Category Archives: Community Relations/Outreach

Grumpy Jayne

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I’m grumpy.

I need a vacation.

What’s making me grumpy these days?

Here’s a partial list:

Conferences that want to charge presenters to attend. Never mind that the presenters are a significant reason why most people attend the conference.

Corporations and for-profit businesses that want advice from me by email or phone about a new product they want to launch – but they don’t want to pay me.

Digital inclusion efforts that don’t talk about web and app accessibility.

Any inclusion efforts that don’t talk about web and app accessibility.

Digital divide initiatives that don’t talk about web and app accessibility.

Popularity contests disguised as “crowdsourcing.” You know: crowdsource who should get a special volunteering award! Such an award isn’t based on merit – it’s based on how well someone or an organization can market itself.

Crowdsourcing efforts actually being about harvesting email addresses / subscribers for something. Example: crowdsource answers to questions from nonprofits on our platform! But register first! (and be added to our newsletter where we will endlessly pitch our products to you) 

Organizations, especially schools, complaining that they don’t have enough volunteers, but then making it impossible to find information about how to volunteer, and what opportunities are available on their web site, etc.

Firefighters complaining that they don’t have enough volunteers, but having a lousy web site regarding volunteer information, refusing to use social media beyond “We posted to Facebook once last year!”, refusing to recruit in any ways that are different than “this is how we’ve always done it,” and targeting their recruitment measures to only those who might want to become career firefighters (volunteering is only a stepping stone).

People who say, upon hearing that their website isn’t accessible for people with disabilities, “Well, I don’t think we have that many people with disabilities trying to access our web site.”

Corporations and government officials who whine about nonprofits not being innovative or risk taking, but then balk at funding overhead costs, including staff training, computer technology, Internet access, etc.

People who never replied to my requests during a process I’m involved with regarding ways to improve or my questions on where to find something but then, when the event or campaign is over, are suddenly are brimming with ideas of how things should have been done.

People who don’t answer my questions and then are stunned when I don’t do work that matches their expectations.

People who post endlessly on Facebook about injustices or various social causes but never come to city council meetings, or citizens’ advisory committees, never attend public meetings to talk to police officers one-on-one, don’t attend candidate debates or town halls by elected officials, don’t vote, etc.

Consultants who make all sorts of suggestions about what an agency should be doing, but have never employed those suggestions first hand themselves. (“Here’s how you should be recruiting volunteers! Oh, no, I’ve never employed these methods myself… I don’t work with volunteers…”)

Consultants that promote themselves as social media experts and have just a few followers on Twitter.

Managers who believe lack of complaints means things are going really well (rather than, perhaps, complaints aren’t being heard).

Organizations that say they need volunteers but turn people away who try – including me.

Can’t get enough? Here are other blogs of frustration:

What should be on a political web site

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I’m a stickler for nonprofit organizations being as transparent as possible, well beyond what is required by law, regarding their financing, spending and staffing. As mission-based organizations, with missions that are supposed to benefit people and/or our environment, being accountable not only to donors but to all the public at large is crucial in showing credibility and ethics. Many in the for-profit/corporate and political sphere are threatened by the work of such organizations – nonprofits, NGOs, community-based organizations, etc. – and they can use an organization’s perceived lack of transparency about certain information to feed the public’s distrust of such organizations. Nonprofits can head this office by sharing as much info as possible on their web site about who they are and what they do.

I think a nonprofit, NGO, etc. should have on its web site:

  • a list of its board of directors
  • a list of its staff, at least senior staff, and their credentials
  • a statement of when the organization was founded and why
  • a list of key activities and accomplishments since the organization was founded
  • a statement regarding how much money it raised or earned in the last fiscal year and how much it spent, and at least a general idea on what it spent that money on

There have been nonprofits that I have seriously thought about giving a donation to, but when I go to their web site, they don’t have this basic info, so I don’t donate. I wonder how many other donations these nonprofits have missed out on because of this lack of info? There’s even more I think should be on a nonprofit’s web site, like complete information about volunteering, but that’s another blog.

