San Francisco Opera is about to launch its 2010-11 season, and (Mission Minded-designed) advertisements have already hit the streets. While there are a number of elements to the public marketing campaign, one of the most noticeable — and difficult to create — is the street pole banners.

At Mission Minded, we strongly believe that designing a successful street pole banner is like writing a great haiku:

If you say too much
You have said nothing at all
Brevity is key

Many organizations fall into the trap. They want to include sponsor logos, dates, times, phone numbers, and catchy copy. Others fall victim to small type. And still others ask the reader to think about too many things at once.

A great pole banner is simple. It introduces an idea and gives readers a single, clear way of responding. Take a look at the San Francisco Opera banner above for Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Imagery and a single word introduce the excitement of seeing one of the world’s best loved operas. The URL is all that is needed to tell readers how to respond.

More, the banner takes full advantage of the space available, allowing the word “San Francisco” to jump the space taken up by the pole. The result: readers driving at 30 miles per hour can still read the name and know what to do.

San Francisco Opera Street Pole Banner - Aida

The next time your organization sets out to create street pole banners, remember: stay simple, clear, and easy to read. Give your audience a single clear step to take, and don’t confuse people with extraneous information.

Around the world, organizations like CHPL, MRCD, and PoRUG are rejoicing. NPR and the Y have officially adopted shortened versions of their names. Does that signal to the rest of the nonprofit world that they should follow suit?

It shouldn’t.

Most nonprofit organizations face an uphill battle to be known and understood by their most important audiences. Using initials or an acronym presents a barrier for people to understand who you are and what you do.

Take BayCES, for example. An organization that believes every child has a right to a quality education, the name was understood only by insiders and ardent supporters. Every introduction required an explanation, which hampered the organization’s ability to achieve its mission.

With Mission Minded’s help BayCES has renamed itself National Equity Project. The full name explains who they are and what they do — an organization dedicated to ensuring an equitable education for every student in the country. And they have resisted the urge to shorten the name to NEP. Doing so would only serve to obfuscate their important work.

Even major national nonprofit brands face this challenge. Ask yourself: which organization would you rather support, the SPCA or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals? The later is a name that paints a picture and has punch.

So Why Can They Do It?

NPR and the Y are special cases. For NPR, the three letter abreviation is a standard practice in the broadcast journalism world. NPR isn’t competing with other nonprofits for attention; it’s competing with CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and FOX for market share.

More importantly, NPR owns the airwaves. Most nonprofits have only a few opportunities to get people to know and understand their name. NPR can remind its listeners many times a day what the NPR brand stands for.

For the Y, the organization has had more than a century to build brand awareness for its shortened name. It is one of the best known nonprofit brands in the world, and as such can marshal the resources needed to make such a move. Additionally, the original name is now so irrelevant that it’s comical. If being a young male Christian were still a litmus test for membership, the organization would lose most of its membership.

So What to Do?

Choose a name with meaning and stick with it. If you need to shorten it, let the shortened name have meaning too. This means that an organization like American Heart Association should use its full name whenever possible and shorten it “Heart” in casual conversation, rather than as “AHA.” The result will be greater understanding and support for the organization’s mission.

In the current economic climate, nonprofits need to focus on ways to stand out from the crowd, win charitable dollars, and survive the downturn. Effective, mission-focused communications can help organizations build strong identities, heightened reputations, and increased fundraising capability. - Sarah Durham

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  In fact, Sarah’s new book, Brandraising, How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications, is the book on nonprofit branding that we wish we had written.  Because Sarah is preaching the sermon we do for our nonprofit and foundation clients every day:  You have a brand whether you think you do or not, and investing in how strong that brand is can mean the difference between the success and failure of your efforts, even your entire mission.

In her book, Sarah makes it easy to understand how to strengthen your organization’s brand and why it’s important. We recommend this as required reading for any nonprofit professional, especially those wise readers trying to convince your colleagues that brand isn’t just a big fancy idea only applicable to large national nonprofits.

