Communicate!

Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Nonprofit Writing: Follow the Golden Rule

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Golden Rule

You know it and I know it: a lot of nonprofit writing is just painful to read.

We donate to our favorite causes. In return, we get newsletters full of jargon, emails full of typos, fundraising letters that sound like they’re written in French–because the organization says “We, we, we.”

As people who work for nonprofits, and to ensure their success, we can and should do something about this! Make sure your organization asks itself these five tough questions:

1. Are you listening long enough before you write?

2. Do you think longer and more complicated is more impressive? (Your readers don’t!)

3. Are you writing memos when you should be telling stories?

4. Are you burying the lead? (Does the reader know from the start why he or she should read on?)

5. Are You as Good a Communicator as Shakespeare’s Fools? (Will people invite you to speak truth fearlessly to them because you leaven it with humor?)

None of us wants to cause pain to our supporters. But that means we must think what our supporters want to read! The golden rule of writing is to write unto others the way you wish they wrote unto to you.

What Your Nonprofit’s Emblematic Story Says about You

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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?

Nonprofits, Start with the Experts Who Speak Your Language

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So you’ve decided your nonprofit organization needs to improve its communications.  You go online looking for advice.  What do you find?  Most of what’s written about communications (outside of this blog!) is aimed at for-profit businesses.  And there’s a lot of it.  How do you sort through the advice available to find what you can use right away?

Here’s the secret: start with the experts who speak your language.

Speak the same language

Speak the same language

You’ll find there are three kinds of articles about marketing and communications:

  1. Some are written for businesses but could equally well apply to nonprofits, with just a little translation.
  2. Some articles assume that you’re in business to make money and that all your decisions (including what you do and whom you serve) will change as the market changes.  Reading these articles is like looking at yourself in a distorting mirror.  It will take time and effort to make a picture you can recognize, let alone gain advice you can use.
  3. Some articles are entirely concerned with for-profit business problems and solutions.

Discard the #3’s.  File the #2’s for later.  Start with the #1’s.

What does it sound like when a communications pro speaks your language?  For example, take a look at Ken Mueller’s article “The Importance of Telling and Retelling Your Story.”  It makes its point in straightforward English, without a lot of jargon: you need to make sure the image people have of your organization is the image you’d like them to have.

This is why it’s important for a business to tell its story online. And to keep telling it. Not only does it tell people who you are, but it also corrects misinformation and tells them who you aren’t. In fact, every blog post, every status update, every photo, and so on, is a part of telling your story.

Just insert “nonprofit” for “business,” and you’ll hear advice that applies to you.  Look for more advice like that.  It will save you time and grief.

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