If you are a reader of many popular nonprofit marketing blogs, you’ll soon find that several common themes emerge. The reason? Because these are the issues that are most common for nonprofit organizations. Communications and marketing, especially for fundraising purposes, is so vitally important and also difficult. If it were easier, everyone would be doing it so much better! People like me who work in this field hear the same challenges and issues from so many organizations - it’s hard, we don’t have the resources, people don’t seem to be responding to our message, there’s too much competition, and so on.

This is all true, and it will always be true. Yet there are many organizations that sustain themselves, and even thrive, while facing these same challenges. What is the answer?

In my view, it comes down to one simple answer - they know who they are! The minute you start to stretch your organization to fit the criteria of a new grant, or tweak your message to appeal to a new group that’s beyond your usual audience, is the moment you start to dilute your image, and therefore weaken it. All the money and time in the world will not improve the results for your organization if you do not start off with a clear image and goal in mind. This is why the smallest and most grassroots driven organization can succeed above others, without the bells and whistles, if it has a clear goal and message. 

I’ll let you in on a little personal secret. When I’m working on a project for a nonprofit, I look for the secret ingredient that makes its flavour unique. I read all of the material, like annual reports, newsletters, fundraising applications and appeals and the like. But most of the time, that’s not where I find it. These have often been added to and convoluted over time, that they rarely reflect what the organization is actually doing today.  To get the true sense of the organization, I talk to the volunteers and donors to find out what motivates them to give their time and money above all of the other options out there. And I talk to someone who has benefitted as a result.

So the next time you are stumped by writing a message or just feel discouraged, get out of your office and get back to the very basics of what makes your organization tick day after day.

Perhaps because I have been vacationing of late, stories like this have caught my eye. These participants of Executive on a Mission with the Salvation Army shared their time in an overseas development project in Tanzania through the power of the internet and blog software.

Now it is possible not only to combine your values with the experience of travel, but to share it with the world while doing so. Coincidentally, my Winnipeg friend Cheryl has recently touched ground in Africa where she has been posted through the Volunteer Services Organization. What possesses an independent single woman who grew up in small town Manitoba to leave her household and fund development and communications career behind to help people living with HIV in Soweto, South Africa? We’ll find out as I invite her to share her experiences.

Meanwhile, she’s asked for some help. The organization she’s working with runs the Footprints Hospice and community projects that assist people living with HIV. They have created a Food Garden project to provide good nutrition and medicinal herbs for existing and discharged patients of their hospice. They are also hoping to train families how to grow their own foods. They are looking for copies of a book called Jekka’s Complete Herb Book - Revised Edition by Jekka McVicar, and would also love any others about herbs and their medicinal properties. Since their internet service is limited at best, she’s also asked for any help in researching foundations that have an interest in assisting people with AIDS/HIV in Africa.

Their address is  Footprints Hospice, PO Box 5, Diepkloof, 1804, Soweto, South Africa or email cherylherda@gmail.com

Are you stuck? Borrowed from business writer and direct response expert Dan Kennedy, here are some creativity formulas to help you work with what you’ve got:

1. If you can’t change the product, change the package.
2. Make it bigger.
3. Make it smaller.
4. Add to it.
5. Subtract from it.
6. Do it faster.
7. Do it slower.
8. Do it cheaper.
9. Do it more expensively.

These formulas can work for anything, from a pizza parlour to your nonprofit. There really aren’t that many new ideas under the sun, it just takes some creativity and fresh perspective to make the most of what you’ve got!

Interested in more like this? I’m offering a free teleseminar this week that will introduce you to new ways of thinking about your "old" nonprofit challenges. Signing up gives you access to the session as well as 15 days of tips to get you started.

A reader from New Zealand sent me a great quote this week in response to my Be Ruthless but Have a Heart post. She wrote: I once heard Stephen Tindall, philanthropic founder of The Warehouse retail chain (New Zealand’s equivalent to Wal-Mart), put this very eloquently:"We’ve got to have a cool head, a hard nose, and a warm heart."

I think there is one more characteristic great leaders must have, and in many ways, it makes up for any deficiency in the others.  Visionary, inspiring leaders of organizations have courage. This is what gives them the determination to keep going when the faint of heart give up, and the daring to be different. If Walt Disney listened to others, and followed the safe examples of the time, Disneyworld would have looked very different, and likely would not be the enduring success it is today. What’s more, the Disney empire is what others now try to emulate.

Having a great story to tell, and sticking out from the herd is the key to success. Where many individuals, and organizations, falter is not having the guts to stand out, stray from the majority, be distinct, and stay on the path. They need courage, but don’t always know where to find it. I offer these classic words of wisdom:

Oz made the Lion drink some bad-tasting green medicine, saying, "You know of course, that courage is always inside of one. This is courage, but it cannot really be called courage until you have swallowed it."

This is for Jeff Brooks, who is hosting the Carnival this week.

On this day of record consumerism, guilt and excess, take a moment to ponder the above statement: Love is not enough. You can love your donors, honour your staff, respect and cherish your board and volunteers, but like a good marriage, ongoing TLC is required to keep everyone happy, giving and content. So, here are my tips that are guaranteed to work for all of your relationships:

• Don’t take the ones you love for granted. Look for ways to connect and build it into your day-to-day life. Schedule it.
• Don’t pay attention only when you want something - avoid the fundraising one-night stand. As a side note, this has been my most popular post. If you haven’t checked it out, enjoy!
• Listen more than you speak.
• Never assume - you know the saying, it makes an … out of you and me.
• Be a part of the solution, not the problem - look for ways to pre-empt problems by being the partner you want your partner to be.
• Don’t contribute to suspicion and confusion - keep the information and dialogue going.
• Be respectful and courteous. Familiarity need not breed contempt.
• Never go to bed mad - translated in organizational terms, don’t leave conflict to fester.
• And most importantly, love is not a selfish act! It’s about them, not you.