Read Sarah’s book and tell us what you think!
http://tinyurl.com/2efb3yu

Nonprofits typically don’t have as much money to spend on marketing as for-profit companies do. But what you lack in funds you can make up for in disciplined use of consistent messages and media over a long period of time.

Nonprofits tend to up and change their messages and design far too frequently. This results in a lack of any clear message being received by the people they need to reach.

You’re not in business to entertain yourself; you’re in business to change the world. To change the world, your message has to stick. For your message to stick, it must remain consistent.

Think of how many times a year you get a chance to really connect with your target audience. Not many, compared to a high-profit marketer like McDonald’s. When the chain launched its national marketing campaign, everyone in America had probably heard the slogan “I’m loving it” inside of two days. McDonald’s can afford to plaster the campaign all over your town along with everything you listen to and watch. But equally important—and the nonprofit’s take-away lesson—is that McDonald’s knows about consistency.

What if, instead of sticking with “I’m loving it” in every aspect of the campaign, they had put “I really, really like it” on some of their posters, and “You will love it” on others, and then used the line “McDonald’s equals love” in their TV ads?

It might have been cute, but the message would have been diluted and far less likely to be remembered. McDonald’s resisted the temptation to “go wide” and chose instead to make something memorable.

Yet, nonprofits make the “variety” mistake every day. They worry that their target audience might be bored with their message. They worry that they could find a better way to say the same thing. They change their focus and so assume they need to change their message.

That’s a big mistake.

Consistent use of message over time is the way nonprofits can successfully capture attention and stand for something.

Think of some of the organizations we know that do this well: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” has been the tagline of the United Negro College Fund for decades. “Only you can prevent forest fires” has been Smokey the Bear’s motto since most of us were kids.

Pick your messages and stick to them through thick and thin: it’s the way to make your marketing efforts stick.

“A brand is a result, not a tactic” – Lucas Conley

While the process of “brand building“ can be complex, in its simplest form brand is just another word for “reputation.”

In discovering a brand’s essence, determining what factors make up a compelling brand, and working to turn your organization into a great brand, you are articulating how your organization wishes to be perceived—what reputation you wish to have—and then doing everything possible to establish and reinforce that reputation.

Your brand is not your name, logo, or graphic identity.  These are signifiers about what your organization stands for, but your brand is the combination of facts and emotions about your organization and its work that comes to the minds of your audiences when they hear or read about you and your activities.

In his book, A New Brand World, Scott Bedbury, the marketing guru behind Nike and Starbucks, defines branding in expansive terms:

A brand is the sum of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the off-strategy.  It is defined by the award-winning [work] and the god-awful [work] that somehow slipped through the cracks….  It is defined by the accomplishments of your best employee—the shining star in the [organization] who can do no wrong—as well as by the mishaps of the worst hire you ever made.  It is also defined by your receptionist and the music your [constituents] are subjected to when placed on hold.  For every grand and finely worded public statement by the [executive director], the brand is also defined by derisory comments overheard in the hallway or in a chat room on the Internet.  Brands are sponges for content, for images, for fleeting feelings.  They become physiological concepts held in the mind of the public, where they may stay forever.  As such, you can’t entirely control a brand.  At best you can only guide and influence it.

In short, your brand is all that you are.  It’s the sum total of your organization’s services, behaviors, and signals.

It is far more than just a logo or tagline; it’s how your organization lives its mission and practices its values.  A brand is an organization’s core promise, its identity, and its reputation.  The best brands live in an organization’s DNA.

The best brands are defined by clarity of purpose, rather than a description of an organization’s strategies or programs.

Think of the best-known nonprofit brands—SPCA or Amnesty International, for example.  You may not quite know what these organizations do every day, but you know why they exist.  And that’s the idea: the goal of branding is not to describe comprehensively what your organization does, but to explain compellingly why it matters that you do it.

It’s about articulating your organization’s unique niche in making the world a better place, and claiming the distinctive role that will attract the public support you need to accomplish your goals.  Nonprofit branding persuasively answers the busy public’s inevitable question, “Why should I care?”

1. Remind people of the problem
Don’t take for granted that your audience already understands the problem your organization is working to solve. State the problem. Be clear and direct.

