Tag Archives: outreach

Adam ruins everything & educates a LOT

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There is a television show in the USA called Adam Ruins Everything. It is both a comedy show and an educational show that uses humor to debunk myths and misconceptions. I think it’s a great example of how to use an entertaining approach, even a provocative approach, to educate about science, including accurate health information. I think humanitarian aid and development agencies, particularly those concerned with public health education, should take note of it.

An example is the show’s comedic and medically-accurate presentation about the misunderstandings many – maybe most people – have regarding female physiology, particularly regarding the hymen and virginity. This is a good model of how much more interesting public health and women’s health videos could be:

It’s not a video that would be appropriate in every culture and country, but its frankness, fast-pace, humor and accuracy can’t be denied.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten good advice for outreach by nonprofits, including humanitarian organizations, from TV:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

The opposite of poverty porn: erasing clients from storytelling

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Earlier this year, I wrote a blog about poverty porn and other kinds of exploitative marketing by many nonprofits, where graphic photos and videos of people in desperate situations or images of people with disabilities are used to make the viewer so upset or emotional as to garner donations, or to make someone delivering services on behalf of that nonprofit look exceptionally compassionate and heroic.

But on the other side of that marketing no-no are nonprofits that make their outreach stories more about what their staff is doing and about their leadership than about those that are served or the cause at hand. You want to tell compelling stories about your organization’s without trivializing people’s lives, absolutely, but you also don’t want to mostly or entirely erase those you are serving from the narrative.

Examples I’ve encountered in the just the last three months of nonprofit marketing that erases clients – or pushes them out of the focus:

  • An arts group that says it promotes the art and artistry of indigenous people, but has no photos or testimonials of these artists on its web site (just clip art of indigenous people the organization has never met), nor does it have any indigenous people on its board or in positions of leadership.
  • A homeless coalition that uses social media to feature photos and commentary about its founders, but offers no testimonials, commentary or images from those the coalition is supposed to serve.
  • Any number of nonprofits and NGOs that have far more stories and photos about the founder of the organization and what he or she is doing and thinking than they have about those being served – including photos where the founder is NOT pictured, or stories where the founder is NOT quoted.

Unlike marketing for businesses, which is pretty much about selling more and more of a product and making as much money as possible, communications for nonprofits, charities and other mission-based organizations requires addressing a variety of needs:

  • getting people to attend events or to participate in activities,
  • attracting new donors and volunteers,
  • giving current donors and volunteers a feeling of satisfaction about what they have donated,
  • allaying fears about the clients served or the cause that’s being promoted,
  • promoting behavior change (encouraging people not to litter, to recycle, to use condoms, to not use certain words, etc.),
  • addressing misunderstandings and crises,
  • and on and on.

In fact, at nonprofit organizations, the people working to attract donations may have a message that is in conflict with the people who are delivering the program – the fundraisers want to evoke an emotional reaction that attracts donors while program managers may feel that the messaging reduces those served to stereotypes. It can be a delicate balance.

So, let’s go back to those aforementioned cases and talk about what it should look like instead:

  • The staff of the organization that promotes indigenous artisans should have ongoing conversations with those artisans about how they want to be supported, how they want to participate in decision-making, how they want to be pictured and how they want their work presented online and in print.
  • The staff at an organization that helps people experiencing homeless, or people with disabilities, or people who have experienced a trauma, should have ongoing conversations with those clients about how they might want to be pictured and talked about online and in print. They should be talking with clients about the goals of the messages in brochures, on the web site, on social media, in slide show presentations: what is it the nonprofit wants to show, and how might images help?
  • Be careful about Executive Director over-exposure in messaging. If the nonprofit leader is the face of the organization and the primary reason people donate, make sure that this messaging is balanced with strong messaging about the impact the organization is having on the community or cause it serves, messaging so strong that the organization could survive the Executive Director’s departure or negative publicity regarding that person (unless, of course, your board is comfortable with the idea of the organization folding with the departure of the Executive Director and, indeed, there are boards that are absolutely fine with this setup – as am I regarding certain charities).

