Endorsing and promoting a code of professional conduct sends a valuable message to your staff, volunteers, donors and clients. To work most effectively, it has to be linked to your vision, and must clearly set out what the organization stands for and how staff and board members uphold it. One of my clients takes theirs a step further and asks each new person using their non-profit services to sign a code of conduct that will guide their consumer-service provider relationship. I think this is a brilliant, yet simple, method of demonstrating commitment and vision in action.

I have had the fortunate experience of working with many organizations who understood the value of corporate social responsibility and were able to connect the dots between employee and professional expectations, regulatory compliance, customer service, governance, transparency and community involvement. While the cynics out there can find fault with motivations, the fact of the matter is that many consumers do consider these factors when making decisions. Like your donors, consumers have power.

The Association of Fundraising Professionals recently updated their Code of Ethical Principles and Standards of Professional Practice to recognize the role of businesses, like mine, that support fundraising and the non-profit sector. As a member and a consultant, I am pleased to be able to say that I follow this internationally accepted standard. I especially like the introduction - and am looking forward to seeing the yet-to-be-released guidelines:

Members of AFP are motivated by an inner drive to improve the quality of life through the causes they serve. They serve the ideal of philanthropy, are committed to the preservation and enhancement of volunteerism; and hold stewardship of these concepts as the overriding direction of their professional life.

Like many painstakingly-created policies, the best communications opportunity lies in the explaining! You can build an entire communications plan around how to introduce your policy and where it could be emphasized and reinforced. After spending so much time on establishing it, take the time to properly introduce and continually bring it to life. Your efforts will pay off.

Did you know that most of what you "say" in person is communicated by your body language and tone rather than by the words you speak? This can be a little disheartening when rolling out an announcement or big news to a staff audience. In this month’s e-newsletter I provide four steps to success to help get around this challenge. Given the wealth of statistics that show employees are looking for leadership and direction from their employers, and notably, their senior management, there is no time like the present to brush up communications within your organization. Here’s the first step from the article. If you’d like to receive the e-newsletter you can sign up here.

Step 1. Fail to plan, plan to fail

Planning is a journey, not a destination. The simple act of planning will bring forward issues and ideas you hadn’t thought of.

· Start with your objective in mind – although obvious, it’s easy to forget. The first step to any strategic communication is defining your objective. Each message you deliver should have a specific audience and purpose.

· Make a list of all of your audiences

· Identify the role each group plays in your initiative – will they be go-to people for inquiries once the project starts? Are they a link in the chain? Do they just need to know, but won’t be directly involved? Are they responsible for training other staff and volunteers? This helps identify what information each group will need. This might even cause you to rethink timing or order of information to each group, for example, brief department leaders or go-to people first.

· Identify the issues or concerns for each group – anticipate any positive or negative reactions, and make sure you have answers for each. Remember the first question each person will have is, how will this affect me?

· Identify the action you’d like to inspire in each group – everyone needs to know his or her responsibility in the process and what you are asking each of them to do.

Do you think it’s guilt? Peer pressure? Compassion? Pride? Sorrow? Or is it because you were asked, you had some money available, and you philosophically and emotionally responded? The reasons are as individual as each of us but there are some ground rules worth remembering. As we enter the time of year when  many charities prepare their year-end appeals it’s a good time to get back to basics on motivating donors. What you have done the rest of the year to communicate with your donors goes a lot further to inspire giving than a few well-crafted appeal packages, so hopefully this is not one of the few times that you’ve connected with your donors this year. Direct response gurus can provide statistically proven tips and techniques that will help you take your direct mail to the next level in this science. But first and foremost, your message has to appeal and inspire and your goal is not the cheque but the relationship. Here are some interesting links that may help you with your brainstorming process. 

