Catching Up After A Busy Three Months
The second quarter of the year seems to be the busiest and time for blogging disappears. So here’s some marketing and communications news, notes and lessons from the last few months.
Term Limit Ends Six-Year Stint With Community Service Public Relations Council (CSPRC): The June lunch meeting marked the end of a great experience with this organization. The organization made drastic improvements in its programs and conferences during the past decade. It was an honor and a pleasure to serve on the board with so many talented, dedicated and passionate marketing and communications professionals who are devoting their talents assist organizations in making our community a better place.
Teaching A Three-Hour Course At the Nonprofit Fundraising Institute: The University of Missouri-St. Louis’ Nonprofit Management and Leadership Program holds an annual fundraising institute in June. It was a privilege to teach the course, “All Donations Begin With Communications.” There were approximately 25 in attendance and they represented a variety of nonprofit and charitable organizations. Many participants shared wonderful stories of how they were first motivated to make a charitable gift. The common thread was that each one of them were influenced by a story about the organization’s work. We started out with an interesting perspective with the blog post from Dan Pallotta, “Don’t Sell Your Soul, Market It,” on Harvard Business Review. Some results from the annual Cygnus Donor Survey, “Where Philanthropy is Headed in 2011” were reviewed.
Work Highlights: Even though President Barak Obama was in Joplin, Mo., on the day before Memorial Day, the Boy Scouts’ annual Memorial Day Good Turn at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery received good media coverage, including a front-page photograph in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Greater St. Louis Area Council’s Annual Meeting and Recognition Dinner was another success. Twenty four adult volunteers received the Silver Beaver Award, the highest recognition a Boy Scout council can bestow. (View a PDF of the awards booklet.) The 2010 Annual Report was presented and approved. Colt Wahl, a 12-year-old Boy Scout received a Heroism Award for assisting his father after he fell 20 feet from a tree during a hunting trip. (Read a story in the St. Louis Review.)
Awards: Finally, the council received two National President’s Marketing Awards during the Boy Scouts of America’s Annual Meeting in May in San Diego. The council won the competition for best website and best 100th anniversary material for the marketing and communications plan for ScoutQuest 100, a council-wide encampment for 20,000 Scouts, parents and leaders in Forest Park. Both awards recognize the hard work, effort and dedication of many staff members and volunteers to provide outstanding marketing and communications for all the council’s stakeholders.
Communicating To Build Momentum During An Executive Transition
An executive director transition, as with any organizational change, can be stressful for staff, volunteers, board members, donors and members or clients of a nonprofit organization. When a retirement, resignation or other departure happens, it can create an environment of uncertainty. There often are questions surrounding the departure that can’t be addressed due to personnel issues. This can create more anxiety and distractions.
During the last six months, three of the largest nonprofits in St. Louis named had departures of executive directors–the Greater St. Louis Area Council, Boy Scouts of America, the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri and St. Patrick’s Center. The combined annual budgets of the three organizations is more than $40 million and they have tens of thousands of donors and clients or members.
Communications and marketing professionals play an important and pivotal role for the new executive director during this period. Social media and web 2.0 functions can help communicators do a better job at helping the new director make a good first impression and provide a channel to communicate vision and priorities.
How important are first impressions?
Michael Watkins, author of The First 90 Days, recently defended the importance of chief executive officers getting off to a good start. He was challenged by Kevin Kelly in a post, The CEO Revolving Door, on the blog, CEO Insight on the Bloomberg Business Week website.
Kevin Kelly
“Business readers have snapped up 500,000 copies of a book called The First 90 Days, by Dr. Michael Watkins, who has served as a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School,” Kelly wrote. “And since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s days, voters have thrilled to hear politicians describe all they will achieve in their ‘first 100 days.’ It makes for entertaining reading or political theater. But as for substance, it’s as thin as spun sugar.”
Watkins responded on a post, Improving Leadership Transitions Is Not Short-Termism, on on Harvard Business Review’s, The Conversation, blog. Leaders always will be judged during a transition. They must be quick to learn and absorb information while creating a positive and productive atmosphere.
Michael Watkins
“It’s that transitions are times when momentum builds or it doesn’t, when opinions about new leaders begin to crystallize,” Watkins wrote. “It’s a time when feedback loops — virtuous cycles or vicious ones — get established. Significant missteps feed downward spirals that can be hard to arrest. So it’s far better for new leaders to get off to a good start by building personal credibility and political capital, rather than dig themselves into holes and have to clamber back out.”
This period of transition for an executive director of a nonprofit is a critical time for communications and public relations professionals. In some cases, quickly establishing the presence of a new executive director helps move the organization rapidly forward. Introductions are made. Visions are communicated. Styles are expressed.
An example of a poor first impression took place almost a decade ago. The executive director held a staff meeting on his first day on the job. A staff member asked how the new director wanted to be addressed. Would he prefer to be called by his first name? Mister?
