Live at the NTC: Dan Roam’s tool kit for visual problem solving

• Wed, April 04 2012
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

I’m at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, where Dan Roam just spoke.  Dan is famed for making complex ideas incredibly simple with back-of-the-napkin pictures.  His new book is called Blah Blah Blah: What to Do When Words Don’t Work.  It is an excellent book on how we can say more by saying less through visual communication.

He started out by talking about the good and bad of communication.

The good: A few years ago, he did a workshop at Boeing, where they were developing the Dreamliner.  He learned the new airplane was incredibly complex and being built in 17 countries in 12 languages.  He wondered, how is that possible?  It turned out that they used a visual language, communicating in pictures.  People asked questions in pictures, answered questions in pictures, and in the end it flies!

The bad: Dan worked with a Senate committee, and between the politics and the stacks of policies, he concluded no one understands what is coming out of Washington.

Dan believes that as this contrast shows, we can solve our problems with pictures.  More than half our brain is devoted to processing vision, and yet we focus so much energy on becoming verbal.  That’s fine, but it’s not enough.  We need tools to take advantage of this part of our brain.

He says about 25% of people are “black pen” people who draw pictures to solve problems.  About 50% of people are “yellow pen” people who can highlight a picture and suss out what is important.  About 25% people are “red pen” people who see the pictures as oversimplified and like to point out nuances and missing facts.  He urged “red pen” people to embrace pictures.

During his talk, Dan gave us a tool kit for visual problem-solving so we can do more “black pen” work.  Here are his helpful rules:

1. The first step is drawing the problem.  And whoever draws the best picture, gets the funding.  One drawing by Arthur Laffer inspired supply-side economics, after all.

2. Our brain is good at focusing on small details, but it has the compensating ability to look at the bigger picture, which is activated by pictures.

3. That is why we need simple diagrams or pictures to explain what we mean.  He talked about how he drew pictures of health care reform, which is incredibly complex.  By communicating clearly, he got on Fox news, received hundreds of thousands of downloads and inspired a White House whiteboard.  Further proof of rule #1 - whoever draws the picture gets the funding.  He’s no expert on health care, but people think he is.

4. There are six ways we see.  We do not solve an entire problem at once - we break them up in slices and solve them one by one.

Here is how you start!

Draw a picture of an idea: Don’t try to describe it all at once.  Break it up into six pieces.

First, draw a smiley face that’s you.  Second, draw a bigger circle that is your problem.  Then something starts to happen - we can look at the two circles in front of us and have activated our visual processing system.  We can start making our six slices of that problem.

Here’s an example (from this website, it’s by Paul Martin)

Slice 1: Write in the who and what (through portraits)

Slice 2: How much (through charts)

Slice 3: Where (like a map of an object or place)

Slice 4: When (timelines)

Slice 5: How (like a flow chart)

Slice 6: Why (visual equations)

This helps us break down our problems into visually represented pieces that people can process, according to how they process information.  Draw a picture that puts together these different pieces and you have something that says a lot more than blah, blah, blah!

 

6 basic things to do when you go mobile

• Tue, April 03 2012
• Filed under: Mobile

I spoke on mobile engagement at Innogive in San Francisco yesterday.  In my talk, I highlighted The Mobile Frontier guide that we at Network for Good wrote with Convio.

The full guide is here.  In the meantime, here are six things to keep in mind when going mobile!

1. Always start by defining your audience, what you want them to do, and what the mobile goal is for your organization.
2. Assess the resources you will commit and the anticipated return on investment - or return on engagement.
3. Collaborate with key members of your team on planning and program design.
4. Identify how you will deliver, promote and support your mobile efforts.
5. Ensure your existing outreach and engagement systems are prepared for the introduction of your mobile program.
6. Measure and analyze your program as it proceeds.  This will allow you to know what is working and what needs changing.

What should you do with that newsletter of yours?  Not these 7 things!

• Mon, April 02 2012
• Filed under: Writing

Do you have a print newsletter?  An email one?  Both?  Should you keep one, both, neither?  What if you want to re-purpose the print version for email?  Or vice versa?

If you have ever asked any of these questions, Network for Good and Kivi Leroux Miller have all the answers.  Because we hear these questions so often, we created a free Guide on the topic. You can download it here.

