Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

What is Your Emblematic Success Story?

by Leave a Comment

Your organization may have many success stories to tell. I hope it does! but what is your emblematic success story?

emblem, n. an object or its representation, symbolizing a quality, state, class of persons, etc.; symbol. 

Spiderman emblemSome emblems are visual. When you see the image at the right, you think, Spiderman–hero–using his powers for good.

Some emblems are stories. Can you tell a story about your organization and a time it succeeded that will let people know who you are and what you’re all about– as clearly as the costume does for Spiderman?

An Emblematic Story about Preventing Homelessness

The Somerville, Massachusetts anti-poverty agency CAAS prevents people from being evicted and becoming homeless. When I worked there, I heard this story.

A Brazilian family came to the Portuguese-speaking Housing Advocate at CAAS, Sylvia, for help. They had fallen behind on their rent, and their landlord wanted to evict them. They wanted to stay.

Sylvia looked at the rent the landlord was charging them. She was horrified. “This rent is much higher than the market rate!” she told them. “No wonder you couldn’t pay it!”

“We didn’t know that,” the family said. “We don’t speak much English. The landlord comes from the same part of Brazil that we do. We thought we could trust him. We didn’t think he would take advantage of us.”

“But he did,” Sylvia said. “You don’t really want to stay there. You want to move somewhere with a reasonable rent that you can afford.”

“Fine,” the family said, “but who is going to take us as tenants when we’re five months behind on the rent?”

Sylvia swung into action. She arranged free legal services for the family. In court, the judge ordered them to pay what they could immediately, and he gave them three more months of living in the same place before they had to either pay in full or face eviction. That was three months extra for them.

After the hearing, the landlord was fuming to his lawyer in the hall. “You told me I would get these people out right away!” Sylvia sensed the chance to make a better deal for the family. She grabbed them and their lawyer and the landlord and his lawyer and started negotiating. Finally, they agreed:

  • The family would pay what they could, as the judge had ordered.
  • They would stay in their apartment for only one more month.
  • The landlord would forgive all the back rent.

And Sylvia helped the family apply to Catholic Charities for assistance paying first and last month’s rent at a new place they could afford. Instead of facing homelessness, they would be housed stably for the long term.

What Your Emblematic Story Says about You

Now, consider what you know about CAAS from this story.

  1. The agency hires staff who speak languages besides English.
  2. It serves clients who were born in the U.S. and clients who were born in other countries.
  3. It partners with other agencies to get legal and financial help for the people it serves.
  4. It doesn’t just stop at the problem that’s being presented (the threat of eviction). It recognizes and tries to solve the underlying problem.
  5. Housing advocates at this agency think creatively and advocate boldly.
  6. Like Spiderman, they use their powers for good.

What is your emblematic story? What does it say about your organization?

Introducing…Your Nonprofit Organization

by Leave a Comment

You’re at a party, and the host introduces you to someone you’ve never met  before. You smile. You say hello. Then comes the inevitable question,”So, what do you do?”

Cadence Turpin thinks that’s the wrong question. People are more than–and some times, very different from–what they do for a living.

For instance, her best friend Carolyn is a meeting planner. “Not many people understand meeting planning, nor do they know what to ask next when the ever so common ‘so what do you do?’ is posed.”

A lot of the time, people in the nonprofit world feel the same way. Not that many people understand the ins and outs of running a preschool program, or helping borrowers work out bad credit, or providing scholarships to young artists…or the millions of other things that nonprofits “do.”

Honestly, not that many people want to know.

So, like Carolyn, we end up feeling stuck. “If they don’t find her work interesting enough, then she must not be very interesting.”

If people don’t want to hear about the nuts and bolts of our nonprofit work, we have nothing to talk about? We know that can’t be true. But what can we do about it?

A Better Way to Say Who We Are

Cadence has found a better way. Instead of telling what her friends do, she tells why they matter to her.

I want people to know my friend Carolyn is amazing at her job, but more than that, I want people to know the stuff inside her that makes her a great friend. The stuff that makes you want to stand by her at a party, in hopes that her thoughtful observations and quick wit might rub off on you.

Can you find ways to do that for the organization where you work? Can you make that agency sound like the best friend you’d love to introduce, and that everybody would love to be introduced to?

Putting On the Shoes: What Ray Bradbury Taught Me about Marketing

by 2 Comments

“I’ve got to think of reasons for the shoes.”Image

The boy in Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Sound of Summer Running” is Douglas, and Douglas wants new sneakers as if his life depends on them.  His parents think last year’s sneakers are fine.  To Douglas, last year’s sneakers are “dead inside.” But how can he convince Mr. Sanderson, the shoe store owner, to let him buy the Royal Crown Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Tennis Shoes when he doesn’t have enough money to pay for them?

It’s not reasons that convince Mr. Sanderson.  It’s not even his way with words.  Douglas gets the shopowner to put on a pair of the shoes.

With the sneakers on his feet, down below the suit he wears to do business in, Sanderson feels what Douglas feels. They have summer built in. For Sanderson, it’s a summer far away, running with antelopes and gazelles, a summer as distant as his own childhood.

Even after he agrees to let Douglas work off the price of the shoes by running–literally running–his errands, Sanderson is still thinking, “Beautiful creatures leaping under the sky, gone through brush, under trees, away, and only the soft echo their running left behind.”

Not all of us are marketing shoes.  Some are selling social change.  All of us, though, are Douglas.  We want something that someone else has the choice to give us.  How do we get them to feel, in every inch of themselves, from the ground up, that they want it too?  How do we get them to put on the shoes?

Yes, I’d like weekly email from Communicate!

Get more advice

Yes! Please send me tips from Communicate! Consulting.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.