Wishing you lots of love on Valentine’s Day.

This is guaranteed to get giggles and many nodding heads at your next strategic planning session. It’s another way of saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting to get a different result.

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover the horse you are riding is dead, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in organizations, we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

• Change riders
• Say things like "This is the way we have always ridden this horse"
• Appoint a committee to study the horse
• Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses
• Change the requirements, declaring "This horse is not dead"
• Harness several horses together for increased speed

Origin unknown. Thanks to Vicki Kranenburg.

During the course of your career, you’ve likely encountered leaders and team members at both ends of the spectrum - the upbeat person who pushes you beyond your comfort zone, and inspires action and belief, and the naysayer who seems to be full of pessimism and 100 reasons why something won’t work. Whether you are an executive director, fundraiser or accountant, when you’re a member of an organization on a mission, you are a leader - of one, or of many. How you approach your daily work, as well as the bigger challenges has an impact on those around you.

This weekend I finally watched The Secret, given to me by my first big nonprofit client about a year ago (another reason why I love working with the nonprofit sector - great people). So I am a little late to the party, but I was pleasantly surprised that it really didn’t offer any big surprise. It reinforced my experience, which is that you get back what you put out there, negative or positive. If you focus on what you can’t do, you will get exactly that. There are many variations on this theme - "we tried it and it didn’t work" or "that other organization seems to get all the funding, so there’s no point in asking" or "we spent all that money on advertising and it didn’t make a difference". The inspiring leader balances reality with a healthy shot of aiming higher than others would. A great leader also recognizes comfort zones and crushes them! The point is to be deliberate in your planning, without putting up your own barriers before you even get out of the gate. Organizations don’t succeed, people do. The secret I’m offering the nonprofit universe today is to take a page from Eleanor Roosevelt’s book: "Do one thing every day that scares you."

p.s. if you want a lesson in defying odds and thinking like a winner, how about the Super Bowl yesterday?

The 80-20 rule is not new (if you have heard of this but didn’t know the origin, it’s an historic economic principle credited to Vilfredo Pareto). Basically it means that 80% of your result comes from 20% of your effort, 80% of your funds raised come from 20% of your donors, and so on.

What if you applied this rule to your communications efforts? What if you focused more on the 20% that has the most impact? Sure signs you’re not doing this:

• You spend 80% of each day, day after day, fighting the daily fires and getting sucked into the minutia, and before you know it, the day is over and all you feel is frustration
• Your most important initiatives keep getting moved to the bottom of the list because you don’t have enough time to focus on them
• Working on a proactive project, e.g. reviewing your website for improvement, raising your donor cultivation program another notch, is a rare luxury saved for a rainy day
• You spend a lot of your time gathering intelligence, but not actually applying it. This can be said of most email correspondence, periodical reading, and professional development. All those great ideas are also saved for "when you have time."
• Your environment is working against you instead of for you - files you can’t locate, information you need from a staff member is inaccessible for whatever reason, or you simply can’t stop the interruptions and distraction.

I have news for you - it can get better! Watch for more on how to focus on the higher value activities that will speed up your progress and gain momentum at the same time.  In the meantime, I challenge you to take one hour (which happens to be 20% of the average five productive hours spent in the typical workday) this week and make a list of the activities and communications tools your organization relies upon - which are the ones that give you the biggest bang for your buck?

For some unknown reason, I have recurring dreams about turtles. This started about a year ago, and has generated a lot of interesting conversation among my friends and family. I don’t know yet what it means, but it has been fun trying to figure it out (I love this photo by Isado called Turtles in Green Tea).

An obvious parallel in real life could be perseverance, or the moral of the story, slow and steady wins the race. Let me admit I can be impatient — however in my professional capacity, I frequently find myself coaching others to plod determinedly towards their goals. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that most people are easily diverted to new and shiny over old faithful when it comes to their marketing and communications. The problem is, usually, old faithful is what they really need.

If you catch yourself thinking more, better, faster instead of progress, focus and direction, you may be undermining your own success. More and faster is ok if you are moving in a consistent direction. But if you are frequently changing your messages to the outside world (tweaking your tagline, changing your profile etc.), revising the look of your documents, chasing the latest trends, or constantly feeling the need to say something different, you could actually end up like the proverbial hare at the end of the race.

A good rule of thumb is to stick to a few core messages, and repeat, repeat, repeat. It might seem like same old to you, but to your audience, you are providing comfort, connection and familiarity. Rome, nor your brand, can be built in a day.

After the holiday season January tends to roar in with a vengeance.

Having just returned from a long and restful vacation in Arizona (that’s my photo of a mystical scene in Lost Dutchman State Park) I am brimming with ideas for 2008. Like many of you I use this time of year for blue sky thinking (foggy views can be ok too) - but the real trick is getting started and staying focused.

Here are some assorted links for random inspiration:

• Glenda Watson Hyatt, the self-proclaimed Left Thumb Blogger documents her experiences and motivates others.
• I learned of Glenda from my virtual friend Pamela Slim, whom I had the great pleasure to meet in person on my trip to Arizona. Check out Pamela and Martha Beck’s post on Death by Procrastination.
• Courtesy of Andrea Seale, Van Jones’ keynote address to Nonprofit Boot Camp last year. Van is the founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California.
• Katya Andresen’s no-nonsense advice on No Excuses. I second the motion!