Even the most basic issues—education, global warming, feeding the poor—are complex at their core. Be very specific about the exact problem facing the exact population you serve. Then speak and write in plain language.

2. Avoid using acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon
Referring to your organization or program by its initials is a mistake. If your name is too long, change it. Every time you use an acronym or other shortcut for your name, you miss an opportunity to remind people of the business you’re in.

For example, most people know what the SPCA does…but when did you last engage with their core message? The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—doesn’t the full name remind you of what the organization is in business to do?

Granted, the name could be shorter, but hearing “animal” instead of “SPCA” makes a clearer and more emotional connection with people who care about animal welfare.

3. Focus on benefits instead of features
“Features” are what your organization does: provide programs, use volunteers to deliver services, etc.

“Benefits” are the solutions and positive outcomes that result from your features: lives are changed, children are protected, adults find jobs. Benefits motivate donors; features do not.

Rather than telling people about your scholarship program and how much money you distribute, focus on the way your community has changed because of your scholarship program; describe the lives that have changed, and the increased economic health of your community.

Your scholarship program is a feature. Changed lives and a better community are the benefits.

Your organization solves problems. Talk about the problems you solve, not the way you solve them. Donors give money not to processes (features) but to outcomes and solutions (benefits).

4. Keep it simple
When you come into contact with someone for the first time, whether in print or in person, it’s tempting to share everything there is to know about your organization.

Successful messaging demands that you stay focused on a high-level idea and mention only those things that help convey the essence of your organization. Be disciplined about what to share. Don’t overwhelm people with too much information. A good rule is to start with a description of the problem your organization is in business to solve.

5. Engage the reader
Great communication addresses the receiver’s, not the sender’s, point of view. When you want to get someone’s attention, use the second person “you” and speak directly to that person’s concerns.

Consider the difference between these two examples:

• The Education Fund needs donations to give students a chance to fulfill their college dreams.
  Vs.
• Your gift to The Education Fund helps a student fulfill her college dreams.

Which example is more engaging? Which organization are you more likely to support?

6. Highlight people, not programs
Studies show that we are much more likely to respond to the emotional story of a person’s challenge and success than to statistics proving the efficacy of the program designed to serve him.

We can learn about a youth-adult mentoring program, but hearing Sarah’s personal story of getting into the college of her dreams after participating in an after-school mentoring program makes us cheer for Sarah and all that she’s accomplished. We know the program is successful because we watched Sarah succeed.

There are, of course, appropriate times to share numbers. Some people need rational data to reinforce what they feel emotionally. When sharing data in a story context, though, use only numbers that are truly surprising, and frame them in a way that helps people conceptualize what those numbers really mean.

For example, reporting that 500 people received a scholarship isn’t nearly as impressive as saying that the number of people receiving scholarships this year would overflow Harvard’s largest lecture hall.

In a brandchannel.com article today it was posited that using Facebook to promote your brand is already a tool that is “over.”

This may or may not be true for consumer marketing mega brands like Coca-Cola and Nike. Those companies are in the business of selling products to people who may or may not want or need them. And people socializing on Facebook may just want a break from their off-line world, a world where they are bombarded with ads, promotions and pitches. Smart marketers will eventually find a way to use social media tools in more clever ways than just blatantly promotional pages. Like everyone, I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

But what about nonprofit organizations and the opportunity to use Facebook for promotion of causes, campaigns and coalitions for making the world a better place? Nonprofits have traditionally lagged behind in adoption of technology. How many of you reading this cringe at the lack of sophistication of your organization’s website, even today? And websites aren’t even new.

The challenge for nonprofits grappling with how to use social media tools effectively is this: Use of these free tools isn’t free. In fact, it’s quite an investment and a big investment if you intend to do it right. Why? Because while the tools are free, the human talent and time needed to maximize the opportunity is not.

Imagine Coke’s marketing head telling a staffer, “Ok, we should see how this whole social media thing works and start using it right away! I want you to devote a few hours a month of your time, on top of your other responsibilities, to this. And come back with some big results!”

That wouldn’t happen at Coke, but it might be happening at your nonprofit now.