Of course, it’s not easy to feature all clients in marketing and public relations materials: there are charities that support foster kids, for instance, that use child and teen models rather than actual foster children in photos and videos, in order to protect the identities of clients. Something that is “exploitative” or a stereotype can be in the eye of the beholder. The best strategy: consult with your clients. Talking to them about what you want to portray, how images will be used, etc., can lead to more buy-in from those you are trying to serve for your efforts, can build more trust for program delivery, can help prevent misunderstandings down the road, and can even lead to great ideas for marketing and public relations you may never have thought of.

There are some good resources regarding ethics and photography in humanitarian work that have advice that can be applied for nonprofits working with vulnerable populations (people who are homeless, people experiencing addiction, people who have experienced domestic violence, foster children, people with disabilities, etc.) in their own countries, including:

I would love to hear from others about how they maintain this balance in their representation of vulnerable populations in public relations and marketing materials.

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Nonprofits addressing homelessness or addiction urgently need to improve their public education

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Myths abound about people who are homeless and people who have addiction issues in the USA – and probably other countries too. I see the myths stated as fact on online communities, in posts to social media and in online comments on news articles. What I’m NOT seeing are rebuttals of these myths by local nonprofits and professionals that are trying to provide services for people who are homeless or people who have addiction issues. I can’t find rebuttals for these myths on the web sites of the MOST local organizations addressing these issues – I can find them on a Google search, for a national audience (rather than a city or county audience), but only with a lot of digging. And representatives from organizations addressing issues around homelessness or people with addiction issues don’t make any attempt to enter online conversations and counter the myths.

Because so many nonprofits addressing homelessness and addiction issues are not making it a priority to educate the public – and that includes the press and politicians – about why people are homeless, about what services are available to people who are homeless or have addiction issues, about gaps in availability of service, etc., people are not voting for taxes necessary to fund government services to address either of these issues and many people that could donate are not donating to nonprofits trying to address either of these issues. In addition, the growing hostility by many towards people who are homeless or people experiencing addiction issues is deeply disturbing: I’m seeing and hearing more and more comments about how law enforcement shouldn’t carry NARCAN or EVZIO and shouldn’t offer any assistance to someone overdosing, how people should engage in vigilantism to remove people who are homeless from their towns and neighborhoods, how people who are homeless or have addiction issues should be imprisoned, and worse.

National statistics and facts that should be on any web site by an organization addressing homelessness (these come from Move for Hunger, the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Low Income Housing Coalition – and probably others that Move for Hunger didn’t credit) include:

  • The chronically homeless make up only 15% of the entire homeless population on a given day.
  • On any given night, nearly 20% of the homeless population had serious mental illness or conditions related to chronic substance abuse.
  • According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a family with a full-time worker making minimum wage could not afford Fair Market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the U.S.
  • A renter earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would need to work 90 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom rental home at the Fair Market Rent and 112 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom.
  • A lack of employment opportunities, combined with a decline in public assistance leaves low-income families just an illness or accident away from being put out on the streets.
  • Many survivors of domestic violence become homeless when leaving an abusive relationship.
  • While families, children, and youth are all affected, most of the people who experience homelessness are single adults.
  • Chronic homelessness is the term given to individuals that experience long-term or repeated bouts of homelessness. The chronically homeless are often the public face of the issue, however, they make up only 15% of the entire homeless population on a given day.
  • Nearly 48,000 or 8.5% of all homeless persons are veterans
  • On a given night, nearly 20% of the homeless population had serious mental illness or conditions related to chronic substance abuse.

This article, Why Are People Homeless?, is published by the National Coalition for the Homeless (July 2009) and offers citations for each fact stated.

Are these stats true for your community? Maybe – but you should have information that adapts this data for your own community and reflects the reality where you are. Perhaps a higher rate of your homeless population are veterans. Perhaps a greater number of your community’s homeless population are teens.

Here are the myths that nonprofits, academic researchers and professionals MUST rebut – on their own web sites, on online communities, on social media, in talks with the community, in meetings with politicians and police and on and on – about people who are homeless and people who have addiction issues.