You will learn the pros and cons of print vs. email and the ins and outs of writing for paper vs. the web.  And you’ll get these tips on what should NOT be included in your email newsletters.  Ever. Enjoy this excerpt on what 7 things to avoid, by Kivi Leroux Miller.

1. Letter from the Director. Honestly, these are often ghastly in print because they are typically full of jargon and behind”the”scenes minutiae, all of which is exactly the opposite of what works in email. If the director really loves writing that letter, then it’s time to give him or her a blog. Your email newsletter, on the other hand, should be focused primarily on the readers and what they care about and how they can connect to you and your cause. Very brief letters can work, but they must be laser”focused on the reader — “you,” “you,” and more “you.”

2. Calendar of Events. If you have a full page calendar with all the boxes for each day of the week, you can put that online (try Google Calendar, for example), but you shouldn’t try to email the whole calendar. Instead, highlight a few upcoming events and include a link to the full calendar.

3. Boring Photos. Group photos of your board, “big check” photos, and the like often make it into print newsletters, but waste precious space in email. Photos in email newsletters should be mission-oriented. A close-up shot of one person will beat a group shot 9 times out of 10.

4. Masthead. This is where, in a print newsletter, you’ll often find complete contact information for the group, the list of the board of directors, the staff who work on the newsletter, and the mission statement. While you should include your contact information in your e-newsletter (CAN-SPAM rules require you to include your mailing address), leave the board and staff lists and the rest on your website.

5. Long Articles. Articles in email are much shorter than those in print. Shoot for 250 - 500 words. If you need to go longer, include an excerpt in the email and have readers click over to your website to read the full article.

6. Big Display Ads. The majority of your email should be text, not images. That means those big full-page ads (or even half-page ads) that you include in your print newsletter, advertising everything from your own events to your sponsor’s products and services, need to go. You can create smaller button ads, or even better, turn that advertising into real content of interest to your readers — make what you are promoting relevant to them and to your cause.

7. Complicated Charts and Graphics. Email newsletters look different depending on which email program you are using to view them, making including charts and tables a crap shoot. Instead, save those items as a single graphic file (e.g. gif or jpg) and insert them into your newsletter that way. Remember, they need to be smaller because you are working with less space, so make your graphics as simple as possible.

Enjoy the Guide and let us know what you think!

How does your online engagement stack up?  Check the benchmarks.

• Fri, March 30 2012
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

M+R and NTEN are about to release their annual ebenchmarking study, and they have offered this sneak peek at the data. (If you have trouble viewing the image in my post, the original is here.)

How do your response rates stack up?  Are you doing better or worse with your online giving, advocacy, mobile and social media?

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The findings are from 44 leading nonprofits like AARP, Planned Parenthood, and World Wildlife Fund.

Picture this: Expert opinions on telling your story with images

• Thu, March 29 2012
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

There’s been a fantastic response to this month’s nonprofit carnival topic: telling your story with riveting images.  Here’s everything you always wanted to know about the topic from an exceptional range of experts.  I’ve arranged the posts into three parts—inspiration, tips and resources.

1. Start with inspiration!

One of the best ways to get inspired is to check out great images from other organizations.  The best examples I saw were from the Gift of Life Blog and Pinterest board, which feature bone marrow donors pictured with their recipients.  Very moving!  Here are two of them, with the donors and recipients meeting together.

I’ve posted many of my favorite images and a little humor via Jeff Brooks here on Pinterest. 

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Pinterest Gallery

Be sure to check out Beth Kanter’s Pinterest boards too.

Also, Nancy Schwartz offers some bus stop inspiration in visual storytelling and Carol Buckheit offers her favorite video for thanking donors from Bowling Green State.  And from Fundraising Detective, check out three classic fundraising images from SOFII.

2. Get tips for capturing and communicating with images

Kivi Leroux Miller’s Nonprofit Communications Blog has must-read posts on how to coordinate a cheap and successful photo shoot for your nonprofit, in two parts.  Here’s part one and here’s part two.

Connection Cafe offers eight hints for the non-photographer.

Big Duck offers tips on how to take fab photos on a tiny budget.

Big Duck also provides the basics on visual storytelling here.

Beth Kanter shares insights about visualization of data here.

3. Find fabulous resources to help along the way!

TechSoup reports on the outcome of its Digital Storytelling Challenge and provides links for free Flickr Pro accounts and Facebook Timeline tips here.

The Georgetown University Center for Social Impact Communication offers a complete guide to communicating with imagery here.

