organizations are finishing up 2008 as not only the end of their calendar year, but their fiscal year as well. Hopefully a new or updated annual plan is in place, but I suspect some may be looking to put final touches on one in January. Sadly, some will continue into 2009 with really no clearer definition of what they're doing than just repeating the prior year and hoping for the best.

One of my favorite tools for mapping out the strategy of an organization, and its corresponding implementation plan is the Balanced Scorecard® developed by Kaplan and Norton. There is a wide amount of literature and content available on the use (and misuses) of this tool so I'll leave it to you to Google the subject to your heart's content. You can also read my blog from November 20 on the subject. However, I wanted to provide some extra content for your consideration.

I've attached a white paper written by Joel Zimmerman, Ph.D. of Creative Direct Response, Inc. He provides a succinct perspective on how non profits might look at this tool and offers up specific modifications that focus on the unique nature of non profits. The suggestions are helpful but not required. At a minimum, a non profit should change the leveling of the four categories to have customers at the top followed by financial as second. This modification is justified given the nature of the organization. But Zimmerman suggests six additional mods that merit consideration – especially if you have a strong donor/fundraising emphasis in your strategic plan.

But a plan is useless if it's left on the table to collect dust, and so is this tool. From my experience in working with non profit boards across the country, you have to work your plan and refer to it on a consistent and regular basis. The reason I like the Balanced Scorecard is that it can also be used as a measurement tool to identify progress toward your strategies; as well as a performance plan for staff and volunteers.

-- David Kinard, PCM

A Tradition of Giving

A close friend recently noted that my family has a lot of traditions. I didn’t think we did, but I guess my wife and I have always tried to build some sense of recurrence and significance to our family activities. For instance, whenever we travel across the state to visit Grammy, we always stop at a little Mexican restaurant about half way through the trip for dinner. Not only does it help to break up the nearly six hour drive, the tradition of making this stop helps to mark milestones in our memories of various trips.

Another tradition we have is during December – we have an advent calendar where each day we have an activity that sets the tone for the season as well as provide opportunities for loads of family memories. Some are from my wife and my own childhood – watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas cartoon, or Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. They were aired on TV when I was a kid; we now watch them on DVD. But either way they are markers of our time together.

This past weekend, we celebrated one of our other holiday traditions. Throughout the year we save all of our spare change and put it in a jar, and the kids save up part of their weekly allowance for “sharing”. Then, on a Saturday morning in December we head out to the grocery store and shop for the local food bank. We team up – my son and I, and my daughter with my wife – and set off on our search to buy enough groceries for a full day’s worth of meals for a family of four. We typically cheat and add in a few extra boxes of this and packages of that along the way, then the kids pick out one ‘treat’ to top it all off. After cashing in our coins and paying for our purchases, we load up the car, travel to the food bank, and drop off all the food. It’s the culmination of a year’s worth of saving and intentional giving. Each time we drop our change in the jar throughout the year, it’s a little reminder of the food we’re going to put on someone’s table.

Of course this is the time of year when need can be most keenly felt – by those who have need, and those whose heart’s may be touched to provide. And it is often more easy to give during this season to the bell ringer on the corner, or to the toy and food drive at your local fire station. But I hope that your giving is not limited to the cold dark days of December, but that you can find a way to make giving a tradition for your own family. How can you build recurrence and significance into your life and create a tradition of giving?

-- David Kinard, PCM

How I Earned $75,000 from Networking

Ann Amati is a business consultant in the Seattle area. She’s got a great idea on how to convert her networking activities and connecting into dollars by making her marketing more tangible, predictable, and yes, enjoyable. Her story, in her words, is on Lori Richardson’s Web site.

A friend sent me the article. It reminded me of a tool I created for American Marketing Association members many years ago – and it still works great today. I call it the PVEP – the Personal Value Extraction Plan (you can download a copy of this Excel file from my LinkedIn Profile). It basically goes like this: You already attend many luncheons, seminars, workshops, networking events, and other meetings with the hope of scoring some qualified leads that will move your professional life forward. This tool helps you to identify what you’re getting for those efforts. I used it and found that I could track more than $75,000 in revenue to my business in just one year.