I apply this rule about mandatory information that must be on a web site to political organizations and political candidates I’m interested in as well. No matter how passionately I feel in support of a candidate or a viewpoint, I want to know who is running things and how the money will be spent, even a general idea. You want me to donate to so-and-so so they can win an election? What are you going to spend the money on? In particular, how much will go to paying for TV time, radio time, flyers, web site development, etc., and how much is going to be paid to consultants for their ideas? What percentage of your staffing is by paid consultants and what percentage is by unpaid volunteers? And if you are a political organization, when were you founded, who is staffing the organization, and how did you pick the candidates you have suggested in your voter guide?

Another tip for political organizations: when someone comes to my door and says they are from such-and-such organization, and they want me to sign a petition about judicial reform or some new law or whatever, I am more likely to listen to that person if he or she says, “I am a volunteer with so-and-so.” Knowing someone is a volunteer, not a paid political person, gives whatever that person says much more weight with me. A volunteer is giving up precious time, often on a weekend, to reach out to me about a person or a cause – that’s how passionate that person feels about that candidate or ballot measure or whatever. And that carries a huge amount of weight with me. A paid person is the same as an ad on TV, and I just shrug, take the info and usually cut them off – I’d prefer to look up the candidate or issue myself in my own time.

Also see:

If I can’t find what I’m looking for on your web site, who else can’t?

Use Your Web Site to Show Your Accountability and To Teach Others About the Nonprofit / NGO / Charity Sector!

REQUIRED Volunteer Information on Your Web Site

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.

Also see:

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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online communities, sexual harassment & hate speech – UNESCO weighs in

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During the 62 Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW62), UNESCO participated in an event exploring the role of online communities in relations to sexual harassment and hate speech. The event took place on 13 March at the Permanent Mission of Finland to the United Nations in New York and other partners were Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in Finland, National Institute for Health and Welfare and Kenya Human Rights Commission.

Interventions to combat the online hate speech were presented including a guidebook, #WeWillNotBeSilent – What is hate speech and what it has got to do with gender? (PDF)

This multi-stakeholder effort raises awareness of the (sexist) hate speech and offers guidance for youth on responding and preventing (sexist) hate speech online.

Currently, 1 in 5 women using the Internet lives in countries where abuse of women is likely to go unpunished and 73 percent of women online have experienced some form of online violence.

Gender equality is one of UNESCO’s global priorities and well reflected in UNESCO’s interventions. These include efforts to counter online hate speech, empowering women and girls to harness digital and media literacy skills, promoting the safety of women journalists and gender parity in media. UNESCO is also addressing the issue through the development of international frameworks to build an open, human rights based, accessible and pluralistic knowledge societies and media environments.

Also see this publication, Countering online hate speech

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A lead from a friend online is still a lead from a friend

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When you see a list of how people find out about volunteering opportunities, you will often see the number one reference, by far, as from someone else already involved in the group. That gets categorized as word of mouth.

You might also see other highly-scoring references, like from a community of faith or from a local newspaper. And very low on the list of ways people got leads for volunteering will probably be the organization’s web site or Facebook.

BUT WAIT!!

There’s a big problem with the question and the way people were given to answer on these surveys.

For instance, I may have been referred to an organization to volunteer by a friend VIA FACEBOOK. So, is the reference from a friend, word-of-mouth, or Facebook? Which category does it go into?

I may have been referred to an organization via a newspaper’s FACEBOOK PAGE. So, who gets the credit – the newspaper or Facebook?

I hear a lot of people still dismissing the Internet as a tool for volunteer recruitment and they base it on things like this survey from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in the UK. But you need to be VERY cautious about such surveys. Remember: we think of messages on social media from friends as messages from friends, or from a church or temple, or from a newspaper, not from the platform itself. We might think of a message on Twitter from a newspaper as a message from the newspaper, not Twitter. If a survey asking volunteers how they heard about a service opportunity doesn’t also ask, for instance, in what context friends talked about the volunteering activity – face-to-face in a social setting, in a phone conversation (yes, people still have those), etc. – you can’t make assumptions about how that referral happened, that it must have happened face-to-face.

