Indecent Prepositions

Are you excited for this post?

If so, you're probably a lot younger than me.

To baby boomers and our elders, "excited for" was something you said about a person. I was excited for my sister when she landed her first job.

Just recently, I was excited for my gay and lesbian friends when their marriages finally, finally became recognized all over the United States.  They are people, and they matter to me.

But I was excited about the decision that made their marriages legal. It was an event!

All prepositions are not created equal

Words like "about" and "for" are prepositions. They're the useful little signposts that point out relationships. Not the "Is Ben going to get back together with Jennifer?" kind of relationship, but the kind of relationship between words in a phrase or sentence.

But prepositions do have one thing in common with romance: if you put the wrong couple together, they are not going to get along. People observing these mismatched pairs may wonder "What are those two doing together?"

Or, they may even appear to have a different relationship than they do, and that causes confusion. Watch a guy flirting with a woman he thinks is single, and how his face falls when her husband shows up. Using the wrong preposition with the phrase can confuse people just as badly.

What's wrong, and what's just different?

"Excited for" is not wrong. I recognize that. Language changes. Meaning shifts. This particular way of saying things is so popular that I see people older than me online saying they're "excited for" an upcoming event. And nobody has trouble figuring out what it means, when they see it in a context.

(Yes, "excited for" still gives me pause, and I have to remind myself that the person saying it isn't an airhead. But that's my prejudice. It's up to me to handle.)

Similarly, language changes from one place to another. I grew up in Pittsburgh, where, when we're waiting to pay for our groceries, we stand in line. My wife grew up in New York, and she gets impatient about standing on line. She's not wrong--at least about her preposition--even though "buying something online" means something totally different today! 

Which words go together?

Sometimes, though, I see prepositions being used in phrases where they just don't belong. The person writing is just fumbling with the words, as if they were interchangeable. To my mind, there's something squalid about it.

Here are some actual examples. I am not giving the sources to avoid embarrassing the writers.

• "It wasn't IQ that was separating successful students to the ones who struggled." No, it wasn't. You don't separate to. You separate one thing from another.
• "Antisemitism is discriminating people just because they're Jewish." No, it's discrimination against Jews. You need the preposition!
• "Sexual harassment is the right of every American...." That sentence appeared in an otherwise very good student essay. What the writer meant, of course, was "Freedom from sexual harassment is the right of every American."

There are other cases where the preposition you choose expresses a slightly different shade of meaning. "Arguing with" someone is not "arguing against" them. The first might be a private conversation. The second is probably a public debate.

If you choose the wrong preposition, other people may still understand you--or they may misunderstand you completely. Either way, you're making them do all the work. And you're putting yourself at the mercy of their ability to understand. Respect yourself: make the effort to learn and use the word that says what you mean.

My Communicate! Blog

You may have noticed that in this blog, Welcome to My World, I've gone back to musing and ranting about Jewish and political topics from my personal perspective. 

I've moved the more professional topics (about social media, writing, and communications strategy and technique) to a new Communicate! site: http://dennisfischman.wordpress.com.

If you're interested in any of those topics, you're invited to follow that blog too.  And if you're not, just stick with this one.  I've got plenty of good things for you to read coming out in July.  Thanks for reading me!

Three Simple Questions to Create a Communications Strategy

Do you get overwhelmed by the concept of a communications "strategy"? Does it seem so daunting that youkeep on doing what you're doing already?  Or, do you assume your strategy needs to be complete and perfect, so you don't even start to create one? Relax!  It doesn't have to be so hard.

Get the people who have a stake in your communications in the same room and ask them:

1) Who are the audiences we're trying to reach? (Hint: there is no such thing as "the general public." You have people inside and outside your organization that you would like to do something for the organization. Who are they, specifically?)

2) Toward what end? (Once we have built up a nice, preferably two-way, relationship with the audience, what will they start to do that they weren't doing before?)

