Non-profits - Maximize Value from your Board of Directors

by Matt Heinz

Every non-profit I speak with wishes they could get more value from their Board of Directors. It's not that their directors aren't engaged or interested, it's just often difficult to get more of their time and specific, focused attention in between board meetings.

Here are several recommendations for how nonprofits (and any organization with board members and advisors) can get more value from these important partners.

• Give them smaller, contained tasks: Make it easier for them to execute, and get things done for you. Big multi-stage projects can be intimidating to tackle, but if you break those requests into smaller, more attainable tasks, things will get done more quickly


• Tap into their networks: Find out who they know, and how they can help you. Help your directors feel good by making connections within their network to other people, resources and organizations that can also help you get things done


• Leverage their specific expertise: I'm surprised at how few non-profits do this. Know what your board members do well - what they're passionate about, where they have experience - and make sure you tap into that


• Use them for ideas, not execution: This is more natural and achievable for board members, but the key is to not only let them be wildly creative - but to write everything down, capture all ideas, then triage, choose and execute the right ideas, right away


• Maximize meeting time with them: The more time you prepare, the more you'll get out of it. Have a set agenda and expected outcomes, give board members materials to review in advance, be focused during your time, record next steps and follow-up


• Track and hold accountable on commitments: Your board members are well-intentioned, but they can get busy and forget. Send them email reminders, set deadlines, and help hold them accountable. They'll appreciate that you do this


• Choose new board members wisely: As board seats come up for renewal, make sure new candidates understand the commitments. You want folks who are passionate about your work plus willing to help execute


• Reward them: For non-profits, monetary compensation isn't a part of the picture. That said, you still can offer introductions within your own network that will benefit them personally and professionally, give them awareness and public recognition for their time, etc.


• Get their families involved: Invite their family to recognition events, and give families a chance to donate time together for the right projects. Help the rest of the family feel good about the director's involvement and contribution. It'll make those couple extra hours your directors spend on a particular project or task easier to swallow


• Give them tools to work: This can be online collaboration tools, CRM systems, whatever is necessary to help them work faster and easier

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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.

Five Nonprofit Marketing Fundamentals

by Matt Heinz

We've been working more closely with several local nonprofit organizations lately, and the more I speak with those responsible for fundraising and donor relations, the more I realize just how similar the process is to creating and managing a for-profit sales process.

I'm also seeing the same fundamental needs for those marketing a charitable cause or nonprofit organization. The below five fundamentals of nonprofit marketing are a starting point, but should be at the core of every nonprofit's strategy.

Donor Profiles: There are so many worthy organizations out there. Which prospective donors are going to be most predisposed to support your cause? What do those potential donors have in common - their associations, their history, their demo or psychographic make-up? You don't need to hone in on just one specific donor profile, but you should have a good sense for the 2-4 profiles that are your primary target. The more you know about them, the more self-evident the messages, channels and tactics will be to engage them directly.

Defining Your Product: What are you "selling" to prospective donors? It's not the tactics of what you actually do, but the outcome of that work. All too often, nonprofits tell their donors about the operations, or what additional infrastructure or materials they need. But what is all that for? What are you enabling? How are you making lives better? What's the benefit, the result, the outcome of what you're doing? THAT is your product, and that's the kind of vision your prospective donors will be attracted to.

Storytelling: Spend less time describing what you do, and more time telling stories about the differences you're making. Tell stories about the recipients of your work. Share the before and after. When it's an option, let the recipients of your work tell the story for you - in print, on video, and in person. Stories make an impression far longer-lasting than mission statements and operational descriptions. Stories can communicate the emotion behind what you're doing better than anything else.

Mobilizing the Community: Take your product definition, your mission, and think carefully about the ecosystem of people, groups, organizations, communities and businesses that relate to it. How can those various individuals and groups help you spread the word, or even contribute directly? If you're involved in transitional housing, how good are your relationships with local real estate offices? Are they giving directly? Are the individual Realtors involved, and getting their own buyer/seller customers involved? Be exhaustive and creative about mobilizing related communities on behalf of your organization.

