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.

Here’s the challenge: your performing arts organization is seeing dwindling ticket sales in this down economy. Your subscriptions have been in decline since 2001, a point at which fewer and fewer people wanted to commit to such long-range plans.

What do you do?

Take a look at ACT in Seattle, a regional theater company that is at the heart of the Seattle performing arts community.

ACT has added a third option for patrons to fill the seats. In addition to ticket sales and subscriptions, patrons can pay $25 each month ($20 for those under 30) to join ACT. The membership works exactly like a gym or museum membership. Come whenever you want, as often as you want. Love a play? Come see it again without paying more.

This is an idea Mission Minded was discussing with some of its clients several years ago. Our research showed that beyond the core subscriber audience, for many potential patrons the idea of a subscription was hard to understand. People understood “season tickets” and they understood “membership”, but “subscription” remained insider jargon. The confusing language plus the larger price tag created a barrier to getting people to make a bigger commitment to the performing arts organization.

Membership, instead, helps people make a bigger commitment without the fear and confusion.

Consider the numbers: ACT’s 4-play subscription is $180, while a 1-year membership earns $300. Giving people a new and familiar way to attend can make your product more attractive, make renewing automatic, and help your bottom line.

We’ll be closely watching how ACT’s new membership program works out. It’s great to see innovation and risk taking in the performing arts, not just on stage, but also in the way we get people to come to the show.

Learn more:

• https://www.acttheatre.org/TicketsPlays/NewBasicMembership.aspx
• http://kuow.org/program.php?id=19396

When your organization develops a new tagline, designs a new logo, or publishes a great annual report (perhaps with the help of Mission Minded), often the next question is about protecting your intellectual property.

How do you ensure that your investment in effective communications isn’t watered down by plagiarism?

Kate Spelman offers a good overview of nonprofit copyright issues in the most recent issue of Blue Avocado. It’s a good basic primer for any nonprofit professional.

Of particular note is her discussion of Creative Commons, an alternative to traditional copyright and an approach favored by Mission Minded.

Josh Bernoff’s article in Advertising Age, “Reaching Out to Conversationalists” points to important new changes in usage of Social Media. His article focuses on new user classifications from Forrester Research, which shows that the “old” ways of thinking about how people use social media need to be updated.

It used to be that we thought of social media users in terms of 6 main categories:

• Creators – representing 24% of online users, creators publish blogs, publish Web pages, upload their own video and audio, and write and post their own articles and stories
• Critics – (37%) Post ratings and reviews of products and services, comment on someone else’s blog, contribute to online forums and add to wikis
• Collectors – (20%) Collect information using RSS feeds and add tags to Web pages and photos
• Joiners – (59%) Maintain a profile on a social networking site
• Spectators – (70%) Read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch video, read online forums and read tweets. They aren’t contributing themselves, but the do consume user-generated content
• Inactives (17%) These folks do none of the above

*Note, users may be part of multiple categories, which is why this adds up to more than 100%.

Now Forrester Research has added a new classification: Conversationalists. Representing 33% of online users, these are people who update their status on social networking sites or post updates on Twitter at least once a week. They aren’t creating substantial new content like creators, but they’re doing more than just critiquing other content. They are part of a growing segment of the population that are participating in a larger online conversation with their networks of friends, peers, family and colleagues.

And as Bernoff points out, these aren’t just the kids. Seventy percent of conversationalists are over the age of 30. They’re 56% female, and they make more money than the average online consumer.

Why is this important to nonprofits? Because the people most in a position to support your organization are more and more also in a position to post tweets and updates about your organization. The new data show that 1 in 3 people online are participating in a global conversation. What if they were talking about your organization?

Now the idea of using social media to strengthen support for your organization isn’t new. What is new is the growing recognition that a sizable segment of online users are Conversationalists. It means that it’s time to take a fresh look at your social media marketing plan and ask yourself whether you are doing all that you can to engage people who could be tweeting and posting on your behalf.

It also means that if you don’t have a social media marketing plan, you’re late. It’s time to get started.

Keep the conversation going –
Does your organization have a social media marketing plan? How are you engaging Conversationalists?

If you want to help the people in need after the earthquake in Haiti you’ve no doubt already considered how to make a financial donation.   How did you choose which organization (NGO) to support?  I bet you chose one that you already knew.

A brand that helps people make quick and easy decisions about which product to choose or which organization to support when there are many choices.

When a brand stands for something clear and meaningful it has the best chance of being understood for what it really is. When you think disaster relief you probably think of the American Red Cross, one of the strongest nonprofit brands in the world. You may also think of Doctors Without Borders, the Salvation Army or MercyCorps.

Why? Because each of those organizations has invested in reinforcing that they are expert at helping people in times of crises.  Their key messages, images and appeals focus on the need and how their organization has the know-how to make a difference.  And they do this consistently, year round, in times of quiet and in times of disaster.  They built a reputation — just another word for brand — that stands for something and in times of disaster the pubic has the confidence to turn to these brands and trust them to do the best work with their donations.

The Haiti Education Foundation? St. Boniface Haiti Foundation? I’m sure they do good work, but I’ve never heard of them and so they aren’t the first groups I think of when planning how to donate to Haiti relief.