3) What do we already know about these audiences? What do we need to find out to give them what they're looking for?

Answer these questions first, and then issues like the content of your messages, the media you should use, what counts as success and how you measure it will be much easier to resolve. 

But don't stop reaching out and interacting with people in the mean time! "Take a sad song and make it better." --The Beatles

Share of Mind, Share of Heart, by Sybil F. Stershic: a review

Sybil  Stershic wants you Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: the employees, volunteers, and Board members of your nonprofit organization.  In her new book, Share of Mind, Share of Heart, she explains the top two reasons why.

1. "Your service is your brand."  Think about it: there are a lot more points where people touch your organization than just the newsletters and emails you send them, or the social media you want them to see.  Every time a client or stakeholder walks up to your reception desk, calls on the phone, takes advantage of a service, attends an event, or volunteers for one of your programs, they are forming their impression of your agency.  That means that the people who represent your organization the most often are not the Executive Director, the Communications Director, the Development Director, or the Board chair.  They are the employees and volunteers who face the public every day.
2.  "Connection is the key." People who work at your agency for love or money must feel connected to the mission of the organization (and know how they are helping to move you forward). They also have to connect with your customers (or clients) to stay dedicated to a high level of customer care.  They want and need to connect with other volunteers, and with employees. Indeed, that may be the reason they came to work for you in the first place.  It certainly will be key to keeping them coming back for more.

Stershic calls this concept "internal marketing."  The term focuses  attention on the fact that employees, volunteers, and Board members are also customers, and they need to be motivated to keep buying what you're selling: the good name of your organization.

What happens when employees don't feel valued?  They disengage and leave the organization.  Or worse, they disengage and stay.

Don't let this happen to you! Share of Mind, Share of Heart is full of examples, tips, and "action plan starter notes."  The book is slim enough that you can read it through in a couple of hours, then go back and put the suggestions into practice that best fit the way your agency functions now.  That will help you make your organization a better place to work, improve your customer service, and at the same time, communicate to the world what you are all about.

My Recent Book Reviews about Communications

I'm learning a lot, and getting many good reminders about what I already know, by reading smart writers' books about Communications.  Here are the links to some that I recently reviewed:

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide 
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-nonprofit-marketing-guide-by-kivi.html

Robin Hood Marketing 
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/04/robin-hood-marketing-by-katya-andresen.html

Strategic Communications for Nonprofit Organizations
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/04/strategic-communications-for-nonprofit.html

Switch
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/02/switch-how-to-change-things-when-change.html

How to Find a Job on LinkedIn...
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-find-job-on-linkedin-by-brad.html

Many of these authors, and other smart people, are giving good advice every day on Twitter.  Follow me @DennisFischman and check out my Communications list.

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide, by Kivi Leroux Miller: a review

Kivi Leroux Miller feels your pain.  And she wants to help.

You work at a nonprofit organization.  Either it's too small to have a communications department or nobody has recognized the need to market what you do until now.  You've recognized the need, but you feel daunted.  There are so many things you could do...and the so-called experts want you to do all of them yesterday! 

Where do you get started?  How much can you do?  What will work best for your group and its cause? You don't need theory or grandiose notions.  You need a friend who's been there and can guide you through the process. Kivi wants to be that friend.

Throughout this book, you will hear great advice that you can put to use right away.  If you love the idea of a "quick and dirty marketing plan," this is the book for you. 

Be warned, though: "quick" is a relative term.  There are no magic wands to wave and no lamps to rub to get a genie to do the work for you.  This book will give you a good sense of what you need to do to be ready to plan and of all the resources--mostly time--that you'll need to turn that plan into reality.  Knowing all that ahead of time will reassure you.  You'll be able to see the road ahead.

As you go on reading the book, I predict that you'll stop feeling daunted and start feeling excited.  You'll see that (in Miller's words), you can do it yourself without doing yourself in.  The later chapters of the book offer excellent advice on how to organize your efforts, how to take advantage of outside help when you need it, and "where to spend your limited dollars and where to scrimp."

