Photo by Carrie Sloan on Flickr.com

It’s not news that the Great Recession has taken its toll on nonprofits and those they serve. The mom on food stamps for the first time, the widow who lost her home to foreclosure, the shuttered community counseling center–these are all important stories that put a face on the economic downturn. But how do nonprofits move beyond these personal stories to spur systemic change?

Our free Brown Bag forum happening next week on Tuesday, Reframing Stories of the Great Recession, looks at how agencies can reshape their communications strategies to move to a narrative that engages policy makers in the midst of city and state budget crunches and ongoing belt tightening in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors.

“Demand outweighs the supply because budgets are being slashed across the board. I think this narrative is tired” says Thom Clark, president, Community Media Workshop. “Nonprofits need a media strategy that goes beyond recounting the human impact of an agency’s financial dilemma. The media is hungry for new angles to tell the ongoing recession story. Nonprofits should be at the center of this news frame.”

The panel discussion with some of Chicago’s top journalists and policy makers includes Laura Washington, Woods Fund; Mark Brown, Chicago Sun-Times; Chip Mitchell, WBEZ; Sarah Karp, Catalyst Chicago; Ralph Martire, Center for Tax and Budget Accountability; Amisha Patel, Grassroots Collaborative; Amy Rynell, Heartland Alliance; and the Workshop’s Thom Clark.

When/where: Tuesday, August 24, 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Columbia College Chicago, 33 East Congress, Room 219

Visit the Workshop’s website or call us at 312-369-6400 to sign up today.

Photo by Keith Ellison on www.flickr.com

Last Friday, a Google search of  “LeBron James Media” produced 108,000,000 links and 1160 related articles. On Yahoo.com there were 10,857 stories posted.

If, during the past two weeks, you lived in the forest with no phone, internet, television or interaction with other human beings, you might have missed the story. Here’s what happened: James dominated the 24-hour news-cycle with his impending free agent decision. When it was all said and done (after a well-publicized hour-long special on ESPN), James’ career decision had been given the attention of a world-changing event rather than the simple business process it began as.

What are the lessons behind the LeBron James PR show?

Steve Buckley, at the Boston Herald, drew on lessons from Vince McMahon of WWE fame, to help explain James’ media mastery.

McMahon, an impresario who turned a regional dog-and-pony pro wrestling circuit into what today is known as World Wrestling Entertainment, has known for years that it’s easy to bypass the meddling media middle men and bring your product/message directly to the public. All you need to do is set up your own network, and then use it as a stage on which to play out all your story lines, plot twists, interviews and “breaking news.”

While nonprofits can’t set up their own media outlets, they can deliver their stories and issues to the public directly through available technology. By using social media applications, nonprofits cut out the “middle man,” taking the heart of an issue to a local (or worldwide) audience.  Rather than waiting for a press conference to be covered, nonprofits, like James, can take control and tell their own stories by tying them to a timely news peg.  Write your press releases with flair. Know your story, conflicts involved, and be transparent. Know who your sources are and be prepared to rise to the occasion when pitching reporters or when they come looking for you.

It’s true that James owns a PR company that’s focused on creating an iconic image of James, and it’s also true that most nonprofits will never have the star power of a famous pro basketball player to entice the media. But, nonprofits can tell their own stories and be clever and creative about using the range of tools now available to talk directly to their audiences.

Lesson: First, control the issue. Don’t allow the issue to control you.

James’ media strategy did have its critics. Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune wrote the outcome would have been better if James’ communications team had seized control from the start.

If James and company had been on top of this, his Web site would have tracked his whole courtship process. He could have kept an ad-supported video diary, including behind-the-scenes video of meetings with franchises.

Of more importance from a business standpoint, fans would have been invited to register to vote for their team and receive updates through e-mail and Twitter, creating a valuable marketing database.

Just one problem: James has owned the domain LeBronJames.com since 2002 but hasn’t done much with it until recently. Until Tuesday, James also had not used Twitter to address the public directly. So much for a New Media offensive.

Do any of these missteps sound familiar? Has your organization attempted to use social media tools in the past, only to fail to put the necessary time into the endeavor because of busy schedules? Perhaps constant Twitter, Facebook, and blog updates are just too much to juggle when you’re already swamped trying to provide services to a community or support to your colleagues.

But don’t underestimate the importance of tending these tools. Posting regular online updates about your organization’s journey, creating a digital archive of past articles on your website, or asking clients for input could give you a powerful platform to engage your audience and keep them coming back.  In other words, use your work to create brand recognition.

Lesson: When given an opportunity to connect, don’t hesitate.

LeBron’s decision to wait to give his answer until his ESPN event was also seen as a big public relations failure by some.  Michael Flood McNulty of OpposingView.com wrote:

LeBron James created a publicity circus unlike any other Thursday night — this was his choosing, not the media’s so don’t blame the messenger — and he humiliated his hometown fans in the most public way possible…

LeBron James alienated a lot of people tonight. Actually, alienated is the wrong word. He stunned and hurt a lot of people tonight.