Like any marketing communication opportunity, it takes talented, skilled professionals to do it well. Devoting little time, or getting people to do it pro bono doesn’t typically yield the top-notch results you seek. (Did any of you like the website your organization got designed for “free” by the brother-in-law of your board Treasurer in 1998?) Don’t make the same mistake with social media in 2010.

If you want to invest in social media invest in staff who can devote time and talent to doing it right. Even if she doesn’t have a lot of direct experience in social media campaigns (and few do) look for someone with a high level of creativity, analytical skills, strong sense of goal-driven marketing campaigns, and a willingness to work hard and take risks in order to find what works best for your organization. And make it her full-time job.

It’s not free, but social media tools like Facebook still hold tremendous promise for the nonprofit organizations who take it seriously enough to devote resources to doing it right.

Tell us your social media stories! We want to hear what’s working and what isn’t.

Yesterday Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook, and a key strategist behind Barack Obama’s online presidential campaign announced the launch of a new charity site designed to connect good people with good causes.

The site seems to leverage the power of Facebook and other social media sites to specifically connect those who seek who are philanthropically minded — as donors and as volunteers — with organizations working to make a difference in the world.

At Mission Minded, we’ve been helping many of our clients think through the challenges of effectively using social media by helping them think strategically about how to get the greatest return on their social media marketing dollar.

Jumo.com seems to offer an important new opportunity for nonprofits because it reaches a user-base already self-identified as philanthropically minded.

As the site develops over the next six months, every nonprofit communications professional around the world should be watching. Will the “next big thing” make our work easier or introduce a new wrinkle?

Video is increasingly important for engaging donors, volunteers and other supporters to non-profit organizations and foundations.  A short, compelling video on your organization’s website can help tell your story — and why your work is important — in a way that is highly effective.

A good video can also be used at events, board meetings, and in emails.

Happily, the cost of these videos can be surprisingly affordable for non-profits. And not because your executive director’s brother-in-law can edit your event footage on his laptop.  Serving our sector is a budding business for professional filmmakers and editors who are turning their talents loose to help non-profits tell their stories.

Mission Minded recently worked with Storytellers for Good to create a fundraising video for San Francisco-based Performing Arts Workshop. You can watch the video here.

And now Storytellers for Good is kicking off 2010 with an opportunity for Bay Area organizations to win a video created by their team of journalists and photographers — for FREE.

Email a description of your non-profit along with some of the inspiring stories you have to tell to cara@storytellersforgood.com.  Cara and her team will choose five lucky Bay Area organizations for whom they will create a promotional video that demonstrates the power of your good work and helps you attract funders, volunteers and others to your mission.

For more information visit Storytellers For Good.

Good luck!

Imagine you’re writing an online newsletter. You have a choice of stories to tell:

1. The one about your board retreat
2. The one about a major gift you just received
3. A story about a person whose life has changed because of your organization’s work

Even though most of us know that the third story is the best option, many organizations end up choosing the first two options.

Why? Because most organizations fall into this trap: we’re so excited to tell people about the work we’re doing on a day–to–day basis that we forget to tell them why our organizations are needed in the first place.

At Mission Minded, we call this the sin of starting in the middle of the conversation. Our donors gave us money, right? We assume they must understand our organization if they were willing to give, and therefore it isn’t important to remind them why our work is necessary. It’s OK if I jump right in and treat them as insiders.

Wrong.

The truth is that even our staunchest supporters — even our board members and staff — need to be reminded that the work we do is crucial.

In order to remind people of that, you have to start every conversation by answering the question, “Why?” Why does the world need your organization? What problem do you exist to solve?

Think about the organizations that do this best: Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, ASPCA. As a donor, I may not know much about these organizations’ individual programs, but through constant communication from these organizations in the form of stories, I know exactly why the organizations are needed. As a result, I feel I know them and trust them.

The same thing should be true for your organization. Every communication from your organization —whether its a annual report story or a casual conversation at your kid’s soccer game — should remind people why your work is needed. Save the internal machinations of how you do your work for the staff meeting.

Start with “Why” and the rest of your communications become easy.