I hope you enjoy this library of resources - and put it to good use.  There is nothing like a wonderful image to tell your story.

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Next month’s carnival will be hosted by Allyson Kapin at RAD Campaign.  The topic is social fundraising and crowdfunding.  Learn more here!

Two lists to make this morning

• Wed, March 28 2012
• Filed under: Nonprofit leadership

I’ve become a big fan of the Harvard Business Review blogger Peter Bregman, who advises CEOs and has good counsel for the rest of us on leadership, professional growth and being yourself.

He also has the occasional tip on managing your time.  He recommends making two lists each morning:

List 1: Your Focus List - This is what you most value, what makes you happy and what you want to achieve.  The idea is to design your time around these things.

List 2: Your Ignore List - These are the distractions.  What are you willing to skip or not achieve?  What gets in the way of what matters?

I don’t know about you, but my first list is clear.  My problem is I don’t have a second list.  Or sometimes I do, but it’s too short.  I’m going to start making a bigger, better List 2.

Tips for a great donation page

• Tue, March 27 2012
• Filed under: Websites and web usability

How is your online donation page performing?  If it’s not up to standard, check out this example and these tips for better performance.  They’re from Network for Good’s new in-depth website training for fundraisers. (Click on the image or go here if you want a closer look.)

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For more, check out our training.

Why you need your hat back and other stories

• Mon, March 26 2012
• Filed under: Writing

What’s the difference between the following?

I want my hat.
I want my hat back.

The first is a sentence, the second is a story.  (Or at least, the start of one.)  It brings stakes to the protagonist’s desires.

Storytelling is the crux of what we do as communicators, marketers and fundraisers, and I’m always looking for inspiration to sharpen my storytelling skills.  Mark Rovner recently introduced me to the exceptional Wired for Story blog by Lisa Cron, which is full of fine writing and sound advice.  She provides this example - the hat vs. the hat back - as an example of how critical it is to not only have a desire - but also a problem for the protagonist to solve - to power a story.  A sought-after hat is less interesting than one that has gone missing.

She writes, “[There is] something we learned back in kindergarten, from books just like I Want My Hat Back, but it’s something that’s shockingly easy to overlook when we write stories of our own. To wit: it’s the very concreteness of the protagonist’s desire that allows us to delve into decidedly deeper matters.”

This gets me thinking about the stories we tell.  I think we often talk of desire - a person needs food, a natural space needs to be preserved, a girl needs an education.  But are we digging into the reason those desires exist?  Did that person walk ten miles to a refugee camp to get food for a child?  Is that park about to be bulldozed?  What has given that girl her desire to learn?

We owe it to those who are part of our cause to honor the stakes of their stories.  Show why the desire not only exists - but matters.

A guide to telling your story in pictures

• Fri, March 23 2012
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

Network for Good’s friends at Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication today launch Communicating Via Imagery, a complete guide to telling your story with images that touch the heart and influence the mind.

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If you’ve been reading the blog lately, you know just how critical it is to have the right pictures in all your outreach.

The guide is the product of a one-year research fellowship conducted by recent graduate Leigh Vogel, a professional photographer, and center faculty and staff.  It explores how nearly 140 local nonprofits are currently using photography in their communications efforts and offers best practices on capturing a variety of must-have images, working with professional or volunteer photographers, navigating copyright and privacy issues, and creatively using photos on both online and offline platforms.

Get the guide here. And please send it to everyone you know working for a good cause.  Tweet it.  Facebook it.  Email it.  Good causes need these great tips.

How to write a perfect donor thank-you: A template and example

• Thu, March 22 2012
• Filed under: Fundraising essentials

My favorite nonprofit, A Wider Circle, set me a thank-you letter this weekend.  It started with the following quote.

“I truly appreciate everything you have given my family.  The household items aside, it’s the hope, the faith, the trust, and the reassurance that kind, caring and loving people still do exist.  I used to be the one that donated the clothes, the canned goods, and volunteered my time.  But here I was having to rely on the same from others.  It’s going to be a struggle for a while but we’re keeping our faith and staying strong.”  It was from Raeleen, mother of two, whose home was fully furnished by A Wider Circle.

This has all the hallmarks of a wonderful acknowledgement:

It’s heartfelt, it’s original, it’s emotional and it’s tangible.  And better, yet, it’s got the right messenger.

