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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Raise Your Voice: A Cause Manifesto, by Brian Sooy (a review)

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When it comes to communications, a nonprofit should act less like a business and more like the voice of a cause.

That’s the message Brian Sooy wants to bring us in Raise Your Voice: A Cause Manifesto. He is tired of watching nonprofit organizations design their logos, their websites, and their social media around some artificial idea of a brand.

As a nonprofit board member as well as a design professional, he advises: start with your mission instead.  Not your “mission statement,” but the purpose for which you exist.

In Part I of this slim book, Sooy gives advice on how to reach clarity about your mission.

In Part II, he spells out twelve principles related to the purpose, character, and culture of your organization and the tone of voice in which you speak to your supporters.  Taken together, these twelve principles guide you toward a more meaningful relationship among your Board, Executive Director and donors based on the cause in which you all believe.

“This is not a how-to book,” Sooy says, and he is certainly right.  It’s a philosophy, distilled.

If you are working at a nonprofit, read it to take a step back from the everyday business of your organization and remember why you work there in the first place.  You may dip back into it from time to time for inspiration.

You may even find yourself sharing sections with your coworkers, to get your focus back, and to remind yourselves that you and your supporters are all human beings who care about something, together.

 

Communication nurtures innovation: a guest post by Brian Sooy

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I hesitate to even mention the word innovation. It is so quickly applied—to a mission statement, a description of a program, an approach to program delivery, to social entrepreneurship—when used often enough, it becomes meaningless.

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Innovation is about doing an old thing in a new way. It is about creating a new way to do something new, or a new way to do something better.

The problem is we’re uncomfortable with new. We’re uncomfortable with new processes, new approaches. We’re uncomfortable with measuring the results we achieve, for fear they do not measure up to the board’s (and our supporter’s) expectations.

A high-performing nonprofit needs to be innovative, and dare be disruptive, in the manner in which it chooses to communicate. It must seek ways to disrupt the expectations of supporters, surprise its funders, and illuminate the outcomes of its work to new audiences. Here’s how that might look:

Think strategically

  • Be focused on your outcomes. With clarity of focus comes a clear path to the impact you need to be communicating about.
  • Put communications first. Create a communication plan achievable within your resources. Stick to it and execute on it.

Think beyond branding

  • Recognize your cause is not a brand, and your nonprofit is the voice for the cause. Think about your purpose, character and culture— the beliefs, values and actions that create your organization’s identity.
  • Begin with the premise that all communications are donor communications. Nonprofits are challenged to find the resources to project a professional image and communicate with a clear voice. More impact in fundraising, organizational sustainability, and cause awareness will be achieved when there is a commitment to investing in communications.

Put communications first

  • Use design to close the (communication) gap between your work and the stories of your work. The role of design is to be disruptive, to interrupt, and gain the attention of the audience.
  • Just because everybody else is doing it, doesn’t mean the approach is right for your organization.

Creating a culture of communication and innovation where one does not exist, or is just beginning to form, will take time. Begin with what you can do today—and one day, one person at a time—you’ll be quietly disruptive, and nurture your own culture of innovation.

 

Brian Sooy

Author Brian Sooy

Brian Sooy is a business owner, design professional, author, and speaker. He is the founder of Aespire, (pronounced “aspire”), a design consultancy that empowers mission-driven organizations to create purpose-driven culture, design with purpose, and communicate with clarity. Brian has over 30 years of experience in design and marketing with private and social sector organizations. He is the author of Raise Your Voice: A Cause Manifesto, a book that explores a framework for understanding how your purpose, character, culture, and unique voice empower you to communicate to the outcomes you are working to achieve.

Can Your Nonprofit Tell a Story to Save Its Life?

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Have you heard the tale of Scheherezade? She was a noble lady who married the king of Arabia.  Her new husband had a grim habit: marrying and killing off a wife every night.

Scheherezade’s  beauty couldn’t save her, but her stories did. Night after night, she told him one fascinating story after another, always ending with a teaser or a cliffhanger.  The king kept her alive another day…to hear the end of the story.

After 1001 nights, he had fallen in love with her and remained faithful the rest of his days.

We all love stories–but many nonprofit organizations can’t tell their stories to save their lives.  Is yours one of them?  Here’s how to become the Scheherezade of nonprofits.

Six stories your nonprofit should tell

Andy Goodman tells us there are six stories every organization should be ready to tell.

  1. The nature of our challenge story: This story describes the problem that you are trying to address with your programs/services. “Too often, we express this as a number,” warns Goodman.
  2. The creation story: This is the “how we started” story. “It’s primarily for internal use,” Goodman says, “but I think everybody who works in an organization should know it.”
  3. The emblematic success story: This story shares your unique approach and why it works.
  4. The values story: These are the stories through which your organization shows how it lives out its core values
  5. The striving to improve story: This story is for internal use and says “sometimes we fall short, sometimes we outright fail, but we always learn from our mistakes and do better next time,” Goodman says.
  6. The where we are going story: This is a story that says if your organization does its job right, this is what it will look like in five to 10 years. (For example, the ADL’s “A World Without Hate.”)

Some of these stories are for your prospects and supporters.  Some are for your Board, staff, and volunteers.  All of them say more about your organization than any mission statement or set of numbers can do alone.

Put it in writing

Sometimes you’ll tell your story in person, or on video, or through graphics.  Often, you’ll tell it in writing.  When you do, heed these 10 Tips for Writing Your Nonprofit Story from Network for Good.  I particularly like #7!

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