Myth: People who are homeless have addiction issues, and people who have addiction issues are homeless. If you are an organization that helps the homeless, you need to have information on your web site that clearly shows not everyone who is homeless has addiction issues, and for those that do have such, WHY they have such issues. You need to reiterate this information your social media channels regularly and make sure all of your staff and volunteers understand this as well. Organizations that address issues regarding addiction need to have information on their web site noting that people with addiction issues come from all economic levels, all zip codes, all types of families.

Myth: There are plenty of services for people who are homeless or people who have addiction issues – those peple just won’t seek help. I have heard, anecdotally, that every nonprofit in my community where I live that has programs to help people attain affordable housing has a waiting list of years, and that residential facilities to treat addiction have waiting lists of months, and that if a person doesn’t have health insurance, they have no options for addiction treatment other than maybe some AA meetings – but there’s no web site I can point you to that says any of these things for my community.

Myth: People are homeless because they are lazy or don’t manage their money properly. If they would work and not spend money on things like iPhones, they would have enough money to have housing. Every organization that works to assist the homeless should have a web page that lists the myriad of reasons individuals and families become homeless and the myriad of reasons that affordable housing is out-of-reach for so many, including people with full-time jobs or working more than one job, more than 40 hours a week. You need to reiterate this information your social media channels regularly and make sure all of your staff and volunteers understand this as well.

Myth: People who have addiction issues are weak. They’ve made poor choices and they refuse to make the right ones. They lack will power. All they have to do is make the decision to stop using. Addiction is recognized by the medical communities – doctors, nurses and medical researchers – as a medical condition and a crisis health situation. An addict craves his or her drug because her body is craving it, and many will go through extreme flu-like symptoms for days without taking that drug because they are addicted – given the choice between feeling good or shaking uncontrollably and throwing up for hours, most of us are going to choose to feel good, and for an addict, that choice involves abusing the substance to which they are addicted. Drugs change the brain in ways that make quitting hard, even for those who want to. What Is drug addiction? What happens to the brain when a person takes drugs that can turn them into an addict? Why do some people become addicted to drugs while others don’t? The National Institute on Drug Abuse has an excellent web site with fact-based information answering these questions clearly and succinctly. The information in no way absolves someone with abuse or addiction issues from personal responsibilities or the choices they make or the crimes they may commit, but it does offer realistic information on how to effectively prevent and address addiction (and prevention and treatment is complex and long term). The brain changes related to addiction can be treated and reversed through therapy, medication, exercise and other treatments. And also note: many people enter drug treatment involuntarily (court-ordered, or given a dire choice by their families: go to treatment or leave our home).

Myth: The people who are homeless in our community aren’t from our community – they are from INSERT THE NAME OF A BIG CITY OR ANOTHER STATE. I have heard, anecdotally, that the homeless people here in the community where I live in Oregon are from this city or county, that most of them graduated from the local high school and/or have or had parents that lived here. But this statement cannot be found on the web site of any organization that serves the homeless in my community. The information needs to be there as well as regularly shared on social media.

Myth: People choose to be homeless. They want to be homeless. Debunking other myths proves this myth untrue, for the most part. In addition, some homeless people may choose to sleep outside rather than in a shelter because they fear being assaulted in the shelter, they fear having to leave their pets or possessions outside, or they are addicted and may not take their drugs or alcohol into a shelter. You may hear someone say, “I chose to live on the streets. I prefer to be FREE.” Saying this gives the person a feeling of empowerment, a feeling of self-worth. They also may have mental health issues and are not completely rational. A whole range of different issues come into play when talking about teens who are homeless.

Myth: The way nonprofits want society to treat homeless people and people with addiction issues require us to not be upset about things like people using my front yard as a bathroom, needles in the park, people breaking into my car and taking anything left unlocked on my property, etc. No one has the legal or ethical right to threaten you, your family or your property. No one has a right to steal from you. No one has the legal right to leave trash or human waste on your property or in any public space. Efforts to educate about people who are homeless or people who are addicted are not about telling anyone they must accept destructive, unsanitary or illegal behavior. Efforts to educate are about encouraging actions that will effectively address homelessness and addiction and about discouraging actions and attitudes that may make problems worse, may endanger someone or may be violations of the law.