The inclusion of the words of someone helped by my donation is powerful, authentic and moving.  Not to mention relatable.  How many of us have had moments where we are reluctant to ask for help and understand the vulnerability that accepting it entails?  I not only understand the difference I made, I think I understand something of the person I helped.

I hope this inspires you, because there is no greater gift to a donor than a story of how they helped.

And if you’re stuck, here’s my template for a great thank-you.

Dear _________________   (use donor’s name, spelled correctly)

First: Don’t start with the typical “thank you for your donation!” Start with a vivid image or mini story of what the donor made possible, like the example in this post!

Second: Say thank you and give the donor credit for the impact of the donation and/or the specific program(s) supported.

Third: Express gratitude for the specific gift amount, noting the date and including any language on tax deductibility.

Fourth: Tell the donor when and how you’ll be in touch to let them know more about what their gift is accomplishing.  Include contact information – your email, phone and website – so they can stay in touch or reach out if they wish.

Closing: Thank them again and sign a real person’s name. If this is a mailed letter, include a PS with a nice added detail about a resource where they can find out more about the difference you are making because of their gift.

Images are great - unless you’re making one of these 3 mistakes

• Wed, March 21 2012
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

As you know, I’m a fan of images.  Pictures are worth 1,000 words and all that.

When people look at a page, they look in this order: first the image, then the headline, then - last - the body copy.  You’re probably aware of that, too, and plan accordingly.

But here are some things that might surprise you, courtesy of this excellent KISSMetrics post via my colleague Caryn Stein.  It draws on David Ogilvy’s work.

1. Don’t have an image without a caption.  Captions matter!  Images seize your attention so strongly that they can draw you away from copy.  So add a caption that helps pull people back into the ideas in the text.  Did you know captions are read three to four times more than copy? 

2. Images that force copy to the right can be problematic.  To make things easy to read, says KISSmetrics, you want to always anchor the eye on the left.  Start each line on the left from the same spot.  If you embed a photo in your text to the left and that forces some text to the right, you may lose that anchor of the left margin. 

3. Irrelevant images distract.  Make sure your image enhances, not confuses your story - or tells your story completely.  Avoid stock photography, which alienates most people. Crowd shots aren’t as compelling as individual faces.  People always perform better than buildings, illustrations or just about anything else.  If you have a person, know that the image will be most compelling if they are looking at you - or toward wherever you want to direct the viewer’s eye.

Here’s an example of an image that tells a story - and features one person - from KISSmetrics.

Are you reading this caption?  Yes?  See, captions work!

These are guidelines, and there are exceptions.  For best results, test for yourself.  And stay tuned for my carnival at the end of the month on nonprofit images!

Cinnamon.  Velvet.  Kick. And more examples of how to seize the brain.

• Tue, March 20 2012
• Filed under: Marketing essentials

If you love fiction as I do, you know that at its finest, it has a delicious quality.  Good words remind me of dark chocolate or lavender or cinnamon - worth savoring.

Dark chocolate.  Lavender.  Cinnamon.  How did you react to those words?  I bet they set off your olfactory cortex.  What if I said, “He had leathery hands” or, “The singer had a velvet voice.”  That would trigger your sensory cortex. 

Now, if I had said good words are eloquent and affecting, or that “He had strong hands” and the “Singer had a pleasing voice,” you would not have any of those reactions.

Why?  Certain narratives activate the parts of our brain responsible for smell or the sense of touch or motion.  Others do not.

This idea and these examples (with the exception of dark chocolate, my own) are from Annie Murphy Paul, who wrote in the Sunday New York Times about “Your Brain on Fiction.”  It turns out neuroscientists have discovered that words describing smell or texture or motion trigger those parts of the brain as if we were encountering those experiences in real life.

As she writes: “Fiction - with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions - offers an especially rich replica.  Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.”

That is why I love to read.

Scientists see “substantial overlap in the brain networks used to understand stories and the networks used to navigate interactions with other individuals - in particular, interactions in which we’re trying to figure out the thoughts and feelings of others… [or] ‘theory of mind’... it hones our real-life social skills.”

And it also helps us empathize with others.  Which brings me to why this post matters.  A good story, told vividly, makes us bigger and compels us to care. 

Choose your words well and create a narrative that matters.  You’ll light up brains and open hearts.

Is your website ick or slick?  Take the quiz!

• Mon, March 19 2012
• Filed under: Websites and web usability

Is your website enchanting?