Alan Sharpe says There’s No Such Thing as a Fundraising Letter

Mal Warwick gives you 23 Reasons Why People Respond to Fundraising Appeals

Ken Burnett looks at the bigger picture in How to be 15 minutes ahead

If your organization is sitting on the fence and investing less in developing your internal team and communicating with your staff and volunteers than externally focused endeavours, a recent study again demonstrates that the lowest hanging fruit can yield the best results. The study found that despite emphasizing the importance of people assets, a staggering amount of employees don’t feel their organizations or their senior management are doing enough to help them become fully engaged and contribute to their organizations’ success. Towers Perrin’s Global Workforce Study not only provides some international benchmarks and comparisons but also concludes the importance of senior leaders demonstrating ‘inspiration, vision and commitment’ and that employees want to work for a company that is seen as a leader. The bottom line of the survey? That the organization itself, and specifically, senior leadership, is the most powerful influencer of employee engagement beyond employees’ personal values and traits. Another recent post, released prior to the survey, on Duct Tape Marketing puts it in another perspective: that if you are not “marketing” to attract and keep staff, and balancing this with an earned reputation for vision and leadership, you’ll be forced to compete by price, or salary, alone. Well said!

This week I came across a quote on the Fundit blog. It sums up perfectly my philosophy toward inspiring organizations. I’ll be covering four steps to success in communicating with internal audiences in my next e-newsletter. You can sign up here.

If you want to build a ship,
don’t herd people together to collect wood
And don’t assign them tasks and work
but rather, teach them to long for the
endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Early into my college education, I quickly realized that I would never fit the advertising mould. ‘Create a need and fill it’ was always good in theory, but I could never get my arms around it entirely. It seemed a little dishonest. I could accept filling a valid, visible need but often I found myself uncomfortable making the claims that seemed to stretch the truth.

This seed of discomfort snowballed into my number one pet peeve over the subsequent years. After working with several advertising agencies on projects my conclusion is that the advertising theory and tactics that work for consumer products don’t translate to the softer selling of public awareness campaigns or causes. As well, there can be a tendency to go for award-winning creative themes that often produce little results for the client, but garner accolades for the agency. How many times have you recalled a catchy slogan, or funny commercial, but can’t identify the product or company it promoted? If you are looking for outside help, don’t be dazzled by the glitz and glamour of ad speak. Your objectives and connecting with your specific audiences should drive the creative, not the images, or the provocative ideas. Anyone who focuses on look or the wow factor without getting to understand your goals is wasting your time and money. Read what Jeff Brooks at Donor Power blog has to say on this topic.

Recently I was reminded of an important lesson in managing client relationships: when problems occur or mistakes are made, it’s not what happened that matters, it’s how you fix it. I experienced a highly frustrating problem with what I have taken to call my new "dumb" smart phone. After hours spent on the phone with technical support, frantic trips to the store where I bought it, and many stifled moments of aggression towards an inanimate object you’d think I’d cancel my contract and move on. Instead I have switched penalty-free to a different type of unit (love my Palm Treo 755p), I am singing the praises of the helpful staff who held my hand along the way and I would not hesitate to recommend the service provider to others.

You may begin to wonder what this has to do with donor relations and internal communications. It has everything to do with it. The point of my anecdote is that memory of detail may be short, but you will always remember how someone made you feel. Here’s what was done right:

• I was not talked down to
• Each person I spoke to actively listened and responded like a real person, as opposed to someone reading a script out of a manual
• I did not have to repeat my tale of woe every time I was passed to someone else
• My calls were returned promptly
• I was appreciated and thanked for my patronage, over and over
• I felt each person I spoke to sincerely cared about resolving my problem and wanted to help me get the most out of my service

If you find yourself in a situation where you have made a mistake with a donor, colleague or staff member, move quickly to resolving the problem without belaboring the issue. Admitting the mistake is the first, but not the only step. Most reasonable people accept mistakes occur, after all, we’re only human. The important thing is listening, acknowledging and addressing the root of the problem. If you can sincerely respond, this will be remembered long after the nitty gritty of the problem is forgotten.

I have had people ask me how big does an organization have to be to require a formal internal communications program? The flip side of this is "that won’t work for us, we are too small". My answer is always the same: size doesn’t matter.  Internal communications is just as important in an organization of five people in one location, as in an international organization with multiple offices and hundreds of employees. A formal program doesn’t have to be as formidable as it sounds: it can consist of devoting time at each staff meeting to touch base on the organization’s strategic plan or progress on an important goal, inviting two-way dialogue and feedback on pending changes or new ways of doing something, and making sure staff know where to find information and who to go to with questions. The key is ensuring they are plugged in to the strategic direction of the organization and understand how they each fit and contribute. If you’re a small organization, steps toward a formal plan can be as simple as writing down the different opportunities you have to communicate with your staff, and pencilling topics and time frames. It’s also useful to think of best practices as scalable, meaning you can increase or decrease all those big ideas you hear about to get the right-sized solution for your organization.

