Nonprofit Communicators Get An ‘Attaboy’ From McKinsey

A Pat On The Back, Photo by Jmehre

Many nonprofit communicators feel their efforts never get any respect or recognition. They often believe their marketing and communications initiatives never measure up to the work done by their counterparts in corporate communications or public relations firms. It’s the front-page newspaper story, the magazine cover or the Super Bowl exposure that captures the attention of executive directors and governing boards.

Those two groups often become too focused on the numbers of media impressions. It places unnecessary and ill-conceived pressure on communications and marketing professionals. They often place unrealistic expectations on communicators whose time can be better spent on other initiatives.

A story in the February McKinsey Quarterly affirmed this belief. It praised nonprofit communicators for successes in social media.

It was a huge “attaboy.”

The power of storytelling: What nonprofits can teach the private sector about social media shows how nonprofits are doing a better job than their for-profit counterparts in harnessing the power of social media. The article contains an excerpt from The Dragonfly Effect, by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith, and includes an interview with the authors. (It also includes an audio file for downloading or streaming.)

One area that Andy Smith emphasizes in the article is for organizations to keep focusing on goals. In the end, if you didn’t raise enough money to meet your operating budget, failed to provide services or programs for your members or clients, or stumbled in recruiting and engaging enough volunteers to fulfill your mission, it really doesn’t matter how many people follow you on Twitter or Facebook.

Many nonprofit communicators underestimate the value of the stories they have to tell. People who work in education, ministry or social services are so busy and consumed with their missions that they fail to make sure their best stories are told. This is where executive directors and board members can help in marketing or communications. It’s so simple for an executive director or a board member to start or use their Twitter or Facebook account to share short success stories.

Nonprofit communications efforts can be small, slow and steady and win the race.

My counterparts in corporate communications and public relations often told me they would love to be telling a story of human compassion or triumph instead of, well, pet food, soft drinks or beer.

News Consumers Are Grazers; Social Media Might Influence The Menu

Photo by Shavar Ross

People are still reading, watching and listening to news in the United States, but the way they consume news is changing. And 2011 might be the year that social media significantly influences news consumption.

Those were some highlights from a presentation by Amy S. Mitchell, the deputy director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. She spoke at the annual joint meeting of the Community Service Public Relations Council, the International Association of Business Communicators and the Public Relations Society of America on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011, in Frontenac, Mo.

Marketing and communications professionals must always be aware of the media landscape. Communicating through mass media is a fundamental strategy for most organizational communications plans. The Pew research shed light on shrinking newsrooms, budgets and revenues. It also provided a somewhat contradictory profile of a news consumer.

Consumption Continues

Mitchell said the average person spends 70 minutes per day consuming news. That’s an increase compared to a decade ago. They spend 57 minutes per day with radio, televisions and newspapers–the same as 10 years ago. However, consumers are spending another 13 minutes per day getting news on the web.

Photo by PennState Live

“People are not abandoning the old forms,” Mitchell said. “About 92 percent use multiple platforms – sometimes four to six platforms – on a daily basis.”

Online consumption is growing rapidly and is now closing in on television as the place people go for national and international news. Mitchell said the news consumer of today is a “news grazer.” They check the news several times per day in multiple places. The average time spent on an Internet news website is two minutes, 30 seconds–down from more than three minutes last year.

“One way to think about the traditional form of news consumption is a lean-back experience,” Mitchell said. “News today is very much a lean-in experience. Consumers know the information they want and they’re going to go find it. It’s a very different way of processing and accessing information.”

People are checking their social networks to see what their friends are reading and talking about. Mitchell said 62 percent of Internet news consumers use social networks like Facebook. Seventy-seven percent of social network users say they get their news there. Facebook is the third-highest referring site to news websites.

“This is a critical development for news providers,” Mitchell said. “What began as a pass-along effect is now evolving into a way of starting news consumption. People are asking friends and turning to friends for what news they should care about. Facebook is their trusted circle of friends — their search universe — to create their news diet.”

Amazingly Negative Numbers

Mitchell shared some startlingly negative financial information for legacy media, especially the newspaper industry:

• Newspaper revenue declined 41 percent in the last two years. “Financial analysts say half of the losses are because of the economic downturn, the other half are structural,” such as the loss of classified advertising revenue, Mitchell said. “And those dollars are not going to return. Audiences have moved online, but advertising revenues have not.”
• CNN experienced a 36-percent decline in prime-time audience.
• The rate of online advertising fell 48 percent last year. “Online ads cost a fraction of what they cost in a legacy media product,” Mitchell said. “There’s too much space online and it’s hard to find enough advertising to fill it. You can’t ramp up dollar value if you have too much to sell.”
• Approximately $1.6 billion has been lost in annual newspaper newsroom budgets since 2000. “That’s a tremendous amount of loss,” Mitchell said. “More than half of the newspapers in America no longer have a staffer in Washington, D.C. The person who is watching your Congressman or Senator may well be a wire service reporter or someone else.”