Myth: Services to help people that are homeless will encourage people to want to be homeless. Services to help people that have addiction issues will encourage people to keep using drugs and alcohol. Again, you may hear someone say, “I chose to live on the streets” but it’s rarely true, and given the opportunity to have a safe, private, simple residence, the vast majority of homeless people will take that opportunity. For someone who is homeless, every day is a struggle for survival. Many people who are homeless are chronically sleep-deprived because there is no safe place for them to get a full sleep cycle: they sleep an hour on a bus or train line, then another hour in a library, then another hour somewhere else, and so on. Homeless people are targets for theft and rape, so they have to stay awake to ward off an assault. They don’t have access to a bathroom with they need it most or to a shower or bath regularly. They have nowhere to store essential documents – birth certificate, social security card, certification of military service, contact information for family, etc. – and therefore often lose these documents, and don’t have the resources to get them replaced, which further deprives them of resources needed for survival. They cannot sit in one place for very long – either the weather, a security guard or police will move them along. Most services for homeless people aren’t just providing charity, giving people toiletries or a meal or one night to sleep somewhere; they connect homeless people with resources and assistance to get them into more permanent housing. And while there are some approaches to treating people addicted to drugs that include providing a clean, safe space to use their drug of choice so that they do not overdose and are not using in public spaces (libraries, parks, bathrooms, public transport, etc.), there is no evidence that this creates more drug users or in any way discourages someone from seeking help with addiction.

Here are some good examples of web sites and online material debunk myths about homelessness or addiction in their respective communities:

Debunking the Myths of Homelessness, a resource about Santa Clara County, California (San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Cupertino – Silicon Valley)

FAQs and Myths, by the Coalition for the Homeless, with New York City-specific information

Myths and Questions About Homelessness, from the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, with Canada-specific information

Exploring Myths about Drug Abuse, By Alan I. Leshner, Ph.D., Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health – rebuts myths like “Drug addiction is voluntary behavior” and “You have to want drug treatment for it to be effective.”

Myths About Drug Abuse and Addiction, from the Indian Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – rebuts myths like “People can’t force someone into treatment; if treatment is forced, it will fail.”

If the local nonprofits that serve the city and county where I live had fact-based rebuttals for these myths on their web site, and localized the information, people could share them, over and over and over, on their social media accounts, and refer people to them when they hear these myths at civic meetings, meetings of communities of faith, family dinners, etc. That information would, in turn, help change peoples minds about who is homeless, who is addicted to drugs and alcohol, what the most urgent needs of people who are homeless are, what works to address homelessness, what works to address addiction, etc.

But we can’t share such information, because the information isn’t there. And so, hostilities against homeless people and people with addiction issues grows and grows, and donations stay flat or even shrink.

It took me two hours to compile the aforementioned information. I reject any excuses an organization would offer for not doing this themselves.

By all means, if you want to share this blog to encourage nonprofits in your area to do a better job of communication, please do so. If you want to share this blog in a grant proposal to get more funding for your outreach efforts, please do so. But if you are a nonprofit organization that addresses homelessness or people who have an addiction and you also don’t want to start from scratch and develop your own information for your own web site, please do NOT link to this blog from your web site as a way to fulfill your education efforts – instead, I would prefer you cut and paste content from this blog and put it on your own web site – you don’t even have to credit me – but then make it a priority in the coming weeks to localize the information, with local statistics from your own organization and government agencies like your county health and human services, profiles of clients, links to local news articles that relate to these subjects, and more. There are volunteers that would LOVE to help you find the information you need – all you have to do is recruit them – local colleges and universities are a great place to start (faculty teaching health, social work or public administration topics would be an excellent source for recruiting students to do this).

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

What is your social media manager doing?

