Don’t speak doglish

• Mon, May 21 2007
• Filed under: Writing

I’m really enjoying Lois Kelly’s book, Beyond Buzz, which she mailed me after I blogged about the executive summary.

In a written Q&A that was packaged with the book, she says this.  Read it, substituting in your mind the words “nonprofit” for “company” and “donor” for “customer.”

Avoid DOGLISH at all costs.  What I mean is that companies speak their own language of what they think is transformational, innovative, or revolutionary to customers.  Yet customers speak an entirely different language and don’t have a clue what companies are talking about.  (Or they know and don’t care.)  Sort of like when we ramble on and on to our dogs, and they look at us with this puzzled look wanting us to just say, “sit,” and “treat.”  Talk about what customers want to know.  Avoid the buzz words and self-congratulatory adjectives.

I get a lot of Doglish in my inbox. 

Avoid at all costs the following doglish: sustainable development, empowerment of disenfranchised groups, CSR, interface, strategic, strategize, leverage, synergy, taking to scale…  arf! arf!

Good story - about lawyers!

• Wed, May 16 2007
• Filed under: Writing

I’ve gotten some inspiring email from the posts on writing this week.  I wanted to share some strong writing shared by Samantha, a top ten fundraiser who participated in Six Degrees and personally got 405 people to donate to Bet Tzedek.

Justice for Guillermo

It reads like a scene from a Dickens novel:  A 17-year-old sews labels on clothes for 70 hours a week, without lunch or rest breaks, earning three cents for each piece he completes.  The year?  2006.  The place?  Downtown Los Angeles. 

Guillermo Martinez (name changed to protect client privacy) thought his job meant a chance to improve the lives of his mother and sisters in Guatemala.  He didn’t realize that he would be physically abused and financially exploited. 

Fortunately for Guillermo, Bet Tzedek’s Employment Rights Project (ERP) exists.  Becky Monroe, ERP Attorney, and Matthew DeCarolis, a Social Justice Fellow in our Valley office, took Guillermo’s case and recently won a $44,000 judgment for him. 

Guillermo is a slight young man of 5’5”.  When he was hired, he was promised between two and six cents per clothing piece he completed.  After a year on the job, Guillermo mustered the courage to question whether he was being credited with all of the pieces on which he labored.  The floor manager’s response?  To physically assault Guillermo and push him to the floor.  Guillermo had to go to the hospital, and one year later, still receives treatments for his injury. 

Guillermo then came to Bet Tzedek for help in getting his owed wages.  Each week, he earned an average of $230, averaging out to less than $3.50 per hour.  Based upon the California minimum wage and overtime rules, Guillermo’s work week should have earned him nearly $600 per week. 

The Hearing Officer at the Labor Commissioner’s office conducted a hearing and reviewed all the evidence we presented.  On cross-examination, the factory owner presented her defense:  “If I paid minimum wage, then I could not make a profit.”

In mid-March, Guillermo received the Hearing Officer’s decision:  Guillermo is entitled to receive $44,000, covering all wages and breaks claimed plus applicable penalties.  The owner has been put on notice that she must comply with minimum wage laws or face exposure to other wage claims like Guillermo’s.

 

Flash (non) fiction

• Tue, May 15 2007
• Filed under: Writing

Blog reader Bonnie B just sent me a link to her blog, where she practices her craft of writing.  She also includes a piece of her flash fiction (see comments).  This got me thinking: why not flash (non)fiction?  Flash fiction is a very, very short story - only a few hundred words.  The shortest and most famous was by Hemingway, as Wikipedia reminds us.  Not surprisingly for a writer known for his exquisite brevity, he told a story in six words.

Flash fiction differs from a vignette in that the flash-fiction work contains the classic story elements: protagonist, conflict, obstacles or complications, and resolution. However, unlike the case with a traditional short story, the limited word length often forces some of these elements to remain unwritten, that is, hinted at or implied in the written storyline. This principle, taken to the extreme, is illustrated by Ernest Hemingway’s six-word flash, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”[1]

How about some cause-related, flash (non)fiction? 