Indeed, word-of-mouth, in a traditional face-to-face setting or via a social media platform – remains the number one marketing tool for MOST things, not just volunteer recruitment. I’ve witnessed no better example of this recently than the reaction to Black Panther, one of the biggest grossing movies ever here in the USA. I have seen a huge number of people among my online friends post testimonials on Facebook about this movie, and responses from their friends saying they are going to go now based on that feedback. The people commenting have ranged from the wife of a local pastor here in my tiny town, both white and over 50, to friends that are teachers all over the USA. But credit doesn’t go to Facebook for the reference – it goes to the friends.

But with THAT said, here’s another consideration: the more sincere a word-of-mouth testimonial is, online or face-to-face, the more effective it will be in motivating friends. The more it sounds scripted, the more likely it won’t have as much effect. If a volunteer is sharing how great it is to volunteer somewhere, and is sharing that info – online or face-to-face – in a sincere moment of spontaneity and honesty and excitement, it’s going to have a much more impact than a statement an organization has given the volunteer to share with friends. A volunteer sharing a scripted message that an organization has asked them to isn’t going to have nearly the same impact – if it has any at all.

And one more thing: if you haven’t seen Black Panther, you totally need to ASAP. It’s awesome!

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Please do NOT stay in your lane (walking the talk on mainstreaming)

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logoWe have a saying in English: Stay in your lane. It means “mind your own business” or “keep moving straight ahead and don’t veer over into other people’s affairs.”

Unfortunately, in the workplace, it’s a mentality frequently used to pass the buck and avoid activities we should be doing, to avoid thinking about things that, for whatever reason, we don’t want to. It’s a strategy to avoid mainstreaming.

This kind of thing happens to me a lot: in a meeting with a group or initiative, we start talking about marketing, public relations, etc., and I bring up that we need to consider that outreach will need to done to target a specific group among our stakeholders because our traditional outreach might not reach members of that group. And someone will say, “Oh, no, so-and-so is in charge of outreach to that group. We don’t need to talk about it.”

For instance, say I’m in a community advisory group regarding a public library, and when the library staff says to our group that they want advice from us regarding community outreach about a new story hour, I ask, “What do you think could be done to reach out to Spanish-speaking residents specifically and make sure they feel welcomed?”, and the response is, “Oh, the city has a diversity specialist and she handles all that. You don’t need to consider it. It’s her job.” Really? I shouldn’t, just as a human being, have a commitment to making sure everyone is welcomed at the public library? I shouldn’t have a commitment to being inclusive? It’s just one person’s job to do that? You are going to cede all discussion and action for outreach to a specialized population to just one person, rather than relying on that person for consultation and guidance as we consider ALL of our actions? You are going to let the community advisory group off the hook in considering minority populations in it outreach entirely?

The job of specialized committees or specialized roles isn’t to be responsible for absolutely all outreach or engagement of particular groups – women, Spanish-speaking residents, people with disabilities, etc. Certainly they will direct specialized outreach or engagement activities, but they are also meant to support ALL staff, regardless of their job titles, in taking those particular groups into consideration in their work. It’s called MAINSTREAMING – where staff get guidance for making considerations about a particular issue, but still feel empowered to take action.

Back in March 2009, I wrote a blog on a now-defunct platform where I noted that I am not a gender specialist, however, that I mainstream consideration of women and girls’ needs into my international and local community work:

if you say in a report, “the majority of the community expressed support for this project,” I’ll ask in my edits how many of the “majority” were women and how their feedback was gathered. If you draft a proposal for a public event or project, I’ll ask how women and girls will be targeted and accommodated to participate in it (as appropriate; maybe it’s specifically focused on men, and that’s okay, provided justification for such is detailed). If you say in your evaluation report that the community technology center is always full with young people using the computers and attending the workshops, I’ll ask what percentage of users were girls. I look for the gender breakdown for any references to community, participants, students, patients, attendees and leaders in reports, and if I don’t see it, I ask for it. I also let community field workers know that they have to systematically collect relevant data/information regarding women’s participation just as they collect overall information…