In other words, all the things you'd ask a trusted, wise advisor if you could sit down with her over lunch?  They are either in this book or on her blog.  Spend some time with each.  Then get started.

Robin Hood Marketing, by Katya Andresen: a review.

You care passionately about something.  You want other people to get involved.  You want their time, money, ideas, commitment.  How do you reach them?  Do you send out mail?  Work on your website?  Go deep on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram?  Sometimes it seems as if there's a new way to reach out to people every day.  How do you figure out what will really work for you?

Stop. Take a deep breath. Now, read Katya Andresen's Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy to Sell Just Causes.

Andresen, chief operating officer and chief strategy officer of Network for Good, has been a journalist, a marketer, and a nonprofit executive.  She doesn't let the latest fad distract her.  She gets right to the point.  And the point is that good causes will not sell themselves--we have to use the most effective approaches to market them.

Read the book for the "Robin Hood rules" she has robbed from the rich for-profit world and adapted for use by nonprofits.  Chief among those rules are "focus on getting people to do something specific" and "appeal to your audience's values, not your own."
Raising awareness is not enough: what action do you want people to take?  And making converts to the cause is too much, at least all in one step.  Get people to do something good for their own reasons (because of how the good action makes them feel about themselves, for instance).  They'll be more likely to listen to your reasons later.  But even if they don't, she asks, do you want to change minds or do you want to change the world?

Read the book for a guide on how to plan your communications.  Step by step, Andresen shows you how to get to know your audience, your competition for support, and your potential partners, and how to shape your message to make a case that will connect with people and lead them to act.

Read the book for excellent tips drawn from case studies and interviews.  Read it in order to ask yourself the right questions. For example:

• What can we ask people to do that will be "fun, easy, popular, and rewarding"? (for supporters)
• "Who wins when we win?" (for partners)
• How can we supply information that is expert, fast, first, accurate, and tells a good story? (for journalists--they are a target audience too!)

I cannot give you a good enough sense of how rich this book is in a review.  It is so chock-full of detailed suggestions and examples that the best summary of the book is reading the book itself.  And it is very well organized, with bullet points up front, highlights marked throughout, and interviews at the end of each chapter.  I read the first edition of the book, originally published in 2006, and it still feels timely and up to date.  That's what comes of focusing on the relationship between the organization and the audience and not on the constantly changing media.

My one reservation about this book is the same one that's been coming up in my mind as I read a lot of books about communications, marketing, or psychology lately--even books I really like, such as the Heath brothers' Switch and Made to Stick, and Beth Kanter and Allison Fine's The Networked Nonprofit.  These books offer great ideas on how to change an individual's behavior, or even a lot of individuals' behavior.  But that is not the same thing as social change.

Social change generally means going up against entrenched structures of power.  Reading these books, you would never imagine that capitalism, racism, sexism, and tightly defined norms around gender affected anybody's lives.  You would think that getting people to smoke less, use condoms, eat healthier diets, and donate to good organizations would revolutionize the way we live.

Perhaps it's just that social change is outside the scope of these books.  But the authors market the books as if social change would come from better communications strategies alone.  That's selling their books too hard.  They are worthwhile to read on their own merits.  People working for just causes need and should take advantage of the savvy that Katya Andresen supplies.

A Priest, a Rabbi, and a Communications Pro Walk into a Bar...

Can you tell a joke?  Then you can write for blogs and social media.

I don't mean to say that what you write has to be funny.  Although, God knows we could use some humor sometimes!  But jokes have the basic ingredients you need to make people want to read what you write, and then, to remember what they've read.

Jokes invite the audience in.  Whether it's "knock-knock," or "What did the one say to the other?", or "A priest, a minister, and rabbi walk into a bar," jokes get the listeners involved. You can see them lean forward, wondering what comes next. 