Here is a very fine example from Mercy Corps:

Sanam, Niger - You can see the difficulty of life here in Boubacar Harouna’s eyes. They are yellowed from chronic malaria and glassy from exhaustion. Still, Harouna somehow summons the energy to treat dozens of patients each day as the town’s only nurse.

Clad in an improbably clean, crisp white coat, Harouna makes the rounds to check on his patients - many of whom lay outside under shade trees because of the lack of beds here. One man, so weak from malaria that he cannot sit up or even move, is sprawled out on a dingy mattress with an intravenous drip in his arm.

One of the clinic’s few observation rooms holds four-year-old Ousama Mamidou, who was transported here in a donkey cart from a nearby village. Already chronically anemic and severely malnourished, Ousama arrived in convulsions from a malaria fever. Even after treatment with anti-malarial medications and rehydration solution, she’s still listless in her mother’s arms and fighting for survival.

“You’ve come on a slow day,” Harouna says with no trace of irony on his care-worn face.

 

 

Tell a story (and get free training if you’re stuck)

• Tue, May 15 2007
• Filed under: Writing

Stories are the most powerful form of expression, and as marketers and writers, we should never make a point without telling a story.  When one person tells another person a story, the two people are transported together outside the present moment, to another time and place.  They are living an experience together as one person recounts what happened and another imagines it in his or her mind. 

What better way to communicate our cause?

If you doubt the power of a story, think about the last time you gave money to a good cause.  I’m willing to bet a free copy of my book that a story was behind your gift.

I looked at ten charity websites today and not one had a story or link to a story on the home page.  Through direct mail, I get some stories, but they tend to sound like they were written from a fundraising 101 template.  Where are our stories?!  Where is your story?  Get one now.

Need inspiration?  Order Storytelling as Best Practice if you don’t already have it.  Or if you don’t want to spend the $15, sign up for a May 24 free training with its author, Andy Goodman, who is its author and the best guy on storytelling for nonprofits, hands down. (It’s free for the first 125, according to Andy’s site, so hurry.)

Once you’ve done this, start writing some stories about what you do, why you do it, and how important it is.

A really talented writer I used to work with at CARE is Gwendolyn Driscoll, who is now a journalist.  She wrote this article in the Orange County Register.

I went to the Saddleback Church website and found its story:

When Rick and Kay Warren first arrived in the Saddleback Valley in December of 1979, all they had was what they could fit in the back of a U-haul truck. Fresh out of seminary, the young pastor and his bride dreamed of planting a church that would be “a place where the hurting, the depressed, the confused can find love, acceptance, help, hope, forgiveness and encouragement.”

With many good Bible-teaching churches already in Southern California, Pastor Rick turned his attention to those who didn’t attend church regularly. Two weeks after Pastor Rick and Kay arrived in the Saddleback Valley, they began with a small Bible study, meeting with one other family in the Warrens’ small condo.

On Easter of 1980, Saddleback Valley Community Church held its very first public service and 205 people, most of whom had never been to church, showed up. That began one of the most exciting journeys of growth that any church has experienced in American history. In more than two decades of ministry in South Orange County, God has continued to expand the church’s influence. Currently, Saddleback Church has more than 200 ministries serving the church and community. One in nine people in the area call Saddleback their church home.

How do you tell the story of your organization and its start?  Is it this colorful?  It is this compelling? I’m not a churchgoer, but I’m taken with this story.  Not surprising given the man behind it wrote the Purpose-Driven Life, which sold 16 million copies.  He is a storyteller.  You can - and should - be one, too. 