“I don’t care what you call me,” he told the entire staff. “Just don’t call me dumb a – -.”
Two things were clear after that first meeting. One, the executive director was previously called by that description. Two, the executive director’s previous performance probably warranted that description.
A communications plan to introduce the executive director during their first days on the job is essential. However, executive directors must be willing, aware and humble enough to see how important an effective communications plan can be during their first days.
Educating Staff On Social Media Guidelines
Nonprofit and charitable organizations can gain more from effectively using social media than for-profit companies. The passion and commitment of donors, members and volunteers can be effectively harnessed through these new media channels.
During the last year or so, the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America developed a presence on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. During the last few months, the BSA published social media guidelines.
A number of staff members of the Greater St. Louis Area Council asked for assistance as they began to work with volunteers in developing Facebook pages. But the biggest challenge for staff members was their online persona. Many staff members struggled as they decided if they should accept volunteers as friends on Facebook. Others had scores of friends who were hard-working and engaged volunteers and they used social media to cultivate and motivate these groups. Many staff members reacted to a post by an employee who commented on their salary increase.
These are just a few social media issues that organizations are dealing with. In an attempt to educate our staff, I reviewed the BSA’s new social media guidelines and made the following presentation to the Council’s professional staff members on March 31, 2010. It was recorded so the remaining employees could watch and listen to the presentation and receive the same information as the professional staff members.
How are you helping your organization maximize its effective use of social media? Are marketing and communications professionals going to be the leaders in this new territory? Or will executive directors and those with legal and human resources responsibilities be expected to provide guidance?
You’re welcome to leave a comment and start a conversation.
Wishing the best of luck to Teak Phillips, new editor of the St. Louis Review
An organization’s newsletter remains an important communications channel. Digital channels continue to grow, but print remains an integral element of any non-profit organization’s communications strategy.
The same is true for the newspaper of a religious institution. Which brings us to my surprise of the week: Teak Phillips named editor of the St. Louis Review, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
I had coffee with this young photographer from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch around 2001. I believe it was after the September 11th terrorist attacks and Mr. Phillips wanted to get involved with a Scouting program. If my memory is correct, he also mentioned that he was either agnostic or an atheist and asked if that would be a problem with the Boy Scouts of America’s membership standards. (A belief in God is a requirement for membership in the BSA.) It turns out he became a Roman Catholic when his wife returned to the church, according to an introductory article in the Review.
I’m happy for Teak and any other employee of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who is able to find another job. Like so many other large daily newspapers, the Post-Dispatch is teetering on extinction. (Last week, the parent company of the Post-Dispatch laid off dozens of employees and sold its interest in the St. Louis Cardinals National Baseball Club. The Chicago Tribune recently filed for bankruptcy and the Seattle newspaper announced it must be sold in a few months or it would switch to an all online product.)
In the interest of full disclosure, I was a finalist to become the Chief Communications Officer of the Archdiocese in 2006. As part of the interview process, I was asked to critique the Review. I recommended a wide-ranging and thorough overhaul. It looks like some of the vision and suggestions I had for the newspaper are shared by Mr. Phillips and Msgr. Vernon Gardin.
“I believe he is committed to working with priests in making the St. Louis Review a practical tool for their parish ministries and the people they serve,” Gardin told the Review.
AND HOW IT NEEDS TO BECOME A PRACTICAL TOOL!
The outgoing editor, Jim Rygelski, was a very competent journalist. But it was clear that Archbishop Raymond Burke, now at the Vatican, had no vision or passion for the publication or for using media to evangelize or to communicate with the general public. Rygelski wasn’t getting any leadership or direction to make the Review more relevant for the average Roman Catholic. Plus, the culture of the Archdiocese of St. Louis isn’t progressive and experimenting with the newspaper or the content could be a career-limiting move.
If you’re a Roman Catholic who wants to continue grow in faith and develop spiritually, reading the Review will rarely assist you. Currently, the only engaging content is found on the opinion page. (Robert Furey’s column is a must-read item when it runs.)
The wild card in all of this is that no one knows who the new Archbishop of St. Louis will be. All Archbishops control the content and tone of the publication. Will the next Archbishop be a better communicator? Will he understand the changing dynamics of mass communication? Will he understand the gravity of this fact: More than 1.4 billion cell phones will be shipped this year–more than all of the computers and laptops ever produced.
Most journalists who cross the dividing wall of pens, notepads and microphones to enter corporate communications must make adjustments. Teak Phillips is in a challenging situation because he will have to adjust to the culture of the Archdiocese and the Review, go through a redesign scheduled to launch in April, and then meet the expectations of a new Archbishop.
My thoughts and prayers are with Teak as he begins this new chapter. To go from questioning your belief in God to editing the newspaper of a Roman Catholic Archdiocese… what an incredible journey. He is a special individual with an understanding of faith and communications. That type of person doesn’t come along that often.
Mueller Communications 