If this man was running for office, I would vote for him. I haven’t yet read his newest release, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, but Seth Godin’s recent blog entries give a sneak peek of his sage advice on marketing and getting your message out in today’s environment.

His post Leadership is the new marketing says it all - focus your efforts on leading a small group of people and take them where they want to go.

Nonprofits and small businesses or organizations alike often fall into the trap of seeking the holy grail of awareness by the general public. This is a waste of time, and a battle you can’t win. You will be more successful with a narrow, dedicated and passionate focus. So many organizations talk about lack of name recognition in their community as an obstacle - but it usually isn’t the real obstacle. The biggest hurdle is getting specific with the audiences that matter.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has released a report on how to harness the power of innovation for philanthropic purposes. It looks at commonly-held concepts and practices more often used in the private sector and adapts it as “a commodity for social good.”

Much of the report talks about building and nurturing an Innovation Culture and the need for it to be systematic and outlines the five stages that are required:

• Setting the conditions required to support innovation
• Identifying the problem or opportunity about which you want to innovate
• Generating ideas to solve the problem or capture the opportunity
• Experimenting and piloting those ideas to test how well they work in practice
• Sharing the innovations with a broader set of stakeholders

Read the rest here.

Do you want to learn more about building a culture? Check out my new resource on Building a Better Fundraising Team.

Bad news sells. Most of us have become desensitized. But what happens when the story hits too close to home, for example, controversy or issues hitting the media are about the organization you work or volunteer with?

I hope for your sake that this doesn’t happen to you, but in too many cases, staff and others close to the organization find out when their phones ring and their mothers or neighbours alert them to the front page. This is wrong, and mostly avoidable.

If you are in a position of influence, ensure that you have a plan in place to manage issues and crises before and after they become public. If you’re not sure how, sign up to receive an article on this very topic, in a few weeks’ time.

99.9% of the time, the reason I am brought in to an organization to help solve a communications challenge is related to change of some fashion. In about half of these cases, it seems that a problem originated after a poor decision was made  and the other times, because a supremely proactive organization wants to ensure it is done as well as possible.

Here’s the first few points from my September enewsletter on this topic which offers a checklist for the critical success factors of change. If you want to read the full article click here or better yet, sign up, so you get future issues delivered straight to your in box.

How does your organization measure up:

Business case - there has to be a strong business reason to make the change. Without this rationale, and senior management and board support, it will simply not happen. Trying to push through a change alone is like rolling a granite boulder up a very steep hill.

Guiding principles or rules to live by - taking the business case a step further, begin with a critical dialogue. Formal or not, the process should include a frank discussion about how the work will get done, how difficult decisions will be made, and where the inevitable lines will be drawn in the sand. This could be three simple statements, or ten, but it is the process that counts the most.

Schedule and time commitment - change doesn’t miraculously happen, at least, not well! A commitment to a realistic timeline is critical and tells everyone involved that this is a serious project that is happening, with or without them!

Big picture thinking - while it can feel to the people involved that the change is all important and the only critical thing happening in the organization, this is almost never true. It’s important to recognize where this change fits into the larger context. To not do so is to risk errors and to miss opportunities.

Want to read the rest? Click here.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently concluded something close to my heart - that nonprofit organizations need to do a better job of recruiting and training volunteers, and keeping them engaged. We have all been there, personally and professionally, no doubt… asked to join a nebulous committee, perform volunteer feats that no mere mortal could be expected to achieve, pester and bully our family and friends into donating their time and money, and stuff envelopes too.

This is not a recipe for long term success. Instead:

• Recruit and orient your volunteers, and staff, carefully and with consideration for the skills and attributes you need. A live body or bum in the chair is not a recruitment goal! A volunteer or staff mismatch only leads to dissatisfaction.
• Once you have the right people on the bus, give them what they need to work and feel great — tools, information and leadership!
• Keep them informed and engaged, making sure they know how they fit and how their efforts are appreciated.
• And last but not least, listen to them…communication is intended to be two-way!

In marketing terms, a value proposition is a clear statement of what a company or organization offers its clients. Like most things in life, simplicity is the key to clarity. The more focused the value proposition, the more effective the resulting communication.

The most powerful statement in the world will lead nowhere, however, if your value proposition is in direct contrast to your organization’s core and culture. Nothing breeds disillusionment among your staff and volunteers (and your donors!) than the rank whiff of disconnect. An organization’s culture, sometimes defined as how people behave when they think no one is looking, needs to be authentic and in tune to resonate. Inconsistency is the greatest demoralizer. Organizations that live their values are:

• authentic - act and do as they say they do
• receptive - actively interested in their donors’ and staff needs and interests
• giving - focused on the needs of their clients first
• prosperous - attract supporters and partners

Proving life really does come full circle, I have found an interesting parallel between games of childhood and boardrooms across the nations — the game of Truth or Dare.