 

 

The art of the telling detail

• Tue, May 15 2007
• Filed under: Writing

When I was working for Reuters covering the July 1997 coup in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the airport was dismantled by a procession of people, each more desperate than the last.  First, retreating royalists soldiers cleaned out the XO Cognac at the duty free.  Then the victorious troops moved in, raiding the safes and taking the computers, the lines of connected waiting-room chairs and air conditioners, strapping them atop tanks.  What remained when I arrived was the roof, the bullet-pocked walls, and a carpet of broken glass and scattered tourist photos still taped to trampled visa applications.  Children and a few parents from the village by the airport arrived late in the day to take what little was left – wiring from behind the walls, light fixtures, scraps of paper.  In the men’s room, two teenage boys ripped the door from its hinges and wrenched the urinals from the wall.  A young boy walked across the glass shards with two paddles, one red and one green, which were used to direct aircraft to their stopping points.  He saw me and shrugged.  I tried to explain how to use the paddles in my halting Khmer.  I waved them over my shoulders and then crossed them in the command for a full stop.  He seized them, laughing and waving them in all directions, making criss-crossing lines and collision courses.  “Barang!” he screamed, laughing, and ran away with the paddles.  Foreigner.

I’m remembering that day with you through telling details, like the trampled tourist photos.  The trampled photos packed an entire, complex story into a single image, so they were worth sharing.  So did the stolen cognac, the loot-laden tanks and the boy, waving his paddles.  At least that’s the idea.  I could have simply told you the airport was looted, but I wanted to show you the scene.  I wanted to convey the telling details.  They are what makes life interesting and stories alive.

The power of the telling detail is that it does what good writing is meant to do - it transports us to a place, a time, a person’s mind.  It shows us what that moment felt like to live, and what it meant.

This week, I want to blog about writing.  Because no matter how great our talents as marketers, we will always need the gift of good writing. 

The best writing advice I have ever been given is old and oft-cited, but it is also dead on: show, don’t tell.  Do it with a telling detail.  Don’t just talk about your programs in abstract language.  Force yourself to define the small story elements that stick in the mind.  Strip your prose of tired adjectives.  Banish the passive voice.  Yank the reader out of her bored, tuned-out state with a startling image she can’t forget.

Do you have an image like that?  A sentence, a story?  Send it to me here, in a comment. Inspire others with your talent. 

I leave you with these words, from a book on writing fiction - but they surely apply to writing about our work.  They say it better than I can.

Specific, definite, concrete, particular details - these are the life of fiction.  Details (as every good liar knows) are the stuff of persuasiveness…  John Gardner in The Art of Fiction speaks of details as “proofs,” rather like those in a geometric theorem or statistical argument. A detail should be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched… [and] the detail must matter.” —Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A guide to Narrative Craft.

 

We’re not in a vacuum

• Fri, May 11 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

None of us works in a vacuum where we can command the full attention of our various audiences. Instead, we work within a messy context of people, ideas, events, and environmental factors that all affect our ability to be heard. This context is our marketplace. Marketplace forces can undermine or advance our mission, affect our relevance to our audiences, increase or decrease our advocacy power and visibility, and make or break our fundraising efforts.  The better we understand them, the greater our chances of harnessing them to work in our favor. 

We need to constantly be on the alert for what might influence our audience and enhance or hurt our ability to reach people.  Our audience’s actions are affected by demographic, lifestyle, social, cultural, health, natural, economic, infrastructural, legal, scientific, technological, political, media, business, and competitive factors.  We need to take a walk in our audiences’ shoes and consider which of these forces affect their likelihood of taking action. Then identify those we can use to our advantage, those in our way, those that require partners to leverage, and those that we cannot control.

What am I talking about?

—I used to consult with the nonprofit Aging with Dignity, which promotes advance care planning and their Five Wishes living will.  When brain-damaged Terri Schiavo dominated the news in 2005, the constant media attention profoundly affected people’s sense of urgency about creating a living will and naming a health care agent.  Because Aging with Dignity was smart and nimble, it connected with this tragic story and gave people a means of avoiding such a fate.

Do you go off and make your marketing plan in a closed environment, or do you design your marketing plan around areas of opportunity that may arise in your marketplace?  Do more of the latter.  It’s easier to piggy-back onto something with momentum that to try to create momentum where there is none.