Find out here with this Network for Good quiz.

And if you find your website is more ick than slick, consider this webinar and our upcoming training!

11 ways to make your website more enchanting

• Fri, March 16 2012
• Filed under: Websites and web usability

According to Guy Kawasaki, former Chief Evangelist of Apple, you need an enchanting website to pull people to your story.  Kawasaki’s most recent book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, offers 11 ways to do so.

I’m sharing them here.  And if this topic enchants you, I urge you to consider Network for Good’s upcoming training on turning your website from ick to slick.  Sign up to learn more here.

Guy Kawasaki’s website basics

1. Provide good content.  Duh.  But it’s true.

2. Refresh it often.  Every few days.

3. Skip flashy intros.  Don’t make people work to know who you are on the home page.

4. Make it fast.  It should load super quick.

5. Sprinkle visuals!  They work - just don’t overdo it.

6. Provide an FAQ page.  It helps people cut to the chase.

7. Craft an About page so people can find the details on who you are.

8. Help visitors find their way.  Include search and clear navigation.

9. Introduce the team.  A good “who are we?” page with photos is nice.

10. Optimize visits for various devices.  Check how you look on tablets and mobile - especially if more than 5% of your visitors find you that way.  (Google analytics will tell you.)

11. Provide multiple methods of access.  Show people how to find you on Facebook, Twitter, via RSS, via email, etc.

The fight over the origins of kindness

• Fri, March 16 2012
• Filed under: Fun stuff

Photo of a vampire bat colony from the Conservation Centre

There is a fight afoot over the genetic origins of kindness, and it’s skillfully chronicled by Jonah Lehrer in the March 5 issue of The New Yorker. 

Here are the basics as I understand them.

Charles Darwin saw altruism as a challenge to his theory of natural selection.  If you were willing to give up your life for someone else, you wouldn’t reproduce and there would be no offspring to inherit your nobility, he posited.  He explained altruism as a way for individuals to sustain the colony and therefore survive themselves.

Yet altruism is everywhere, in many species, as Lehrer notes - even when it doesn’t ensure individual survival.  Vampire bats starve to death within 60 hours if they don’t have their fix of blood.  When one has had a bad night of hunting, another will give it some of its own supper by locking mouths and passing on digesting blood (ew, I know).  Honeybees will defend a hive with their sting, even though the act amounts to suicide.  And of course we humans sometimes sacrifice ourselves for others too.

To explain this seeming paradox, a theory called “inclusive fitness” evolved over the past six decades.  It explained altruism in genetic terms.  If you make a sacrifice for kin, you’re just taking another route to perpetuating your own DNA.  Altruism is attributed to the need to spread our own genes.  This idea has the support of many scientists, since an entomologist named E.O. Wilson built off early work on the topic and wrote many books and papers on the subject. 

But now, after 60 years of studying insects at Harvard, Wilson has had an apostasy.  He says inclusive fitness isn’t all it cracked up to be.  Many species aren’t cooperating, after all, even when there are close genetic connections among them.  He teamed up with two other scientists to ask, if cooperation (also known as eusociality) is such a successful strategy, then why is it so rare?

They believe the answer is that kin working together is a consequence and not a cause of eusociality.  In other words, says Lehrer, in an ant colony, “sisters don’t get along because they’re sisters.  Rather clumps of females just happen to be the most likely to evolve the necessary preadaptations.  They work together because they can’t leave; they have become slaves to the queen.”

Wilson now believes in something more akin to group selection. In recent studies of cooperative species, clumps of cooperators thrive and replicate, while selfish groups die off.  Wilson is quoted by Lehrer as saying, “Selfishness beats altruism within groups.  But altrustic groups beat selfish groups.”  Says Lehrer: “Goodness might actually be an adaptive trait, allowing more cooperative groups to outcompete their conniving cousins.” 

Humans are neither wholly selfish nor completely cooperative.  We’re somewhere in between. 

As the scientific community ironically dukes it out over theories of cooperation, I’m left with a few inexpert thoughts.  First, whatever the genetic purpose, we are altruistic.  We can and do help each other.  That’s the one thing that’s not in dispute.  Second, most living things fare better when they work together.  Third, as professionals dedicated to inspiring people’s better angels,we should embrace these facts as good news indeed, whatever the biological reasons. 

If we’re wired to be nice at least some of the time, there’s hope for all of us.