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This happens a lot. Too much, in fact:

I find a Twitter account for a subject in which I am very interested. I look at who the account follows, so I can see other, related accounts on the subject. Instead, I see a long list of celebrities that whomever the social media manager follows: movie stars, athletes, bands, reality show celebrities, etc. Sometimes, I even see the account follows adult entertainment stars and highly-controversial political figures. And I wonder: how much time does this social media manager spend on Twitter doing what personally interests them rather than activities that benefit the organization?

It’s not just what you post on social media that sends a message about your organization: it’s also who you follow, what you “like”, what you retweet, etc.

The accounts that your Twitter account follows should be related to your organization’s mission or subjects your organization needs updates about, such as nonprofit financial management, corporate social responsibility, volunteer management, etc.

This isn’t to say your organization can’t follow a celebrity via its social media accounts. If a celebrity is vocal in supporting the issue that is central to your nonprofit’s mission and posts about such frequently, by all means, like that celebrity’s posts that relate to that – in fact, leverage them: reply to and retweet their messages with your own organization’s congratulations or point of view.

This isn’t to say your organization shouldn’t follow a politician: you absolutely should follow your area’s elected officials, even if you don’t agree with them, because what they do can affect your organization and clients. And again, reply to their posts, even if you disagree with them, if your message relates to what your organization tries to do as a part of its mission.

If a social media manager reports to you, you need to be supervising them! You do that by:

  • Following your organization’s account on Twitter via your own, personal Twitter account – an account you never, ever have to use to post anything at all – and reading that account regularly, certainly every week
  • Following your organization’s account on Facebook and reading the posts regularly
  • Asking how many people are coming to events or activities as a result of social media posts (and if they say they don’t know, tell them they need to start finding out)
  • Asking how many people engage with the organization’s social media (comment, ask questions, etc.), not just how many people “like” a social media post
  • Asking what the manager is doing to attract new followers on social media
  • Asking for an overview of who is following the organization on social media. People interested in attending events or obtaining services? Elected officials? Other area organizations?
  • Asking the social media manager to break down by percentage the categories posts might fall into: posts that are about marketing activities, posts that are about attracting donors, posts that are about promoting the organization’s accomplishments, posts meant to educate regarding the organization’s cause, etc. If 50% of posts are asking for money, should this be reduced, and the number of posts about accomplishments be increased?
  • Asking the manager how he or she engages with other accounts on their feeds: what posts are they “liking” or commenting on, and have those interactions lead to anything – new followers, questions, criticisms, etc.

On a related note: please put the FULL name of your organization in your Twitter description, not your mission statement! I don’t want the only way to find you on Twitter to be to look on your web site – most people just give up rather than trying to hunt you down.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into developing material, researching information, preparing articles, updating pages, etc., here is how you can help.

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Why your public meetings are so sparsely attended

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You represent a nonprofit. Or a local government citizens committee or board. Or an activist group.

You have a monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or yearly meeting, open to the public. You want your members or the public to attend.

But meeting attendance is poor. Why?

I’ll tell you why! It’s one, or more, or ALL of these reasons:

  • You don’t make it crystal clear why the meetings happen. Why are you having this meeting? What happens at this meeting? Will I sit and hear a lecture? Will I watch a video? Will I have to offer an opinion or participate in some group exercise or vote? Can I just listen and observe? Why do you want me there? What will the meeting be like? All of these questions should be explicitly answered on your web site, in your email newsletter, on your Facebook event page, and in any other ways that you communicate about the meeting. This is the number one reason few people are coming to your meeting.
  • You put the information for the meeting in just ONE place. That one place could be your newsletter. That one place could be your web site. That one place could be a Facebook event page. Worst of all, that one place could be a PDF file somebody has to download as an attachment from email or from a web site (a lot of people don’t even bother opening a PDF). The information needs to be in multiple places. Does your city have a web site of community events and, if so, have you sent them this meeting information? What about the nearest public library? What about to civic organizations, business associations, neighborhood groups and cultural groups?
  • The meeting information isn’t updated on your web site. It’s 2019, but your web site is still talking about 2018. The upcoming meeting is in February, but your web site is still talking about December. The outdated information makes someone wonder if the meetings are still happening, even if your web site said that your group meets on the second Thursday of every month.
  • Your web site just says your group meets on the second Thursday of every month – or whatever. And that might be true, but it’s not enough to prove that this meeting really happens. Photos from the last meeting, or the minutes from the last meeting, or the focus or agenda for the next two meetings, with the actual meeting dates included, would affirm that, yes, these meetings really happen.
  • There’s no information about parking. Is free parking nearby?
  • People can’t get to your meeting by public transport easily. There’s a bus, but it only goes by every half hour, and there’s only one other bus it connects to – in a city of more than 50 buses. That means, to get to you and your hour-long meeting, most people would have to take mass transit around four hours round trip.
  • You don’t provide child care. And you probably don’t want a bored child – or more than one bored child – at your very important meeting.
  • Your meeting is at a time when I can’t attend. You didn’t survey membership or potential members and find out when the best time is for them to meet. Or you don’t offer meetings at different times – maybe every other month’s meeting could be in the evening instead of the afternoon.