Creating Evangelists: You have them already. Passionate donors. Highly-involved volunteers and board members. A variety of individuals and groups who feel strongly about what you're doing. No matter their level of passion, they won't help spread the word as widely as they could if you don't help them. Give them reminders to do so, give them content to pass along, give them the facilities and tools to share. This alone can be so simple, but so powerful. Identifying, arming and mobilizing the evangelists in and around your organization can be the very foundation of your marketing strategy.

Over the next several weeks, I'll go deeper into each of these fundamentals with more examples and suggestions for action.

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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.

Identifying Innovation

I want to return to an issue that sparked some healthy debate a few weeks ago but didn't go far enough in my opinion.

When Michele Obama first announced the Office of Social Innovation, bloggers like Allison Fine posed some really important questions about what is meant by innovation and how to ensure that the government doesn't just reward the largest and most tested programs in lieu of smaller, sometimes newer, and even untested efforts at innovation. I'd like to pose this same question to the philanthropic sector.

How does innovation get funded and are we ok with the way it currently works?

Everybody knows that these are tough times for nonprofits and even tougher times for new nonprofits, IssueLab among them. We frequently hear from foundations that they are only supporting their existing grantees or that they aren't currently accepting proposals from organizations they don't already know. (A recent online discussion about grantwriting at Charity Channel only underscored the fact that we are hardly alone in this experience.) It's not that I don't understand the pressures foundations are under but if they aren't going to fund newcomers for the next two years how exactly will innovation get funded? And what sorts of innovative projects will simply disappear because they don't have the necessary funds to continue their work?

The difficulty in even introducing new ideas to potential funders reflects what I think are two conflicting values at work here. Foundations (and the government) want to support innovation but at the same time they place enormous value on legitimacy. We see this everyday in the work that we do at IssueLab. One of our core missions is to build visibility for the work of smaller nonprofits. There is no shortage of great research coming from organizations that maybe produce one or two reports a year. But these reports don't get the kind of search engine rankings, graphic treatment, traffic, or audience that are too often confused with legitimate research.

Anyone who has ever read anything about job training programs knows the critical role that legitimacy plays in the vicious cycle of poverty. If you don't look the part you don't get the job and if you don't get the job you will never have the resources to look the part. The second nasty thing about legitimacy is of course the question of access. Organizations and individuals who lack legitimacy also lack access. And in the case of funding innovation, they simply lack access to funding opportunities and to exposure for their ideas. At IssueLab we spend a great deal of time actively searching for research from smaller organizations. It's key to the work we do and it's why our collection can include research from a small after-school media project alongside research from the MacArthur Foundation. What will foundations and the Office of Social Innovation do to identify innovative projects?

What are the equivalent measures in the sector for judging the legitimacy of organizations? Other funders, name recognition, buzz, scale, earned income revenue, the ability to measure results and impact? How many innovative startup projects and organizations can claim all these measures? And will they have access to either the Office of Social Innovation or to ever scarcer foundation funding?

If as a sector we don't answer these questions, I am afraid we won't even know what we're missing!

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Gabriela Fitz is the Co-Director of IssueLab, a publishing forum for nonprofit research. She and her team blog about third sector research on IssueLab's blog "FootNotes"

incentive2innovate Conference Wrapup

I just returned from a great experience at the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations in New York City. Hosting the conference at the United Nations seemed appropriate given that it was a gathering of people who are trying to change the world. The percentage of people representing non-profits and social capitalist organizations was much higher than I expected, and it made for fascinating discussions. The conference was hosted in a gigantic conference room at the United Nations where UN delegates recently discussed the current economic crisis and debated potential solutions.

The conference was a combination of keynotes, panel discussions, and group breakouts where the groups debated one particular topic and brought their collective reactions back to the bigger group. There was a high level of interaction between participants during the various breaks and meals - with the public, the private, and the charitable all coming together for some interesting conversations and debates.