You shouldn’t have to be a gender specialist to mainstream women’s issues in your aid and development work. Why is the gender specialist the only staff person who goes to gender-related meetings outside the organization, for instance? Why is the gender specialist the only staff member who is asked to write a report about how women’s issues are being addresses by a project — as an annex to the main report written by someone else? To truly mainstream gender, shouldn’t a project manager who is not a gender specialist be at gender-focused trainings every now and again? Shouldn’t every staff member in a development organization have to show how he or she addresses the concerns of women and girls in their work, and if not, say explicitly why not? Shouldn’t every staff member be held accountable for what they do — or don’t do — to address the needs of women and girls in their aid and development work?

Let’s use another example: on any project I’m on, as a paid employee, consultant or unpaid volunteer, if anything comes up regarding a website, I am going to ask these questions: “Has the website been/will the website be designed so that it is accessible to people with disabilities or people using assistive technologies? If it hasn’t been, shouldn’t we have a commitment to doing that?”

There is rarely anything in my job description about advocating for people with disabilities. I have no written mandate to advocate for this issue. But I do, every time. Because I have mainstreamed web site accessiblity into my life. I don’t wait for a web accessibility expert to bring it up – I bring it up. I’m not a web accessibility expert any more than I’m a Latino outreach expert, yet, I bring these issues up, because I have a commitment to inclusiveness. And I will happily consult with the official disability rights advocate on staff in advocating for these issues – but I am going to advocate for these issues, regardless.

What drives people to want to pass off consideration of communications or engagement that will target particular audiences to one specialist, or one entirely separate committee, to do all of the work him, her or themselves?  Perhaps someone thinks, “I don’t want to step on any toes.” Perhaps they are scared of the issue, afraid they will say or do something that isn’t welcoming to that minority group or to women. Perhaps they really don’t understand cross-cutting issues or cross-cutting considerations – I met someone today who has worked in community relations for decades and had never heard the term cross-cutting issue.

Of course, this kind of “we shouldn’t talk about this at all – leave it to the specialist” approach can also be driven by a silo mentality of an outreach specialist or particular committee that does want to collaborate with other individuals in the same organization – they don’t want to empower, they want to control.

Let me be blunt: the gender specialist shouldn’t be the only one promoting women’s inclusion in an initiative or project. The diversity specialist shouldn’t be the only one promoting inclusion of Latino members in a city’s activities. A commitment to inclusiveness shouldn’t be one made only by one staff member or committee. Everyone making a commitment to inclusiveness – mainstreaming – doesn’t mean taking anything away from a specialist or a committee with a designated role regarding specialized outreach. It also doesn’t mean you have to become an expert. A comment from someone who wants to be inclusive, who wants to mainstream, can be as simple as this:

Hey, we’ve got this proposal in front of our committee about where to locate the new public pool. How will the city be informing our Spanish-speaking population about the possibilities and get their input?

That doesn’t mean your committee suddenly becomes experts in Latino affairs. Rather, it means you are bringing up an issue that needs to be addressed by someone.

Another example: a nonprofit wants to create a community technology center in a poor community, to give people experiencing extreme poverty access to critical information and communications they need online or via a phone. Any staff member should feel empowered, even encouraged, to say, “We need to make sure women feel welcomed and safe here. What resources can we access to make that happen?” Again, that staff member is probably not a gender specialist, but he or she has made a commitment to make sure gender issues are considered and addressed by someone.

 

Nonprofits: volunteers can caption your YouTube videos

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I had never captioned videos ever until recently, and in the last eight weeks, I’ve captioned four, via YouTube’s free tool. My conclusion: there is NO reason that your organization’s videos should not be captioned. None. Zilch. Nada. If I can figure it out, anyone can.

Why caption your videos? So that people with hearing impairments will be able to experience your videos, because a lot of people that want to watch your video aren’t in an environment where they can politely listen to your video (for instance, at work in a cube farm, or someone in a coffee shop that forgot his or her headphones), and because you may want to use the narrative of a video or phrasing from such in other ways (speeches, grant proposals, etc.).