There is no excuse for not addressing those first five bullets. None. Start with those. You may find that you need to ask people to RSVP for meetings and then text them a reminder, to better ensure they will attend. You may find you need to post reminders to social media as well. You may even need to look into broadcasting the meetings online, so that those who can’t attend in person can view the meeting online, perhaps even participate online as well (ask questions, vote, etc.).

If, after doing at least these first five bullets, your meetings are still poorly attended, then it’s time to sit down and call 10, 20, even 30 people you really want to attend these meetings and ask them why they can’t, or won’t, attend and if these reasons can be addressed.

Also see:

The Impact of In-Person Usability Demos on Web Designers

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“During (Knowbility’s John Slatin) AccessU, I had the opportunity to sit in on a series of assistive technology demos and witness firsthand how people with disabilities use the internet. That experience completely changed the way I looked at building a website… There is nothing like seeing the ‘a-ha’ moment from people’s faces the first time they see someone use assistive technology.”

The power of an in-person demo regarding usability of a web site from the point of view of a person with a disability is explained in this Knowbility blog by Christi Barker.

An example of the reaction of one of Barker’s students to a demo she later arranged:

“For example, as a designer, we care a lot about how things like buttons are put on websites. However, for vision-impaired people, the aesthetic or the structure of the layout does not mean the same thing to them. Sometimes, it only decreases the ability for them to stay connected with the world. That was the first time I perceived the many inconveniences in their life. Their stories are inspiring and have made me start thinking about what can I do to make a difference in their lives.”

Knowbility is a nonprofit organization with a mission is to create a more inclusive digital world for all abilities.

And remember: accessibility is a human rights issue. And if your organization claims to work towards inclusion of any kind, that should include accessibility for people with disabilities to your web site.

Accessibility: a human rights & a digital divide issue too many ignore

Pioneering in “hacks for good”: Knowbility

Knowbility’s AccessU 2019: Call for Papers

Something New & Innovative? How about something that WORKS?

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So often – TOO OFTEN – I hear nonprofits, government initiatives, NGOs, charities and other mission-based programs complaining that they aren’t getting good attendance at their events or program activities, or aren’t getting any press coverage, or don’t have enough volunteers, and so they are looking for something innovative and new in marketing.

But is something innovative and new really what they need?

In my junior year at Western Kentucky University, a million years ago, one of my professors proposed an idea to me: for one of my senior year classes, to fulfill my minor in theater, I could be in charge of marketing the Fall Children’s Theatre series, a then-annual event where three to four student-directed productions were presented, all focused on children audiences. I would get credit for a full senior-level class for such. I had also been working at the local arts center as a marketing intern outside of classes and had a wonderful mentor there who had taught me a lot about getting press coverage – combining this experience with my journalism major and newspaper experience, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse!

I was oh-so-successful at getting kids and their parents to the plays. One performance had to be delayed a few minutes because there were so many kids pouring in from an area kindergarten. We consistently sold out of intermission snacks, filling the coffers of our student theater society. Of course, I got an “A” for my efforts: my professor said they had never had so many full houses for the Fall Children’s Theater series.