I had the opportunity to record the following video interviews to share with you:

• Dean Kamen - Founder of DEKA Research and FIRST


• Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin - Innocentive Founder and CEO


• Charlie Brown - Executive Director of Ashoka's Changemakers


• Neil Blakesley - VP, Strategy Marketing and Propositions for BT Americas

I have also published a collection of blog articles that highlight the top insights from the various sessions:

• Peter Diamandis and Matt Bross


• Keith Ferrazzi and Don Tapscott


• Tool #1: Open Collaboration


• Tool #2: Incentivized Competition


• Healthcare Industry Applications


• Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn


• Creating an Innovation Culture in Your Company


• Global Development and Partnerships

Here is a video from the Xprize Foundation from the conference to give you a quick inside look into what the conference was like:




I thought that incentive2innovate was a great conference and that the Xprize Foundation organizers put on a fantastic event in a historic location. But, I'm not sure how they can put on another compelling event next year without expanding the focus of the conference. Given the large number of social enterprises, charities, and NGO's at the conference this year, that might be one direction to go - "Innovation for the Greater Good." For people interested in this topic, I encourage you to download and read my white paper "Charitable Innovation - Disrupting for Good."


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

incentive2innovate - Global Development & Partnerships

The final panel on the second day at the incentive2innovate conference at the United Nations was on global development and partnerships. The panel was moderated by Michael Green (Co-Author "Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World"):

Andreas Widmer, Co-Founder, S.E.VEN (Social Equity Venture) Fund
Amir Dossal, Executive Director, United Nations Office for Partnerships
Charlie Brown, Executive Director, Ashoka Changemakers
Carol Armistead Grigsby, Deputy Director, Office of Development Partners (ODP), US Agency for International Development (USAID)



Rather than trying to recount the discussion, I thought I would present the Top Insights from the panel:

1. "Innovation requires the use of appropriate technology for your target markets (whether corporate or non-profit)." - Andreas Widmer


2. "When a non-profit is looking to run a contest, it shouldn't be focused solely on the ideas or the solutions, but on the total impact." - Charlie Brown


3. Ashoka's Changemakers seeks to act as an accelerator for external foundations who provide sponsorship for its challenges.


4. "There are lots of social efforts going on and sometimes it can feel overwhelming but you have to get involved." - Charlie Brown


5. USAID plans to launch "innovation springs" similar to the "innovation jams" at IBM.

What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Charitable Innovation - Disrupting for Good

The operational model for charities in this country is an ideal candidate for disruptive innovation. It strikes me as odd that charities, the organizations that really have the least to spend on marketing, spend such inordinate amounts of money and time on marketing to raise money. Does spending lots of money on fundraising actually work?

Let's stop for a moment and look at how AIP defines acceptable charity performance:

• Spending 60% or more of a charity's budget on programs, and spending $35 or less to raise $100 in public support

Groups included on AIP's Top-Rated list generally spend 75% or more of their budgets on programs, and spend $25 or less to raise $100 in public support.

Unfortunately, many charities don't even meet the acceptable charity performance definition:

• "It is sad that cancer charities, one of the most serious and popular giving categories, perform so poorly - half of the cancer charities that AIP rates in this Charity Rating Guide receive a D or F grade and only 37% receive an A or B."

If we look across charity organizations as a whole, it is not a stretch to imagine that the aggregate reality is probably somewhere around spending 50% or less of their budgets on programs, and spending $50 or more to raise $100 in public support.

What greater positive benefit could we have on society as business innovators than to help create a disruptive business model for charities? What if we could stand the traditional, and hugely inefficient, model of list rental, telemarketing, direct mail, and list saturation on its head and instead imagine something different?

There has to be a better business model that we could collectively create as a gift to society that would increase the percentage of charitable revenue that actually goes towards the charities' intended missions. If we created a new best practice that could be adopted across the industry, think about the impact we could have (equivalent of up to a doubling of monies raised).

I think we can distill the disruptive possibilities down to the following five key principles:

1. Give consumers a way to offset negative side effects with a positive action


2. Link fundraising efforts more closely to the benefit delivered


3. Reduce fundraising friction


4. Maximize existing communication channels to highlight benefits that others provide


5. Improve Efficiency

Please download and read the white paper to look at the disruptive possibilities and charitable innovation opportunities each one presents.


And, if you would like to help evolve the ideas in the white paper, please post a comment with your thoughts, additions, or refinements, or join our Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn and contribute to the discussion there.


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)