What’s one of the first rules of communications? Who’s your audience and how can you reach them? Whether you’re trying to educate a specific group about an issue you’re working on or you’re trying to get people to take action, how you say it and when you say it and the channel you use to convey it are so important.

Lesson: Don’t forget your audience. Be thoughtful of what they need to hear your message.

As friends at social service agencies are getting set to layoff staff in the coming weeks and organizing rallies in the hope that they can stop it, we get the sense of the limits of the power of effective communication.

The situation, which calls to mind the phrase “if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention” is that governor and Legislature are at a standstill in fixing problems a long time in the making. Governor Pat Quinn says the current budget “creates a $9.2 billion dollar funding gap and forces deep and distressing cuts to our vital social service agencies” on his home page. Rich Miller’s authoritative Capitol Fax (fair warning, if you haven’t been following along, you may have to spend 15 minutes or so reading to get a sense of what’s going on in springfield) documents that legislators feel Rod Blagojevich’s replacement has done a less than stellar job of convincing them to support his income-tax increase solution.That’s the simplistic (maybe overly so) sum-up of the situation.

The news coverage has been good, as a recent google news search shows. Some favorite columnists such as Mary Schmich and Phil Kadner, have both had nice stories on local rallies, for example. (Mary’s story ends with a great quote from a picket sign: “the state budget is a bigger mess than my room.”)

Read the rest of this entry »

the Chinese vase balancing act of GuiMing Meng (via Dance Project Sequence inc. online reviews)

Well, time to go back to work! Thank goodness. Didn’t think too much about the office or communications over the break (whoops, busy Monday ahead tomorrow!) but in between fending off requests for popcorn at the Big Apple Circus just before Christmas I was reminded of what CMW trainer and professional storyteller Susan O’Halloran taught me is the “rule of three.” As Wikipedia puts it most succinctly, the rule of three is

…a principle in English writing that suggests that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things. From slogans (”Go, fight, win!”) to films, many things are structured in threes. There were three musketeers, three little pigs, three billy goats Gruff, Goldilocks and the three bears, and Three Stooges. (Link to full entry here)

Here’s what I saw and here’s how I think it applies to our work, especially in tough economic times.

Read the rest of this entry »

You should be pushing your content out to every available venue possible — syndicating everything you can, information, experiences, and stuff, so that people can find it.

p. 15, Media Rules by Brian Reich and Dan Solomon, (Hoboken: Wiley & Sons, 2008)

Video matters because it gets high response. But how well do oral history video databases work compared to more produced tight, short videos?

At Vertical Response, they blogged recently that their video tutorials are among their most popular website pages. I noticed a video posted on our blog got instant response, and Michael Hoffman of See3 Media notes this, too, along with a raft of other helpful materials on video at his agency’s blog, See What’s Out There.

My favorite on-line videos, like the ones by Free Range Studios, have high production values and a strong advocacy agenda. But what seems potentially more interesting–what prompted this post–are the oral history with a purpose video storytelling sites such as The Historymakers, the 1,000 Voices Archive, and a new one, Chicago Gay History. Read the rest of this entry »

When six anti Iraq war activists staged a “die-in” this past Easter Sunday during Francis Cardinal George’s sermon at Holy Name Cathedral, they got a lot of holiday weekend  attention from the media, but not quite with the message they’d hoped for. Facing felony charges for “criminal defacement in a house of worship” with potenially 3-5 years in prison, the Holy Name Six sought media advice fromt he Workshop for their upcoming court date.   The young activists knew broadcast and print media would be present for the cardinal’s Mass, but admitted they didn’t prepare ANY materials for the media to explain their action, which included spraying of a blood-like substance made up of sugar water and food coloring. Read the rest of this entry »

Patricia Jane Pennell and I looked over “Green Pursuits” game for Grand Rapids community planning at a Communicating Land-Use Better workshop April 21.

Monday with a group of land-use planners we talked about using stories and leading with our values to catch our audiences’ attention instead of putting them to sleep or sending them away puzzled about what we really were talking about, anyway. The training was a mix of Sue O’Halloran’s storytelling techniques and Action Media’s findings on how to communicate around issues.

From the evaluation by and large people loved it (definitely the first part, the second is still a little abstract). Read the rest of this entry »

Today I heard Ahmed Rehab of Council on American-Islamic Relations Chicago presented to some 50 leaders and staff of immigration-related nonprofit agencies on media relations. It was awesome to be in the audience, what I wrote down highlights of course the most important issue: context. Read the rest of this entry »

X-politics: ESPN-speak for direct action organizing. Read this piece from The Nation, by Nick Von Hoffman, I think you’ll love it! Gotta love those Code Pink ladies.