YouTube’s captioning tool can be used multiple ways:

  • from scratch, meaning a user can go through a video and type in what’s being said, easily syncing it to the sound
  • from an upload, meaning you upload the text from a script you used for the video, and then sync up the text to the sounds
  • and the way I do it: wait for YouTube to automatically transcribe the video, and then go through the text YouTube has generated and correct it (and have a big laugh over some of the way it has mistakenly interpreted what’s being said).

Here is the online document from Google, the owner of YouTube, telling you how automatic captioning works. There are lots of online tutorials that are really easy to find as well. One caution: If automatic captions are available, you’ll see Language (Automatic) in the “Published” section to the right of the video, but it may take several minutes to appear. I uploaded a video that was more than an hour long, and for 15 minutes, this automatic link didn’t appear, so I thought the video was too long. But after 15 minutes, it appeared. GIve YouTube at least 30 minutes after going to the captioning function for it to figure out your video text.

Examples of some of my videos that I have captioned myself:

Knowbility 2018 OpenAIR Kick Off Event (1:12:35) – in case you’re wondering, I edited this myself (down from more than two hours) and I start talking at about the 14:50. If you watch, notice how we integrated videos from other people into this onsite event, which was live-streamed.

Human rights, the digital divide & web accessibility (4:39)

Nonprofits, non-governmental organizations, community-focused government programs, schools, charities: GET YOUR YOUTUBE VIDEOS CAPTIONED. No excuses! If you don’t have time to do it, recruit online volunteers to do so. That’s going to mean giving an online volunteer your login and password for your YouTube account – if you are uncomfortable doing that, then require the volunteer to come onsite to your organization and provide him or her a computer or laptop at your agency to use, one where you login to your YouTube channel for the volunteer.

Also see:

Transcribe & Caption!

If I can’t find what I’m looking for on your web site, who else can’t?

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I saw an online article about an initiative in Afghanistan and I immediately wanted to donate money to it. So I followed the directions in the article, went to the web site, and looked all over for the promised “donate” link.

It wasn’t there. I even used the “find” tool. Nada.

Test your web site to see if anyone coming onto the site can find what they might be looking for. This is a great test to be undertaken by new volunteers. You could get a group of volunteers to use their smartphones or laptops (you should have a mix of devices and browsers being used) to go to the home page and try to find:

  • your information on exactly what services or activities your organization provides. They should rate how easy it is to find and how easy it is to understand.
  • your organization’s physical address.
  • your hours of operation (if applicable).
  • the “donate” link, and if they do, to click on it and see if they find all the info they want to donate to your organization. They should rate how easy it was to find the information on how to donate and how easy it is to donate (you do allow for online donations, right?!?).
  • information on what a donation pays for. They should rate how easy it is to find this information (if they ever do).
  • the “volunteer” link, and if they do, to click on it and see if they find all the info they want to donate to your organization. They should rate how easy it was to find information on how to volunteer and on what volunteers do at your organization, on how easy it is to use your online application process (if you have such), etc.

Here’s another test: ask them what they think, based on looking at your web site, your organization’s attitude is regarding volunteers. They could rate, on a scale, what messages your web site information regarding volunteer engagement says:

  • We involve volunteers because we don’t have to pay them; they are cheaper than paying people.
  • We involve volunteers to do the work staff doesn’t want to do.
  • We offer a variety of opportunities for volunteers, in terms of the amount of time they have to commit, the nature of the service they will provide, where they will provide service (onsite, online, in the office, in the field, etc.).
  • We value our volunteers.

You also want to hear if the web site works well on desktops or laptops and smartphones.

You could have volunteers do this from their home, over a week, and have an online survey for them to fill out, or you could have volunteers come into your conference room for an hour, bringing their devices, serve them some cookies or pizza and have them do the testing and feedback together, in-person.