Conversation marketing in action

• Thu, May 10 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

Two readers shared some interesting stories about conversational marketing in response to my post on the topic (and offer of free books!).  I want to relay their stories, because we as marketers need to do more of this.  As I said before, people increasingly don’t trust sales and marketing.  They are bombarded with information.  They want to be heard and have a say.

Kelly Bock, Marketing and Development Manager of Advocates for Faith and Freedom, shares this story:

We hosted a focus group with our highest donors (about 12-15 people), and we plan to hold a couple more groups with more of our donors, since we gained so much valuable information from the first.  The types of questions we asked the group were:

How did you first hear about Advocates and why did you decide to financially support us?

Why do you continue to support our group?

In what ways are we communicating well with you?  In what ways can we improve our communication and marketing efforts?

We have a fundraising event coming up in the fall, and we asked our supporters what kind of speaker they would enjoy, where they would like it to be, etc.  We learned that they loved hearing from our clients and their personal stories!  This was a wonderful insight for us – so obvious when you think about it, and so simple to implement in marketing communications with current and potential donors!

How can we reach out to new people who have never heard of Advocates before?

The most amazing thing I learned from the focus group was how devoted these donors are to our group.  They truly want to be informed of what is happening, they want to know about successes and court trials and hearings when they happen.  One woman even suggested starting an emergency prayer chain, because she wanted to know exactly when we needed prayer – when going into the courtroom, when writing an important brief, etc.  And, she agreed to help initiate it!

In all, this was an exciting look into how and why our donors are so drawn to Advocates and why they continue to support us.  In addition, it was an amazing application of a marketing tool – the focus group – that I had always learned about in regard to consumer product marketing.

Chuck Warpehoski of the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice shares his Listening Project experience.

We went through a “listening project” to consult our members and allies on a range of topics relating to the future of the organization, and our
members were happy to share their wisdom.  When we compiled the full results of the project, the data filled 51 pages.

Here is what we did right:

—We invited a broad group of folks to be part of the conversation: donors, activists, community partners, etc.;
—We acted on what we heard. For example, we heard a lot of people say that they wanted to hear more about the faith components of people’s connections to peace and justice, so we added more of that to our programming.
—We shared the results broadly so that everyone could continue to see what others were saying and deepend the converstation.

We learned a lot about what we should be doing and strengthened our relationships with our members. It helped in our Board recruitment and started as a springboard for new programs and changes in our structure.

There is one weak spot in our program that I do regret. We didn’t do enough 1 on 1 follow up with people who shared their personal information. There was an opportunity to have lots of personal conversations, which would have led to increased involvement, but we didn’t have the capacity for that.

Great work Kelly and Chuck.  They had in-person conversations, but you can also engage in conversations online and on the phone.  Wherever you have them, however you have them—please have them.  Listen to your supporters and address their perspective.

 

 

 

Tips for tipping boring communications upside down

• Fri, May 04 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

In the kiddie movie Barnyard, there is a scene where some beleaguered bovines avenge the abuse of cow-tipping.  They sneak into their tormenter’s bedroom and upturn his bed, sending him to the floor with a big splat.  My two daughters thought it was hilarious, and they talked about it incessantly.  Why?  In the paradigm of Chip and Dan Heath, it’s because it was a sticky story with an unexpected twist.

Some stories stay with us long after statistics, and the ones that are most memorable are those that surprise us in some way.  You don’t expect cows from a barnyard to engage in boy-tipping, so you remember that, especially if you’re a kid.

This is a completely trivial example of a very important concept.

I’m becoming concerned that some of our storytelling in the nonprofit sector is becoming rather rote.  We stick to a sad-to-happy, cookie-cutter template that fails to cut through the clutter.  We make more wristbands.  We print brochures.  Instead, we should be challenging ourselves to seek out striking details, exhibit unexpected stories and communicate in unusual ways.  We should think about how to tip expectations on their head (stupid pun intended).