Now, don’t get me wrong on this important point. The PVEP tool is not going to make money for you. You still have to do the work of networking, shaking hands, research, follow up, and creating and delivering value to your business community. This tool simply helps you identify where those dollars can be tracked back to. That way you know if you should renew that membership or continue attending those luncheons. It’s also a great tool for sales people to share back with their managers to justify where they’re spending their time.

For the PVEP tool to be most effective, it’s good to also ensure you set goals and have a plan for your networking efforts. That means you don’t just go to the monthly luncheon for XYZ Association to hear the speaker – you go with a networking plan in place. How many contacts do you want to make? How many meaningful conversations do you think you might have? And, how will you track those contacts back to that event?

The tool is a simple form for a simple process – go places, make friends, create value, harvest rewards, pay it forward. I think this tool combined with Ann Amait’s 20 Nickels Plan will get you off to a great 2009!

-- David Kinard, PCM

Let’s Date First Before You Grab My Wallet

This is the time of year I get a lot of mail from very worthy organizations. Some I’ve heard of before, most I haven’t; some I remember from prior years at this same time. All share a story of deep need teetering on the verge of crisis and the opportunity for me to make a difference. All have no problem asking me for money. Unfortunately, this same experience is being played out across the country, likely in your mailbox as well.

I would like to think that if I had unlimited funds, I would be more than happy to send checks to all these organizations. I could feed the hungry, house the homeless, provide educational kits to children in far away places, and even pay for medical supplies to ease those who needlessly suffer. But I have limited funds and I can’t help everyone. So I make a choice which organization I support. And the decision is pretty easy: those organizations that sought to first understand the motivations I have for giving and created and nurtured a relationship with me over time – they get my money, time, and energy. Every year. The others are like those people in the movies at nightclubs who use bad pick-up lines trying to go from hello to breakfast all in one cheesy opening line.

In his book buyology, author Martin Lindstrom suggests that the noise of advertising and promotion has become just like wallpaper to our brains. We see it but the message doesn’t really register. That exact same thing happens with these requests for help – genuine and important as they may be, they fall on deaf ears because there is no prior relationship to base the request on. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Whether you’re a non profit or for-profit, I have a new year’s resolution I want you to make. Start in January to establish and build a relationship with your constituents and community. Make regular and non-request contacts with them throughout the year. Keep in touch, tell success stories, treat them like you’re going on a date and are s-l-o-w-l-y falling in love. Woo your community. Then, at the right time, make a small request. Then, once you’ve demonstrated to that participant what you’ve done with their gift to you, say thanks and be quiet. After a period of time – when you’ve been dialoging and sharing – building a deeper relationship, then you can ask for something bigger. Go ahead, pop the question!

Sending me a letter during the holiday season telling me that you’re in need and want money just isn’t going to cut it anymore. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it is poor stewardship of the funds you do have. Sure, you’re likely getting a series of donations from that campaign, but I’ll bet your not getting the donations you could if you’d ask people out on a date first.

-- David Kinard, PCM

P.S. If you want to hear more about and from Martin Lindstrom and his book buyology, be sure to listen to Marketing News Radio on February 25, 09. I'll be interviewing him about his book.

A Lot of Talking...But is Anyone Listening?

Over the past two weeks I've had the pleasure of moderating two panel discussions on Beyond Analog: Becoming Part of Today's Digital Marketing World. The Webinars were sponsored by the American Marketing Association as member-only events, and were precursors to the AMA's Mplanet 2009 conference slated for January in Orlando, FL. On the panel were Julie Fleischer of Digitas, Greg Verdino of crayon, llc, and Toby Bloomberg of Bloomberg Marketing.