The next time you write, look for the opening line that makes your reader want to read the next line.

Jokes have a structure.  Human beings like to know where they're going and how long it's going to take to get there.  People waiting for a bus or subway are much more content to wait if they see a sign that says "Next train to Alewife Station, 10 minutes."  When they're listening to a joke and they hear that something happens three times, for instance, they know something unusual is about to occur and they're waiting to find out what it is.

The next time you write, look for the structure that tells your reader when the main idea is going to arrive.

Jokes have a punch line.  Sometimes people even forget how the story went, but they remember "That's what she said," or "I'll have what she's having."  It's the payoff.  It leads to a reaction: laughter, or a groan, or both...but an emotional response.

The next time you write, figure out the response you want to provoke first.  Then, tell the story that will elicit that response from your readers.

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi went into a bar, and the bartenders said, "What is this, some kind of a joke?"

I'll bet you remember that one.

Strategic Communications for Nonprofit Organizations, 2nd Edition: a review

Strategic Communications for Nonprofit Organization: Seven Steps to Creating a Successful Plan by Sally J. Patterson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Are you leading your organization through the process of creating a communications strategy? Good for you! There's a lot of scatter-shot communications in the nonprofit world, but very few organizations take the time to think about how to bring all their communications--in print, in person, on the web, through social media--together for the greatest impact. Whether you're a consultant, a staff person in house, or a Board member, this book is meant for you. 

If you are a seasoned communications strategist, the book will serve as a refresher and a series of checklists. It also contains two dozen worksheets, all available online, and you can use the ones you find most helpful to structure the discussions you lead. 

If you are new to strategic planning, don't get overwhelmed. Look at the overall flow of the book to get a sense of what steps are involved. You may decide you want to hire a consultant to lead the planning process, and this book will give you the tools you need to interview that person and decide whether he or she will meet your needs.

This book offers a lot of good advice. I particularly like some of the lists. For instance, here's a list that could serve as the itinerary for the whole process:

*What are we trying to achieve?
*Whom are we trying to reach?
*What do we want them to do?
*How will we encourage them to do it?
*How will we know if we have succeeded?

There are also some real drawbacks to the book. It seems to assume that people in the organization will already understand the value of creating a communications strategy and commit themselves to a what could be a very long process (every week for six months).  My experience tells me that you begin instead with a certain amount of information sharing and consensus building.  You might not want to tackle a wholesale audit of the agency's communications at the outset.  You might want to start with concrete questions like "Whom are we trying to reach?" and "What do we want them to do?"

I think that the process of creating a strategy and the process whereby you get the buy-in of the people who have to carry that strategy out are the same process. I wouldn't hand this book to people who know a lot about programs but not much about communications. It would alienate them.  Instead, I would take what I could from the book and apply it to my organization in whatever order would get the most participation in and eventual buy-in.  That's the way to make sure your plan doesn't sit on a shelf but instead directs the actions of your agency every day.




View all my reviews

"Three Ways You're Making Sure I Won't Read Your Tweet"

"It's like drinking from a fire hose," people say about social media. We all know the problem: there's so much information out there, how do I pick what to read?  Or, from the writer's side: there are so many writers competing for an audience out there, how do I make sure that readers pay attention to what I say--or that they even notice it?