Was I innovative in my approach to marketing these shows? No. All I did was the basics:

  • Sent press releases in a timely manner, with complete information, to area newspapers, and the one local TV station, in time to get into their calendar sections.
  • Sent press releases to local schools and kindergartens as early as possible.

That’s it. That’s all I did. And I sent these by mail – there was no Internet in my world back in those days. I had no budget to do anything else. All I did to be so wildly successful was the basics of marketing. And I did the basics WELL. Before my involvement, press releases were never sent, or were sent too late for information to be included in a local newspaper or on TV, or didn’t have complete information.

Before you start looking for something innovative to improve attendance at your events, increase program participants, recruit more volunteers, increase your visibility, etc., look at your current communications:

  • Is information on your web site up-to-date and complete, with answers to Who?, What?, Where?, Why? and When? right in the first paragraph of any information about events?
  • When you post about information on social media, do you make sure it includes Who?, What?, Where? and When? (you may not have enough room on Twitter for Why?)
  • Are you sending press releases and announcements to every area media outlet in your area, including newspapers, radio stations and TV stations watched in your area, in a TIMELY manner?
  • If you have a poster or brochure about the event, are the answers to Who?, What?, Where?, Why? and When? obvious and easy to find/easy to see?
  • Has your up-to-date, complete information been emailed directly to every employee, every consultant and every volunteer at your organization, in a timely manner?

There’s nothing innovative about any of that – but these steps are absolutely fundamental to successful marketing by nonprofits. And often, it’s all that’s needed.

Also see:

Some people think they aren’t perfect enough to volunteer with you

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Meridian Swift has a terrific blog about the impression our volunteers-in-action photos might give, unintentionally. She imagines this scenario:

Yvonne took in the photos of volunteers working together, triumphant smiles on their busy faces. She imagined how dynamic these volunteers must be, and here she was, shy, insecure, and full of doubts. She wasn’t like them. They were so…amazing and who was she kidding, she was just stumbling through life. With a wistful sigh, Yvonne closed the tab and moved on.

She’s right, and not just about photos: when we celebrate volunteers on the organization web site or in a press release or at a ceremony, we celebrate things most people cannot do: volunteer for more than a decade at the same organization, in the same role, or volunteer 100 hours or more in a year. That isn’t to say that those volunteers shouldn’t be honored, but what about honors for the most tenacious volunteer, or the volunteer who made a big impact with a small project?

As Meridian says in her response to volunteers who may be thinking they aren’t perfect enough to volunteer, per the perfect-volunteers imagery:

You may think we want you to be perfect. What do we want? We want to do some good in this crazy world and we don’t have all the answers. We’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking for you.  

It’s something to keep in mind as you recruit and welcome new volunteers at your organization.

Also see:

Yes, I really did read that report you wrote

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logoI worked in Afghanistan back in 2007, and I stay in contact with some of my Afghan colleagues there, including a member of my communications staff from back in the day. As I’ve written about before, I’ve been mentoring her online since I left, regarding her university studies, her career pursuits and her work.

For the past few years, she’s worked for a government initiative regarding water and sanitation. Communications regarding WatSan was brand new to me, and to her, so we both had to work to get up-to-speed on best practices, particularly regarding working in low-infrastructure communities, rural communities, low-literacy communities, and with women. How have we gotten ourselves up-to-speed on this particular type of public health communications? By finding and reading online reports by various United Nations agencies and various non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It’s been extraordinarily easy to find relevant, detailed reports on how water and sanitation practices have been communicated in every scenario imaginable and very honest reports about what’s worked and what hasn’t.

We’re still not experts. But the reality in humanitarian work is that, very often, you are suddenly asked to do something that’s at least a bit outside your experience, and you may have just a few weeks, or a few days, or even a few hours, to get the knowledge you need to proceed. That so many humanitarian workers have shared their work online has been critical to me doing my job over the years, and it’s proving invaluable to my colleague in Afghanistan as well.