Courtesy of Nancy Lee, who put these on a social marketing listserve, here is some inspiration.

Conversational marketing

• Thu, May 03 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

Check out this free summary of the book, Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word of Mouth Marketing.  It’s intriguing.

Author Lois Kelly says “buzz marketing” misses the point.  What you should be focused on is not creating “buzz” but rather engaging in interesting conversations with your audience. 

Why?

Because people increasingly don’t trust sales and marketing.  They are bombarded with information.  They want to be heard and have a say.

So how do you do have a conversation instead of a marketing message? 

Listen and make people feel heard.  Get beyond typical messages and value propositions and focus on interesting topics of conversation.  When people respond, respond back.  Make fewer brochures and have more two-way communications.  Hire people who like to have those conversations.

I fully endorse these ideas.  When I have taken the time to ask people their opinions, listened, responded, and continued the conversation, great things happened.

Want a good example?  Check out Lois’s blog post on Nike’s ad after the Imus debacle.

Here is the conversation Nike started in an ad:

“Thank you, ignorance.

Thank you for starting the conversation.

Thank you for making an entire nation listen to the Rutgers’ team story. And for making us wonder what other great stories we’ve missed.

Thank you for reminding us to think before we speak.

Thank you for showing us how strong and poised 18 and 20-year-old women can be.

Thank you for reminding us that another basketball tournament goes on in March.

Thank you for showing us that sport includes more than the time spent on the court.

Thank you for unintentionally moving women’s sport forward.

And thank you for making all of us realize that we still have a long way to go.

Next season starts 11.16.07.”

I’m ready to go buy Nikes.

The conversation approach has worked amazingly well for Six Degrees.

Have you had success in conversations or two-way communication with your audiences?  I will send my Robin Hood book and post the story of the first two people who respond to this question here on the blog.  Please respond, we need to learn from you.

 

The most common question donors ask

• Wed, May 02 2007
• Filed under: Fundraising essentials

The most common question(s) from prospective donors: “How much of my money goes to program versus overhead, and what can you tell me that will show me how well you spend your money?” 

I know this from my experiences at nonprofits (it’s always the #1 customer inquiry) and my friends from Sea Change, who’ve heard a lot of focus group participants ask those questions.

My question to you: Are you answering this question on the home page of your website?  The first page of your direct mail?  You need to.

Mercy Corps does an especially good job of this. 

Thank three times for each ask

• Mon, April 30 2007
• Filed under: Fundraising essentials

I got a fantastic email today from Shelter Pets.  I’m blogging about it because 80-90% of the emails I get from nonprofits are awful.

Shelter Pets participated in our Six Degrees person-to-person fundraising site.  The top six fundraisers each quarter receive matching grants from Kevin Bacon.  While they didn’t finish in the top six, they were very close.  Here is the email they sent to their supporters and forwarded to Network for Good:

This special edition of the Saving Shelter Pets newsletter has been sent to update you on the results of the Six Degrees charity badge contest. As most of you know, SSP was recently involved in a fundraising contest, organized through SixDegrees.org, competing against other non-profit groups to gather the highest number of donations for their cause.

During the course of the contest, which ended March 31, SSP collected 861 donations and raised $17,375 to further our mission of helping companion animals in need. With respect to the competition, we finished seventh, just outside the top six (who each will receive a $10,000 grant from actor Kevin Bacon). Several of the top-placing charities are large, well-established organizations, and we are very pleased and proud of our efforts to achieve a top ten finish among these “competitors”!

Saving Shelter Pets would like to extend a heartfelt “thank you” to each and every one of you who donated and helped us to spread the word about our participation in the contest. We have made some new friends through this experience, and reconnected with some old ones too – and for this we are truly grateful.