One of the slides Toby shared had to do with a graphic created by Brian Solis and Jess3 called the Conversation Prism. This masterfully illustrated wheel identifies all the various ways the social Web is integrating itself into peoples' lives...or the other way around. Either way, it is an amazing look at the proliferation of engagement technologies. But with all the ways we have to talk to one another, to review, share, tweet, input, output, post, publish, update, and edit -- the larger question is if anyone is listening, or are we all just talking into the ether.

There are already many places where you can find the number of estimated blogs, Web sites, and users of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, and cyworld. Needless to say, there are a lot. People are publishing at an amazing rate -- some of it relevant, much of it personal, most of it just noise.

Listening to the presenters, and sorting out the questions from the audience, here are a few items of note I took away from the event:

• The opportunity to add digital to the marketing mix is appealing, but not the first thing a marketer should start doing. Marketers must first ensure what they have to say is relevant and builds relationships. Let the message and the audiences' reception requirements define if the mix has more digital or analog in it.
  
• Digital is not a silver bullet, and it is not a panacea for the insufficiency of an existing marketing program. Many marketers will start a blog, add their company to Facebook, or attempt to find ways to widget and wiki, but unless the marketing program is based on consumer insight, tactics -- whether they are digital or analog -- are just tactics. The responsibility is to customize the marketing program to your audience.
  
• ROI is not as elusive as many marketers think. The problem is not that we can't measure the ROI of digial initiatives. Rather, the problem is that we don't have targeted, specific goals in the first place. Remember, measurement starts at the mission/goal articulation phase of the planning process, not as an after thought at the end of the campaign.


• Waiting is not an option. Many marketers are waiting for someone else to figure out what digital is and isn't before they do something. The fallacy of this approach is that your consumers are already engaging in digital. Waiting simply means that your consumers are building relationships and engaging with those businesses, products, and services that are doing things right now.

-- David Kinard, PCM

But What If We Were Feeding Starving Children?

As a marketer, there have been plenty of stressful times in my career when my team is trying to get that brochure out, a Web site up, or launching a new national campaign. There have been times when the trivial became monumental and a quick perspective check was needed. In those moments, I usually pulled my team together here and asked a simple question – “Hey, is what we are doing as important as feeding starving children?” The answer has always been ‘no’. Those moments of clarity usually helped the team realize there are far more important things in life happening than a brochure, and ad, or an email campaign.

But what if what I was doing was indeed feeding starving children?

In early November I was laid off from my job. I’ve had the chance to look into a lot of jobs at some amazing companies, with amazing products, and equally amazing people. But one thing that has resurfaced for me is my passion for making a real and fundamental difference in the lives of people. I spent seven years as a consultant with non profits, and I continue to be drawn back to the desire to do work that has meaning.

What if I could do something that fed starving children?

I am blessed. I have never gone to bed hungry from a lack of food in the house. Nor have I ever slept outside because I had no home. And even in the hardest of times, my family has always had good health and a wonderful group of friends and family that have been there to see us through to the other side. Each night my wife and kids and I sit at the dinner table and share a meal. Some evenings we play games; everything from Apples to Apples to Zooreka. Sometimes we pop some corn and watch home movies, or just hang out and do our own thing while music plays in the background. We don’t have a lot, but we have more than most. And likely the most valuable thing we have are options. Many in this world do not.

Yesterday I excitedly applied for a job with Unitus. They’re a microfinancing nonprofit based in Seattle with a goal of reaching 15 million families by 2010. They need a communications director – a job that seems to be ideally suited for my every capability. I read through the description with a growing sense of anticipation as I could capably meet each of the requirements. But what struck me more than anything else was the answer to the question I’d asked a thousand times in my career – is what I am doing as important as feeding starving children?

I think I’ve found a place where I can finally say yes.

-- David Kinard, PCM

**********************************************************

You can learn more about Unitus, microfinancing, and ways you too can help make a fundamental difference in the lives of others by visiting:

**Unitus Headquarters: http://www.unitus.com/

**Wikipedia entry about microfinancing

**BBC Interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner to Bangladeshi economist Professor Muhammad Yunus on Microfinancing

**Micro Financing to Reduce Poverty