Even if your organization is not as large as the Red Cross or Salvation Army (and few are) you can still benefit from investing in having a clear brand. You’ll be making it easier for donors and volunteers to choose your organization when they seek to provide support to the people, animals or issues your organization serves.

Good luck. Now please make a donation to help the people in Haiti.  Choose the organization whose brand you trust most.

At today’s Development Executives Roundtable meeting in San Francisco I heard a solid presentation by Claire Light http://www.kqed.org/arts/profile/index.jsp?essid=21804.  Her topic, “Your New Year’s Resolution:  Figure Out Online Communications and Fundraising” intrigued me in it’s simplicity.

Among the many points she made to this audience of nonprofit fundraising professionals, these were my three favorites, paraphrased:

1. To understand all the Internet offers to non-profits, organization leaders must cultivate a high-level understanding of all the tools — and how they might support their organiztion’s goals.  Note that basic understanding, not mastery, is the idea here.

Some non-profit leaders may be burying their heads in the sand about how to maximize web-based tools because they don’t want to deal with the overwhelming amount of work it would take to learn them all. This is a mistake.  Leaders should know what the tools are so they can make decisions on which to use and which to avoid.  Leaders don’t have to personally master how to use each one — that’s what paid and volunteer staff are for.

2. Social media should be the least important tool for most non-profits. Yep.  That’s right, mastering how to build fan pages on Facebook and crowds on your Twitter page isn’t your top priority.  So let out that breath of fear you’ve been holding and think about what really matters most: mastering the basics of email communications, database management and online fundraising.

3. Related to #2 is that most fundraisers are asking the wrong question. As in, “How do I get rich people to give to my organization on line?”  The right question is, of course, “How does our constituency use the Internet and how can we use their preferences to more effectively engage them?”

I’d summarize Claire’s main points this way:  Don’t let shiny new tactics drive your communication and fundraising decisions.  As with your off-line strategies you must think about your goals and how best to achieve them, rather than frantically trying to fit new tools into your plan.  There are some Internet strategies that will serve you well in meeting your fundraising and advocacy goals. Use those.  And leave the rest until they actually add value to your constituents or really make your life easier.

Tiger Woods is a brand and his brand is in trouble. For all those who say he’s finished, for all the companies now withdrawing their sponsorships, for all that the media seem so gleeful about his fall, we predict that this unfortunate drama is just a blip on the screen of his long public life.

Though he has engaged in embarrassing activities that hurt his family and fans — all of them real people — the Tiger brand is far more powerful than Tiger the man. Brands aren’t built overnight and they are rarely destroyed overnight either.

The value of a brand is that it stands for something people understand and value. When people love a brand they tend to be loyal to it and that loyalty creates a certain willingness to overlook  facts that fly in the face of the perception one has about the brand.

Tiger’s brand has made mistakes, reflected both in disloyal acts to his family and in how the brand responded publicly to the scandal. Mistakes aside, the people who love and value what the Tiger brand stands for are far more likely to forgive, and maybe even forget, his bad behavior IF he sincerely asks them to forgive him, and then returns to what made his brand great in the first place: the athletic super power that people love to watch and aspire to be.

The Tiger Woods drama should be a reminder to all non-profits to invest heavily in creating a brand that has value to its public.  Why? Because a strong brand builds loyalty among donors, volunteers and other supporters. This loyalty will matter when the inevitable drama — major or minor — befalls your brand.

Say your receptionist calls in sick and the temp is rude to a major donor who calls.  That donor is more likely to forgive this transgression if she already feels a loyalty to your mission and your organization.  What if the media features your organization in a story about non-profit bureaucracy and financial inefficiency? Your donors and volunteers are less likely to believe what they read or hear if it doesn’t match what they already feel about the integrity of your work.

So think deeply about your brand and what it means to those who care about your mission. Make it stand for something simple, authentic and valuable that resonates strongly with those most in a position to ensure the success of your organization.  You’ll need that brand in times of trouble and the investment you made in ensuring a strong brand will pay off in loyalty.  Like Tiger’s fans, your supporters will stay with you if you really mean something to them.

We keep highlighting the work of Courage Campaign. But that’s only because we think they do a lot of things really well.

Their most recent campaign positions California candidate for governor Meg Whitman as “California’s Sarah Palin”.

Now, regardless of how you feel about Whitman’s politics or the Courage Campaign, the strategy demonstrates a few important communication tactics that you can apply to your own fundraising or political campaigns.

1. Write visually Sarah Palin is one of America’s best known political figures. Whether you love her or hate her, Palin has clearly aligned herself with a key set of ideas. But ideals don’t tend to be visual. Sarah is, though, and when we hear her name a picture comes to mind.
2. Find the shortcut Courage Campaign could have said that Whitman is a conservative or is anti-environment. But a lengthy description is hard to remember. Whether you want to or not, it’ll be hard to forget the simple equation, that Meg Whitman = Sarah Palin.
3. Be topical With her new book, Palin is dominating the headlines. By tying their message to one of America’s top stories, Courage Campaign makes sure that their message stays in the news, too.

One of the best books I’ve read on messaging, Frank Luntz’s Words That Work, was written by a man that I don’t agree with much politically. Yet, I recognize that there’s a lot to learn from what he does.

Whether you agree or disagree with Courage Campaign. Learn from what they do. They understand well how good messaging works.