In the marketing world the saying goes it takes an average of seven contacts before a consumer takes action and is ready to buy, not dissimilar from the cultivation numbers in fundraising (another parallel between the business of selling and the softer selling in the non-profit world). This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to do more, you may just need to do better with less. Here are seven suggestions on making the most of what you have.

1. Email works - If you’re not using an e-newsletter or other email tool to cultivate donors and communicate with your members, you should be. Read more at Despite newer technologies, email is number one.  There is a place for both online communications and print materials. Use your e-newsletter and email list to communicate time sensitive information, to let supporters know a direct mail appeal is coming, and to reinforce the messages in your other materials, for example, content on your website, testimonial stories in your current print newsletter, etc.
2. Website - The website is the place to highlight current campaigns, post inspiring stories, encourage online donations and give readers the self-serve option to choose the information they want. Use your website to feature current articles in your print newsletter or annual report and to expand upon stories in your direct mail piece. Add a sign up box to collect email addresses for your e-newsletter. Sign up forms should be prominently on your website, reinforced in all of your print materials, and collected anywhere you are recording data, e.g. membership renewals, program enrolment etc.
3. Direct mail works - And studies show it works better if you mention your direct mail appeal in your email communication beforehand.
4. Information materials - Admittedly most budgets don’t allow to reprint or update all materials every time a new campaign or initiative is launched. One way around this is to start with a standard format and look that can be carried through all materials. This way, adding a one page or simple folded panel doesn’t need to break the bank.
5. Business card and email signature - The business card and your email signature are communications tools. Make sure your website address and one sentence or less appeal is on yours. If you have an e-newsletter, put the link of your sign up form into your email signature.
6. Stationery - Although not the most glamorous, your letterhead, envelopes, receipts and other stationery items may be seen more often than any other material you produce. Make sure yours are current, include your pertinent coordinates and website, and look similar to your other materials. Add your current campaign theme or other tag.
7. Personal stories work - Gather the wonderful testimonials and personal stories collected from staff and board members. Use them on your website, in your print newsletter, in direct mail, in your brochures, in your annual report and speaking presentations, and in your e-newsletters.

And last but not least, promote your promotions internally. Even in the smallest of organizations, staff who aren’t directly involved in communications or fundraising may not be aware of the current materials and messages. Post them, circulate them, ask for feedback on them. The more people who can explain and advance the cause of your organization, in a consistent voice, the stronger you will be.

When faced with a major change or project in your organization, it’s easy to overlook a well-thought out approach to internal communications. Yet most would agree building internal support is a critical success factor for any large initiative. In the September Make It Count e-newsletter I discussed common communication traps that can inadvertently trip up well-intended organizations. In the October issue I’ll offer four steps to avoid these obstacles and to help ensure your initiative is a success. If you’d like to receive the e-newsletter directly in your inbox, submit the sign up form.

Here’s an excerpt:

Too busy –when planning for a major initiative, much of the emphasis is placed on the external announcement or event and spending much time on the internal announcement can become an afterthought. However, the last feeling you want to inspire in the troops is disregard.

Using the same message for all audiences – whatever your message is, it needs to be meaningful and inspire a specific reaction from your audience. Staff will have different interests than media would, for example.

Leaving more questions than answers – there are times when you won’t have all the answers, granted. But anticipating the questions and having reasonable answers will at least take care of the immediate reaction and show that you have taken the time to consider their needs.

Giving the wrong message – what could be great news to one group can be cause for concern for another.

Failing to segment your internal audiences – staff is not a single entity. Divide your internal audiences up as much as appropriate to the project. This can be done by function, by role, by department or whatever works for your situation.

Not giving enough time for your internal audiences to digest the information – you’ve spent weeks or months being immersed in your project. When you announce your news, don’t be surprised if there are no immediate questions. Most people like to reserve comment or questions until they’ve taken the time to think it over.