There was some good news. Political advertising revenue provided a boost for nearly all media sectors. And newspapers cannot abandon their print products because they are still producing a significant amount of revenue.

Tomorrow: Another post with Mitchell’s perspective on the evolution of journalism.

Slides From UMSL Continuing Education Course: Developing A Marketing Plan For Your Nonprofit

There were great conversations, questions and interactions during a University of Missouri-St. Louis Continuing Education class on developing a marketing and communications plan for your nonprofit organization on Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2010.

More than 25 people attended on Wednesday and there were some great questions and conversations.

I failed to include a link to one of the templates I used in the presentation. The four quadrants of developing a marketing and communications plan and committee can be downloaded by clicking here (PDF).

Here’s a link to my deck of slides:

Panel Discussion On Crisis Communication At Tuesday’s CSPRC Luncheon

Sooner or later, your organization will face some sort of crisis. You will have to swiftly and accurately communicate to a wide range of audiences. And in today’s continuous news cycle, immediate response is expected.

Join the Community Service Public Relations Council on Tuesday, Sept. 7, for a panel discussion on crisis communication. Cindy Gibson, Assistant to the Superintendent for Communications and Community Services in the Ritenour School District, will provide some real-world examples and practical advice for turning theory into an effective response. Tim Beecher, Senior Vice President and Senior Partner at Fleishman-Hillard, will provide advice from a leading public relations firm. We will discuss how social media changed the communications landscape, how organizations should prepare for a crisis, and how to respond. Tuesday, September 7, 2010
11:30 a.m. to noon: Registration and networking
Noon to 1:15 p.m.: Lunch and Program  

Meeting Fees: members, $25; non-members, $35; sttudents, $20  

Please note: Make reservations no later than noon on Friday, Sept. 3. Walk-ins may not be able to be accommodated. Cancellations must be made at least 24 hours in advance; no-shows will be billed.  

Meeting Location
Sheraton Clayton Plaza Hotel
7730 Bonhomme Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63105
Complimentary parking is available in the hotel garage.  

CLICK HERE TO MAKE A RESERVATION

Finishing An Incredible Stretch

The last six months have been incredibly busy. Five major projects ended within the last three weeks.

I thought I would share an interview with Fox 2 News which put the final the word on ScoutQuest 100, the Greater St. Louis Area Council’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America. My sincere thanks to Ann Steffen, the director of communications at the Archdiocese of St. Louis, for her assistance in making this story possible.

Archbishop Carlson Celebrates Mass With 6,000 Scouts At MUNY Opera

Provide Protection, Support To Volunteers During A Crisis

 

 Photo by Dave Malkoff    

A family medical issue so distracted me one day a few months ago that I failed to check my voice mail at the end of the day. The next day, I realized that, for the first time in 18 years, I failed to return a reporter’s phone call within a few hours. I felt terrible.  I felt even worse when I realized my failure placed a volunteer in a challenging television news interview. He’s in law enforcement and conducted a great interview. But a volunteer shouldn’t have to face cameras or microphones after he was held up at gunpoint the previous night at his Boy Scout troop’s Christmas tree lot. Nonprofit organizations must serve their members and volunteers by providing communications support, and in some cases protection, during media coverage of a crisis.   

Two other crisis communications opportunities dealing with child abuse came across my desk in the following weeks. One occurred in a neighboring council that shares the St. Louis metropolitan media market. When I contacted that council, a statement was ready for the media. However, the reporter was already on his way to conduct an interview in the home of the volunteer. The volunteer did his best to answer questions, but the video showed a clearly awkward situation. That interview ran during the 5 and 6 p.m. newscast. A reporter did a live remote report during the 10 p.m. newscast from the church where the Boy Scout troop regularly held its meetings. 

The other communications crisis was in a small town in southeast Missouri. Thanks to the persistent work of a staff member, we were in constant contact with the leadership of a Scouting program whose top leader — a police officer — was charged on several counts of sodomy. The leaders were extremely thankful to learn they could defer all media inquiries to a council staff member.   When organizations offer spokespersons, they are always at the mercy of editors. Your best block-and-bridge answers to difficult questions may never make the newscast. But organizations must be accessible to media in a crisis. Nonprofit organizations must think ahead and be proactive to protect and support volunteers and members when the media is covering a crisis.

Communication Lessons Learned From Closing, Rebuilding An Interstate Highway In Two Years

Linda Wilson learned five communication lessons during the last two years. As the director of community relations for the Missouri Department of Transportation, she was a key player in developing and executing the communications for the I-64/40 project. She spoke during the Community Service Public Relations Council’s December luncheon meeting.

