Today, I received an email asking me to take a survey on the nonprofit sector and encountered a number of obstacles in getting to the survey. Here is my assessment and tips for improving the process.Continue reading
Lessons from an Outreach Campaign
Lessons from a Campaign – Blog Post
I recently followed up with an nonprofit organization that produced an outreach campaign around the concept of alleviating hunger in their community. Taking a three-pronged approach of collecting food, soliciting donations, and galvanizing people to long-term volunteering, the organization partnered with other community groups to implement the campaign. Ambitious and well-intentioned as it was, the campaign did not achieve their desired outcome. Here’s what they learned.
Lessons
1. Focus on one goal. Raising $100,000, collecting food and inspiring volunteerism turned out to be too many goals for one initiative and spread them too thin. They said that next time, they would assess what is realistic and focus and channel their efforts toward that one goal.
2. Allow enough time. With only three months to coordinate the effort, they were already short of time in coordinating all parties, lining up the right assistance and developing the marketing. Allow 6 to 12 months to work out the strategy, plan the details, galvanize support.
3. Have strong leadership. In this case, they had the laudable goal of stitching together a coalition of community groups. However in practice, there were too many chefs in the kitchen and disputes broke out about who was in charge. Strong, diplomatic leadership is needed as well as clearly articulated roles for each party that match their expertise and meet their interests.
4. Plan properly. Lack of proper planning resulted in major problems, such as not getting the requisite permission in time to distribute 140,000 flyers in schools – a huge wasted opportunity – as well as a website that was incapable of collecting volunteers names. Proper planning can help you to map the roles, responsibilities and logistics, as well as contingency plans, needed for a successful campaign.
5. The coordinator who was hired to recruit volunteers did a good job in his initial outreach, but failed to set up a campaign office to field calls. As a result, innumerable volunteers were lost and the effectiveness of the overall campaign was compromised. There are several possible lessons from this:
A. Vet your consultants thoroughly to ensure that they have the necessary expertise and capabilities to deliver on what they say they can.
B. Fully understand the scope of services that you are engaging them in and document it in writing.
C. Assign one person to take responsibility and provide proper oversight, including feedback, support, resources and monitoring to ensure the project is on track.
6. Identify your weakness and get help. The organization recognized that they lacked the expertise or connections to get media exposure for their campaign. Looking internally they found someone with a contact to a former TV reporter who was very connected to the media. They got him to volunteer his services, which proved invalable in getting media coverage.
7. Build the structures needed to ensure continuity. For this campaign, one of the goals was to inspire people in the community to become regular volunteers. Poor planning and oversight resulted in a website that did not capture volunteers names or list the ongoing volunteering opportunities with the community groups. Had this been a priority, the campaign could leveraged this asset to build on the hundreds of hours of work put into the campaign.
8. Learn from your mistakes and build on your relationships. Unfortunately, the relationships with the community partners were left in a more strained status than at the start. Bringing together other organizations to work on a campaign serving the public interest is a good foundation from which to grow. And while success is the goal, some mistakes are inevitable. Viewed as learning experiences, these could be seen as opportunities for all parties to gain knowledge about what does work and to deepen their relationships for future collaborations.
• • •
Postscript: In the end, the organization publicly claimed the campaign as a success, stating that it was billed as a one time event, raising 2,000 pounds of food (and justifying that it did raise the $100,000, but from community foundations that had made previous pledges, instead of the public as intended).
A nonprofit organization produced an outreach campaign around the concept of alleviating hunger in their community. Taking a three-pronged approach of collecting food, soliciting donations, and galvanizing people to long-term volunteering, the organization partnered with other community groups to implement the campaign. Ambitious and well-intentioned as it was, the campaign did not achieve their desired outcome. Here’s what they learned.
Seminar on Fundraising Events
Toady, I conducted a seminar on Branding and Your Fundraising Event in conjunction with Peter Levinson, Owner of Levinson Block LLC. The session was part of the Connecticut Association of Nonprofits’ spring education series.
Held in New Haven, CT, the workshop helped nonprofits understand how to marry their mission with their fundraising event so that event attendees would leave the event as advocates for the organization. Using case studies for a house salon party, walk-a-thon, dinner gala, and conference-type events, we explained how an organization’s brand can inform the look of the marketing materials for the event, how to highlight the organization’s name so that donors know what event they are supporting, and ways to maximize your marketing budget,
A Few Takeaways:
- Create a theme for your event that reinforces your mission.
- Employ graphic techniques for establishing a consistent visual look for allmarketing materials for the event – from the invitation, to the journal, the emails, as well as the signs and presentation at the event.
- Look for every opportunity to promote your mission and create a consistent brand.
- Have your speakers reinforce your mission as part of the theme of their speech.
- And don’t forget a podium sign with your logo!
The seminar can be adapted for different audiences and different lengths. To bring this session to your organization, contact Howard Levy at 212-673-9353 or howard@redroostergroup.com.
Red Rooster Group is a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites, and marketing campaigns to increase your visibility, fundraising, and communications effectiveness. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.