I've been following on Twitter since May 2012, and I've noticed contributors using the same few strategies for getting attention over and over again.  They must work.  In fact, some of them hook me.  But I'm always sorry afterwards.  Even if the content I read was worthwhile and useful, I feel a little soiled because of the way the writer lured me in the first place.  Those sordid strategies include:

1. Scare tactics.  If you called me up on the phone and asked, "Are termites eating your foundations?", I'd say NO and hang up.  I don't respond to a hard sell.  I know it's not in my interest to do so.  Same thing online.  If the message is "Read this or your competitors will eat your lunch," I'm beginning to skip right by that tweet without opening the link.  I'll take my chances on missing a bit of information just to avoid being taken for a sucker.
2. Negativity.  "How your blog is turning people off."  "The mistakes you're making on Facebook."  Now, I'm not perfect.  I know I have a lot to learn.  But couldn't you possibly present me with an opportunity to do better, instead of telling me that everything I'm doing is wrong?
3. Arbitrary numbers.  Nothing wrong with presenting a list of  four questions, or top ten links, or twenty-two websites...except that everybody's doing it.  After a while, all these numbers run into each other and blur.  They sound like a gimmick, and they are.  Can we possibly save numbers for when they matter?

You may have noticed that the title of this blog entry uses all three of the strategies I think are being worked to death.  How did you respond when you read the title?  What do you think now?  What are some different (and perhaps better) strategies for standing out and being read?

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (review)

Can you get families to eat healthier food, delinquent students to start showing up on time, businesses and governments to save millions of dollars by buying smarter, all by learning one set of concepts?  Chip & Dan Heath think so.  In Switch, they lay out a basic framework for all kinds of change, from the individual to the social level--and they tell stories to show how to make the changes.

The framework: Each of us is a Rider (rational mind) trying to direct an Elephant (emotional side) along a Path (the environment we're operating in).  To make a change, all three have to pull together.  Why don't they?

"What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity." The Heaths show how you can help the Rider in yourself, your colleagues, or your fellow citizens by making it clearer exactly what they need to do.  If you can find a few bright, shining examples of what works, for instance, you can get other people to adopt that approach.  Not everyone will go along, but if enough people buy in, a little change in behavior can lead to a big change in the result.

"What looks like laziness is often exhaustion." We have a limited amount of self-control. A small rational Rider can only tug on the reins of a big emotional Elephant for so long!  And the rational side of us may plan forever and not get around to acting--I've heard this called "analysis paralysis."  The trick is to get motivated to do what we know would make a difference.  The authors show us how to take changes in small steps and aim for early victories.  They also show how we can cultivate the belief that we are capable of change...which is key to being able to make the change we seek.

"What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem."  If we can make it easier for people to do something different, more of them will.  If we can encourage new habits, those habits will take a lot of the stress and strain out of change.  "Behavior is contagious," so show that a lot of other people are doing the right thing and you will get even more people to join them.  (This is a concept I've heard people call "social marketing," and it's one of the big reasons that fewer people smoke tobacco today.)

The Heaths illustrate all these concepts with stories that are "made to stick" in your mind (to use the title of one of their previous books).  Here's one that pulls all three together:

In 2004, 1 out of every 10 patients in the U.S. received defective medical care.  For instance, they "did not receive their antibiotics in the specified time."  So, "thousands of patients were dying every year, unnecessarily.  Dr. Donald Berwick set out to change that.

• He proposed that the medical industry save 100,000 lives in 18 months, and he gave them six specific ways to do it.  (Clarity, for the Rider.)  
• He brought in a mom whose little girl had been killed by a medical error.  She told the hospitals, "I know that if this campaign had been in place four or five years ago, that Josie would be fine." (Motivation, for the Elephant.  What greater motivation is there for a healthcare professional than saving the life of a child?)
• He made it easy for hospitals to join the campaign (by signing a one-page form) and brought them together in conferences where they could see how others just like them were succeeding.  (Smoothing the Path)

As a result. by the set date, the campaign had saved 122,300 lives, "the equivalent of throwing a life preserver to every man, woman, and child in Ann Arbor, Michigan."

Now, I am not convinced that this formula for change will always work.  I agree with the Heaths that even a marginal improvement is better than none, and their techniques will work when there is no entrenched and powerful opposition to the change you have in mind.  You can probably lose weight this way.  You can very likely get more people where you work to respond to their email. 