Of the $17,375 raised in the contest, Saving Shelter Pets has applied these funds directly to our programs as follows:

$2,029 to the Puppy Promises program
$1,160 to the Bernies Buddies heartworm fund
$2,050 to the Spay & Neuter program
$12,136 to the Rescue & Transport program

$5,186 of the 6 Degrees donations has already been used to save over 30 dogs & puppies from death row, including the ones pictured below.  [Adorable photos of dogs were included.]

What a nice letter, and how wonderful to know exactly where their money went.  A genuine thank-you with clear accountability for funds raised.  Follow this model!

Shelter Pets is also worth highlighting for their MySpace page.  They do a nice job there, and during their Six Degrees campaign, they promoted their charity badge there.  [Note: Our badges will work on MySpace soon thanks to a new Network for Good partner; till then, consider creating links to the badge as Shelter Pets did. They even did a colorful promo that clicked through to their badge.]

All this raises an important point: You should be thanking your donors more.  A lot more.  Thank them at least three times as often as you ask for money.  Really.  Tell your donors this week how wonderful they are and what different they’ve made.  Pick up the phone and tell a few in person.  It will shock them, in a good way.

What’s new with donors

• Fri, April 27 2007
• Filed under: Fundraising essentials

My favorite Donor Power blog has a great post about new data showing a dip in donors.  As Jeff points out, Target is saying:

... revenue for the entire year of 2006 grew a median 0.7% over 2005. Median donor counts are down 2.8% from 2004 to 2006, and have fallen a cumulative 1.4% over the past five years. This appears to be due not only to declines in new donor acquisition, which is down 6.7% over the last two years, but also to declines in both first-year and multi-year retention rates.

Here is what Jeff thinks it means, and I think he’s right.  Consider what he says—it’s very important:

The donor universe isn’t shrinking; it’s just changing. We’re at the beginning of a generational changing of the guard in the donor-aged population. Boomers are different from the older generation, and they’re just starting to show up in significant numbers. From the under-60 group, you typically see lower response rate but higher average gift. Get used to it, because that’s the way it’s going to be for a few decades.

Fewer donors/more revenue is something many organizations are doing on purpose. They’ve discovered value is more important than volume when it comes to a healthy donor file. One $20 donor is better than two $10 donors; you’ll get the same gross revenue either way, but from the one donor you’ll get it at a better ROI—and you’ll walk away with more net revenue. Organizations that know this are not seeking the high volume of low-dollar donors. The result is just what TAG found: lower numbers of donors, but higher revenue.

 

More great info on web analytics

• Fri, April 27 2007
• Filed under: Websites and web usability

Beth Kanter’s great post on web analytics is well worth a read today. 

A highlight is this quote:

“Web Analytics packages are sold as if it’s an automatic coffee maker.  In fact, it is more like buying a coffee plantation.  You can still get your cup of coffee (eventually), but your going to have to stick your hands in a lot more manure than you ever knew.”  Tom Cunniff - Yahoo Web Analytics Forum

Yes, it’s messy - but vital - to know who is coming to your site and what happens when they’re there.

10 commandments of communications

• Fri, April 27 2007
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

To wrap up the week, I offer some last words from Luntz.  Here are his 10 commandments of messaging.  Bottom line: be able to explain what you do in one visual, compelling, intriguing sentence or phrase.

1. Simplicity is key.  What one word or phrase captures your work?
2. Brevity: Keep it short, always.
3. Credibility matters more than ever.
4. Consistency is vital - stick to your message, and make your message sticky.
5. Novelty: be fresh and use fresh language and stories.
6. Sound and texture matter.
7. Speak aspirationally.
8. Be visual.  Have one great picture that tells your story.
9. Ask a question.  Start conversations, not monologues.
10. Provide context.  Explain why your mission matters to your audience.

Who is visiting your web site?

• Thu, April 26 2007
• Filed under: Websites and web usability

If you don’t know, you should find out.

Here is an EXCELLENT guide from TechSoup that explains how to find answers to questions like:

How many people visit our Web site every day? What are visitors doing when they get there? Which features are most popular? Was that big redesign worth the money?