If you’ve played this game, you know that most of the time, given the choice, people pick Dare. This is because it is easier to risk embarrassment, and to gain admiration through an act of courage or daring, than it is to reveal one’s personal feelings and Truths. In fact, our culture rewards daring (and stupid acts of daring) above truth, much of the time.

This revelation came about because I have been immersed lately in a lot of "deep thought" and tough conversations, due to a project I am working on with a client on internal culture as well as a presentation I recently delivered on the importance of building internal teams.

In a nutshell, if you are setting out to change your organization’s culture, the most important thing you can do for your organization is to frankly agree to the rules you are going to live by, and have consequences for not doing so. If you approach this by asking what you are prepared to accept, and not accept, you will soon get to the hard truth. This will take your mission statement and list of values beyond a piece of paper and will instead tell your staff, volunteers, donors and the world, what you are all about. It becomes what you stand for and how you do things, and makes decision-making clearer and more decisive. Above all, it gets to the truth of your organization. And exposes the less than truthful very quickly, in other words, the disconnects between what your organization says it upholds, and what it actually does.

Don’t get me wrong - a certain amount of daring is necessary too! But looking at ourselves in the proverbial mirror is the most difficult, enlightening, and transforming step we can take. So pick Truth!

p.s. another definition of culture - how people act and what they do when no one is looking.

Attend a few gatherings of fundraisers or nonprofit executives and you’ll soon tap into what’s on the minds of people working in this sector. One of the most common topics of discussion is how to create a giving environment, a.k.a. culture of philanthropy (another example of bad language in fundraising). I spend a lot of time helping others communicate better within organizations, and I have always been a strong advocate of what I call inside-out communications.

At yesterday’s presentation to the Association of Fundraising Professionals in Winnipeg by Tom Ahern and Simone Joyaux on Keeping Your Donors (based on their recent book Keep Your Donors –buy it!),the unavoidable and ever present link to the level of support and understanding within the organization for fundraising came up more a few times. Lucky for me as I will be speaking on this topic to the same group in a few weeks.

So here’s my spin on this: If you are lamenting that no one understands you, that fundraising doesn’t get the support it deserves, etc., convincing others how important fundraising is to your organization is not going to work. The same way you can’t argue a prospective donor who is not interested in your cause into making a donation, assaulting other staff with facts and figures is not likely to help you much.

A culture of philanthropy is not something you grow in a petri dish or in a series of statistic heavy, carefully crafted debates — it’s gained through shared experiences, rowing in the same direction and those little "emotional aha" moments when someone has realized on a personal level, how they have contributed to something that makes a difference. And they want to do more of it!

Of course, there is more that you can do, and it doesn’t happen overnight. However, it bears remembering that in fact, accountants are only human and not the mutants they are called in Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium — although they might like numbers more than the average person, they have feelings too! (p.s. I am married to one).

Watson Wyatt Worldwide’s recent study of internal communications trends in the corporate sector piqued my interest for two reasons: one, I am incessantly curious and can’t resist some good number twisting, and two, these trends can often be equally reported in the nonprofit sector. This report measured the change in communications trends compared to 2004.

Among the top five positive trends are the use of web technology for training and development, and a large increase in the use of internal communications to communicate organizational change. Bravo corporate America.

What disturbed and surprised me is the decrease in these areas:

• 32 per cent report a decrease in using a new communications initiative to support change
• 28 per cent report a decrease in giving employees input on how work gets done
• 46 per cent report they don’t provide a systematic orientation for new hires
• and a shocking 62 per cent don’t explain the reason behind major decisions

The moral of the story: if you plan on using internal communications to communicate change (as I hope you do), get buy in, etc. you also need to get input and listen to your staff, involve them in change, equip them with the knowledge and tools they need, and explain decisions and actions in ways that are meaningful to them. People today expect this. My six year old is more accomplished at consultation and negotiation than I was at 30. Staff vote with their feet, and there are always greener pastures so take the best of the trends and run with them, but make sure you are also doing what others aren’t. Your staff will be happier and your organization will be more successful.

In last month’s newsletter I ran an article on how to come up with more effective communications messages in six easy steps. To walk through the steps, read the full article here. When deciding how to communicate something with your audiences, you have to start with knowing who they are, and match your message accordingly. Here are some reminders of the basics you probably already know, but are well worth revisiting:

Know your audience – You are wasting your time and theirs if you are not positioning your message in a way that will appeal to them. In a world of information overload, this investment of thought and effort will go a long way in keeping your audience interested and connected to your organization.

Know what you want to achieve – Your message has to support your overall goal, but also has to be intended to achieve a specific purpose. Without this direction, you can’t begin to match the message to the audience. With it, your message will be effective and clear.

More emotion, less logic – Don’t bog down your message in facts, data and history. To penetrate your audience’s attention and to achieve your desired result, you need to consider their driving emotion and design your message in keeping with it.