So, thank you, all you communications staff at various UN, USAID, DFID, and NGO-supported initiatives all over the world, for detailing what worked and what didn’t in whatever project you worked on, and sharing that online. You may think you no one is reading your reports. But we are.

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I’ve been trying to warn about “fake news” since 2004

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Since 2004, I have been gathering and sharing both examples of and recommendations for preventing folklore, rumors and urban myths from interfering with development and aid/relief efforts and government initiatives. And for years, I felt like the lone voice in the wilderness on this subject. It was almost my master’s thesis project, but while I could find examples of widespread misunderstanding and misinformation campaigns interfering with relief and with relief and development activities, and government initiatives, including public health initiatives, I could not get enough people to go on record to talk about these circumstances and how they were addressing such. For a year, I contacted numerous organizations, particularly organizations promoting women’s health and access to abortion, trying to get them to talk about how these misinformation campaigns were affecting them, but if they replied at all to my emails or phone calls, they said they didn’t want to bring more attention to the problem, even if that attention was in an academic paper that people outside the institution may never read.

I went with another subject for my Master’s project, but I had gathered a lot of publicly-available information, so I shared it all on my web site, and I have kept it updated over the years as my time has allowed. I have always easily found many examples of myths and misinformation creating ongoing misunderstandings among communities and cultures, preventing people from seeking help, encourage people to engage in unhealthy and even dangerous practices, and cultivating mistrust of people and institutions. I easily have found examples that had lead to mobs of people attacking someone or others for no reason other than something they heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, to legislators introducing laws to address something that doesn’t exist, and influencing elections, long before such finally got noticed because of Brexit and the USA November 2016 elections.

In my original web pages, I said that this subject was rarely discussed, and for more than a decade, that was the truth: while I could find all of those examples, it was very difficult to find any online resources or published resources outside of academic papers about how to address or prevent misinformation campaigns designed to interfere with a relief or development effort, public health campaign, etc. Where was the practical info on how to deal with this? It was few and far between. For many years, mine was the only web site tracking such.

How did I get interested in this subject? I noticed stories my friends and family told often turned out not to be true, everything from spiders or snake eggs found in a jacket of a friend of a cousin that lives in another state, to why a local store closed, to something they had heard about happening on a TV talk show but hadn’t actually seen themselves. Then, while attending Western Kentucky University for my undergrad degree, I took a very popular class, Urban Folklore 371, where we discussed these stories, how they were spread, how the story changes over time and why such stories are believed. I was hooked on the psychology of rumor-spreading.

When I worked at a United Nations agency from 2001 to 2005, I made a joke to a colleague about the outrageous mythologies about the UN that so many people believed back in the USA – I’m not going to repeat them here, on this blog, but they are easy to find online. She gave me a confused look and said she didn’t know what I was talking about. So I showed her various web sites that promote this misinformation. She stood there, with her mouth open and eyes wide, staring at the outrageous graphics and text. “Is this a joke?” she asked. No, I replied, this is very real. I showed her more. “I can’t believe this!” she said. I explained that we could stand there all day with me showing her these sites, and these were just ones in the USA – I had no idea how many there were based in other countries, in other languages. And I admit I was starting to get angry, because not only did this seasoned UN staff member not know about this, no one I worked with at the UN had ever heard of these myth-spreading web sites. Conspiracy theories, pre-social media, were already affecting our work, yet, I seemed to be the first person to be talking about it, at least at my agency.

We have a saying in English: closing the barn door after the horses are already out. It means you are too late in trying to address an issue. Now, all these many years after trying to sound the alarm, I fear that there are entire generations of people that will now never be convinced that global climate change is real and devasting to communities, particularly to poor communities, or that will never believe that vaccinations do NOT cause autism nor infertility, or that will never believe that condoms can prevent HIV, or that will never accept fluoride in their water because they believe too many outrageous things I can’t even begin to list here, and on and on. I fear these generations are lost forever in having basic scientific literacy. And I fear that if we don’t make a concentrated, sustained effort on educating young people about science and how to evaluate information they are hearing and reading, more people will die, more communities will be devastated, more lives will be shattered.

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