On a related note, someone from your organization should also see how easy it is to find your organization online at all. Go to Google and Bing (yes, do it on both), and search for:

  • the exact name of your organization. Is your organization’s web site the first in the search results? Does it come up at all on the first page of results? If it doesn’t come up at all, or doesn’t come up early, it’s probably because you don’t have the exact name of your organization on several pages, if not every page, of your web site. Make sure you have this full name on “about us” on your Facebook page as well.
  • the acronym of your organization and the name of your city. Is your organization’s web site the first in the search? Does it come up at all? If it doesn’t come up at all, or doesn’t come up early, it’s probably because you don’t have the acronym and the name of the city where you are on every page of your web site.  I’m stunned at how many nonprofit web sites I find that never say what city (or state) they are in nor what cities they work in.
  • the word volunteer and the name of your city, and, perhaps, a word related to your organization’s mission (children, arts, homeless, dance, teens, women, etc.). Does your organization come up at all in the results? If it doesn’t, or doesn’t come up early, it’s because you don’t have the word volunteer and the name on your city on various pages on your web site.

Also try to find your organization on Twitter, if your organization has a Twitter account. Use a variety of names and acronyms that people use for your organization in your searches. Can you find your organization’s account? If not, then it’s probably because of how you describe your account on Twitter. Your account description also should have the full name of your organization and your acronym – do NOT use your mission statement instead! If you use your mission statement instead of your organization’s name, then it probably won’t be found by people looking specifically for your organization on Twitter.

If you have room in your Twitter description, you can also put in keywords to help people find you. What keywords? It depends on what your organization does, or the target audience for your Twitter account. For instance, in my own, personal account, I use these keywords, because I want people that are interested in these subjects to be able to find me when they do a search for such:      , , ,  

In your Twitter description, if you have room, you might want to put the hashtag for your area, if you want people in that area to find you. For instance, if I wanted to target people in Portland, Oregon specifically, I would put in #PDX in my Twitter profile (instead, I put it in tweets that target people in Portland specifically). If I wanted people in Oregon who wanted to volunteer to find me easily on Twitter, I would put #volunteer and #Oregon in my profile (again, instead of doing that, I put those keywords in tweets that relate to that subject specifically).

You can apply these recommendations for Twitter to your YouTube channel as well, to increase the numbers of people viewing your organization’s videos (if you have such).

Altogether, these are things your nonprofit, charity, NGO, school, government agency or other community initiative can do in ONE day to immediately improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Also see:

Press relations tip from a person I loathe

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There is an activist that I loathe, a spokesperson for causes that go against everything I believe in. When I would hear or see him speak, my blood would boil. I’m not going to say his name because I do not want to give what he stands for any spotlight whatsoever.

Before he passed away, he was everywhere in the media here in the USA: in newspaper articles, in TV programs, on the radio. Some days, I saw him multiple times across networks. And I would seethe and wonder: why do reporters and producers call this man all the time to comment on, well, anything at all? Why do they give him so much attention?

At some point, I heard a press person be asked this very question. And he said something along these lines, “Because he will always, always return our calls, within minutes of our calling. He places a priority on talking to us. Whether it’s national network or a tiny newspaper in a small town, he always talks almost immediately to any press person that asks for an interview or comment.”

It immediately made me think of all the times I told the Executive Director of wherever I was working that some reporter was on the phone, or had emailed, and wanted an interview or comment, and the agency head telling me “I don’t have time” or “I don’t want to” or “Yeah, just give me the info, I’ll call” but she or he never did. I thought of how often I have had to BEG a senior staff member to do a requested interview, how I’ve offered to sit in on the interview and answer any questions the director may not know. And I thought about how, later, after not doing these interview requests, these same people will complain about lack of coverage from the press.