If you are trying to raise the minimum wage, or end global warming, or stop a war, you are going to need more.  As Frederick Douglass famously said, "Power concedes nothing without a struggle."  For struggle, you need a movement.  You cannot throw a behavioral switch. 

Even a social movement would have something to learn by reading this book, however, and for most of us, most of the time, this framework will be a powerful set of tools.  I strongly recommend reading this book and then going to work on making change where you live.

Who Cares? The Need for Personalized Communication

Today I received a letter in the mail from my health insurance company.  You are taking a certain medicine, they said, so every year, you should have a certain kind of blood test.  Are you doing that?  Will you ask you doctor to make sure?

The company called the letter a Care Alert, and everything in it reinforced the message, "We Care."  The envelope didn't: it looked as if it might have been one of those Explanations of Benefits that don't explain anything at all.  And of course, one of the reasons they care is that if I look out for myself, I can avoid serious health risks that would end up costing the insurance company a lot. 

Still, the message itself was caring.  It was personalized, and it treated me like a responsible adult who can make good decisions with the proper information.

I would like to propose that nonprofits aim at making all their communications as personal and as caring as the letter I received.

What would it take to do that?

1. Knowing, and remembering, a lot about your supporters. 
2. Thinking, "How can I make my agency useful to this person?"  What topics matter to him or her?  What information would she or he find useful--not in a general way, but here and now?  
3. Calling on them to take action...and showing them how.

The tools exist to make all this possible.  Databases, constituent relationship management software and processes, email tools, various programs that remind you it's time to send this kind of message to this specific person: they're out there, and not that expensive.

But is your organization willing to spend the time and attention it takes to treating every client, constituent, prospect, or donor with at least as much care as a health insurance company showed to me?

Obama's Two Speeches

Last night, President Obama's State of the Union address was a tale of two speeches.  The first one was disappointing.  The second offered signs of hope.

 


The beginning of the speech was a fairly routine laundry list of Obama's legislative agenda.  I agreed with a lot of it, and I was dismayed that Obama gives so much credence to the talk about cutting the deficit.  That is bad policy, and it undermines the rest of his policies. 

But the problem with Obama's first speech was not any of the particular policies he enunciated.  The main thing was that it was a list.  Lists by their nature are uninspiring.  We write down lists precisely because unless we keep referring to them, we'll forget what's on them. They are not inherently memorable.  They are not self-enforcing.  Obama kept saying, "Let's get it done."  But to-do lists never get done unless the people who can make them happen are motivated to do so.

The people who can make Obama's agenda happen are...the people.  Obama needed to motivate and activate his supporters, the ones who elected him and want great things from him. People in Congress are not opposed to "getting things done."  Many of them (including some in his own party) are opposed to his specific agenda.  To keep the heat on Congress, and to overcome the determined opposition, he needed to give the "hope and change" constituency a rallying cry and a framework within which they could unite and work together.  Did he do that?

The second speech offered the rallying cry: "They deserve a vote."  Obama was most directly talking about victims of gun violence, who deserve to have legislation aimed at preventing future tragedies debated and voted up or down, not smothered in committee or squelched through the filibuster. 

But in context, that theme is broader.  It singles out an increasingly isolated group of conservative white men and their allies who are out of step with the country on issue after issue and yet use their positions of power to block action.  By not even allowing the proposals to come up for a vote, they say to the rest of the country--the 47% that Romney wrote off, or the 99% who have not gained an inch and have even lost ground for the past thirty years--"We know what's good for you.  Your concerns don't matter."

Obama won the election in part by telling a diverse range of people that their concerns DO matter.  At the end of that speech, he repeated that vision of America as a place where people have to be listened to.  Sometimes, we call that vision democracy.  It is Obama's winning message, and his best hope for getting the power of the people behind him.

Chopsticks, Hammers, and Social Media

My dear father could never master the use of chopsticks.  He resented people who did.  Whenever we went out to a Chinese restaurant and other people reached for the sticks, he would grumble, "A fork has always been good enough for me.  I don't know why it's not good enough for you." 