1. Communicate a simple schedule: “We had a simple message to communicate,” Wilson said. “We were going to have minor closures the first year, we were closing the first half the first year and the second half during the second year. It was a simple way to communicate a complex project.”
2. Empower people: “There was such a sense of panic in St. Louis,” she said. “People were thinking they were the victim. What was MODOT going to do to them?” Wilson and her staff made 200 speeches in 2007. They emphasized what individuals could do to have a sense of control as they traveled the new routes during these presentations. Teams of engineers were constantly examining how people were going to travel once the highway was closed. 
3. Use existing communications tools: “We knew as a team that there was no way that the five of us could communicate with 2 million people,” Wilson said. “We tried to team up with major employers. If we could get them information, they could get it to their employees.” A key organization was the BJC hospital system, which employs 20,000 people and has hundreds of thousands visit the hospital complex each year. They also worked closely with all cities that had newsletters and websites and constantly provided updated text. “We knew the elected officials get a ton of questions from their constituents and the more they were informed, the better they could answer questions.” Wilson said.
4. Be accessible and responsive: “Dan Galvin (communications director for Gateway Constructors) and I answered our cell phones at all hours of the day and night,” Wilson said. ”So many times I heard people say that they didn’t expect to actually talk to somebody or get an e-mail returned. But there are real people in government and they do answer their phone.”
5. Publish and promote progress: “We had a ribbon cutting for everything that we could,” Wilson said. “It was to a point where the construction guys were dreading us wanting us to do another ribbon cutting. But we needed to let people know their pain and suffering was almost over and we were moving ahead. We were checking things off the list and we would be done soon.”
6. Celebrate and thank people: MODOT had approximately 20,000 attend both celebrations marking the opening of the east and west sections of the highway. “We couldn’t have done this without the public,” Wilson said. “It came down to motorists making the decisions where to go.” 

Wilson acknowledged that Americans are naturally suspect of government and big construction projects. But the success of this project brought more praise than criticism.
“It’s been so wonderful to be out on the road and have people come up to anyone in a vest and ask to shake their hand and thank them,” Wilson said. “Our workers–who rarely get a compliment–don’t know how to accept that. They are so used to having people criticize them when they are out there fixing the roads.”

The project also produced a new spirit of cooperation in the community.

“One of the lasting benefits beyond the concrete and steel that we built is that we have developed a new regional cooperative process,” Wilson said. “St. Louis tends to segregate themselves to all of the municipalities and this project pulled us all together. We are such a great team now. Mayor (Francis) Slay and County Executive (Charlie) Dooley have been leaders with us and have pledged to work together into the future.”

You can view her entire presentation at the MediaWatch website.

When you see a chance, take it

As Steve Winwood once sang, “When you see a chance, take it.”

Most marketers/communicators for non-profits and charities possess a never-ending task list. When they’re cultivating donors, planning special events, or executing programs, it’s often a challenge to read the paper or listen to the news. But the post at The Bad Pitch Blog: Those Who Hesitate Are Lost emphasizes the importance of monitoring the media and pouncing on an opportunity to be a part of “the story of the day.”

When your organization can provide a new or local angle for a national story, or provide an expert for a comment, non-profit communicators must have the discipline to act swiftly and deliberately. Positioning your organization prominently in local or national story provides many benefits. Then, communicate your media placement results to your staff, Board and the appropriate stakeholders.

Fast Media Relations

From time to time, I hope to share successes, failures and learning experiences in my role as a communicator. Here’s a rapid-fire rundown from Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009:

• Ran four miles in 17-degree weather. Great way to clear head and develop strategy for the day.
• Take one last look at media release on a Cub Scout receiving a heroism medal at the conclusion of the Greater St. Louis Area Council’s fundraising dinner on Wednesday night.
• Post media release (http://tinyurl.com/6t5m37) and photograph of Scout on website (http://www.stlbsa.org/.)
• Review media database.
• E-mail media release to approximately 40 contacts. Decide not to fax–first time going with distribution solely by e-mail.
• Log on to Twitter (jfmueller) and write a “tweet” that contains a link to the media release and the website.
• Susan Weich, columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, calls and asks about the levels of heroism medals because she’s writing a column on another Scout who did CPR on woman this summer and is being nominated for an award.
• Edit story for newsletter on Cub Scout receiving the heroism award.
• Get call from Leisa Zigman, KSDK, at 6:41 p.m. She asks for help setting up an interview with Cub Scout and his family. Says she would like to do interview and top story with the medal presentation on Wednesday.
• Call mother of Cub Scout, who pleads for time to take a shower and straighten the house.
• Link Leisa Zigman and family for interview.
• In keeping with the old adage that you can’t beat stories on dogs and kids, KSDK’s 10 p.m. newscast has a story about the Obama’s dog and then comes Zigman’s story on the Cub Scout. (http://tinyurl.com/7nqfcl )
• Get on Twitter and write a “tweet” on the KSDK story.

Some reasons for success: A well-written and tightly edited media release, being accessible to the media, cooperative sources, prompt returning of phone calls, a lucky break that the child the Scout rescued in the pool–his cousin–was at his home Tuesday night.

I’m blessed to be able to use my communications skills for an organization that I benefited from when I was a youth. It’s a privilege to help Scouting tell its story to the general public.

I’ll post a link to Susan Weich’s column when its posted on the www.stltoday.com site.