I worked at the Williamstown Theatre Festival for two summers, the second time as the head of publicity, both times pre-Internet, and I got a lot of compliments about how much press coverage I was able to land for the shows. Someone asked me for my “secret”. And it was easy to answer: I treated the press as my customers. I would knock myself to get them absolutely anything they needed, no matter how tight the deadline. I also made sure, before the interview with the famous person, that the reporter had everything about the upcoming show that person would be in, with the key information – what, when, where and how to buy tickets – right up front. Whether it was Entertainment Tonight, the entertainment reporters from CNN, or a tiny community newspaper in Vermont, everyone got immediate callbacks, everyone got complete info, everyone got some kind of access, even if it wasn’t precisely, exactly the access they wanted. And I have to give kudos to the two Executive Directors I worked under, first Nikos Psacharopoulos and then Peter Hunt, both of whom would do absolutely any interview with the press they were asked to do, no matter how crazed they were with final rehearsals, no matter the absolutely horrid mood they were in.

Sure, some reporters were still hostile and wrote the negative stories they had every intention of writing before they ever called me. But for the most part, I really enjoyed working with the media at Williamstown, and I think they really enjoyed working with me, because they saw me as on their side – and never knew all the many things I was hoping they wouldn’t find out about and want to do a story on… I remain grateful that digital cameras nor camera phones existed at that time.

I realize this was more than 20 years ago, but I think it’s still the key to getting press coverage: treating the press as customers and making calling them back quickly a priority. Also, keep sending those “old fashioned” press releases: I still use them for nonprofits I work with, and they still work in getting coverage – or, at least, a mention.

One more lesson: the man I loathed also always had a message, always had something to say. He knew what his central message was for whatever media moment was offered. Some speakers get that naturally, but very often, communications managers have to brief and prep someone before an interview regarding such a central message. Executive Directors: listen to your communications manager, meet with them, work with them, and craft that central message well! The payoff for doing so is enormous.

Also see:

        • Basic Press Outreach for Not-for-Profit and Public Sector Organizations
          Like fundraising, press relations is an ongoing cultivation process. These are basic, low-cost/no-cost things you can do to generate positive attention from the media.
        • Daily, Mandatory, Minimal Tasks for Nonprofits on Facebook & Twitter
          There are a lot of nonprofits using Facebook and Twitter just to post to press releases. And if that’s how your nonprofit, NGO or government agency is using social media, then your organization is missing out on most of the benefits you could gain from such. Facebook, Twitter and other social media are all about engagement. This is a list of must-do social media tasks – these tasks take minutes, not hours.
        • Outreach Via the Internet for Mission-Based Organizations
          It’s more than just putting up a Web site; it involves finding and posting to appropriate Internet discussion groups, sending emails to current and potential customers, using online social networking… it’s pro-active, interactive and ongoing. Here’s how.
        • Your initiative should exploit UN days
          International days, weeks, years and decades, as designated by the United Nations General Assembly, offer excellent outreach opportunities for nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations, charities, government initiatives and other agencies focused on improving and enriching communities and individuals, as well as protecting the environment.
        • For Schools: You Should Be Using Social Media. Here’s How.
          This advice talks not only about exactly what your school should be posting to social media, but the consequences of not doing so, as well how to handle tough questions and criticism. It also links to legal advice.
        • Getting More Viewers for Your Organization’s Online Videos 
          Videos are a great way to represent your organization’s work, to show you make a difference, to promote a message or action that relates to your mission, etc. But just uploading a video isn’t enough to attract an audience. This page on my site offers specific steps that will get more views for your organization’s videos on YouTube.
        • Where Are Your Organization’s FAQs?
          Reporters love FAQs – frequently asked questions and their answers. Are yours on your web site?
        • Handling Online Criticism
          Online criticism of a nonprofit organization, even by its own supporters, is inevitable. It may be about an organization’s new logo or new mission statement, the lack of parking, or that the volunteer orientation being too long. It may be substantial questions regarding an organization’s business practices and perceived lack of transparency. How a nonprofit organization handles online criticism speaks volumes about that organization, for weeks, months, and maybe even years to come. There’s no way to avoid it, but there are ways to address criticism that can help an organization to be perceived as even more trustworthy and worth supporting.
        • Lessons for online outreach to nonprofits, NGOs & charities
          From working with the nonprofit Knowbility in 2017 & 2018.
        • Frank description of what it’s like to work in communications in the UN
        • My consulting services regarding communications and community engagement