I think of my father sometimes when I hear colleagues ask why they need to use social media.  I'm a big believer in print, video, and face-to-face contact myself, but I have to wonder: how much resistance to adopting social media comes from the fear that we won't use them well?  That we'll be still dabbing away with tools we don't understand while other people have eaten our lunch?

This fear is unnecessary.  Anyone can learn to use social media well enough for company.  Once we stop worrying about how to master them, then we can really ask why--and get good answers.

Contrary to what enthusiasts sometimes think, it is not self-evident why organizations should use social media. I see people who leap on board each social media trend as it comes along.  They remind me of the saying, "To the person who owns a hammer, everything looks like a nail."  Social media are tools.  One size doesn't fit all.  We need to know what they can do, and what we want to accomplish.  Then, we can pick the right tool for the job.

Here are some questions we can ask ourselves to figure out what we really need, whether we are communications conservatives or early adopters:

1. Who are we trying to reach?
2. Where does our audience spend its time, and how do they like to get their information?
3. What can we do for them?
4. What are we hoping to get them to do?
5. How much time can we invest?

Then, and only then, can we figure out which social media we should use, and how.  That's a social media strategy.

Resolve to Communicate Better in 2013!

It’s a new year.  Here are ten resolutions that every organization should make to improve their communications in 2013.

1. Google yourself. What are the first things people see about you? Would you support the group you see on screen?

Review of The Networked Nonprofit:Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change

Beth Kanter and Allison Fine have a warning and a promise for nonprofits.  The warning: with the rise of social media (and a generation that's used to quick and transient support for the cause of the moment), your old models are not going to work much longer.  Don't count on gaining new supporters who will be loyal for life.  If you don't adapt, you're toast.

The promise: if you narrow your work, open your books, and collaborate with other agencies and key individual actors, using social media, you may be able to get more done than ever before.

The book is full of real-life examples and checklists to help you put its lessons into practice.  Some of the examples are negative, like the organization that didn't want to let its young professionals group create a Facebook page that the organization didn't control.  (We should be happy if people want to spend time talking about our organizations!) Others are positive, like Planned Parenthood's use of its website and pages on Facebook and MySpace to let "individuals share their personal stories in their own words, images, and videos."  On the website www.networkednonprofit.org, they keep readers up to date with current thinking and provide more tools.

The Networked Nonprofit also includes helpful chapters on how (and how not to) use crowdsourcing, learning loops, online fundraising, and online tools for governance of your organization.

I do have some reservations about the book.  One assumption behind it is that the Millennial generation, or Generation Y, will keep on surfing from cause to cause and not form abiding loyalties to particular organizations as Baby Boomers like me have done.  I distinctly remember acting the same way when I was in my twenties and thirties--even without the aid of the World Wide Web.  As my dear wife Rona Fischman says, people create their own grooves and fall into them.  I am not sure that's going to change.  But that means it's even more important to meet young supporters in their chosen media, on their terms, now, so they will stick with us in the future.

The other reservation is about "Sticking to what they do best."  This is Kanter and Fine's idea of how you become more effective AND become a good citizen of the "ecosystem" of groups working on your issue.  They say:

A common refrain within nonprofit organization and by nonprofit staffers is, "How can I make my life simpler when I have so much to do?"  The answer is, well, simple: You have too much to do because you do too much.  (p.89)

I have a lot of respect for the wisdom of this observation.  At the same time, social problems are complicated.  If each group sticks to what it does best, who's looking out for the whole?  The authors would probably say that if you're not trying to DO it all, you have time to engage in those strategic conversations.  They are refreshingly frank that "It's too soon to tell whether and how the outcomes of Networked Nonprofits differ from their predecessors...."  Anyone who is interested in finding out, however, should read this book.

"Elevator Speech" for People Talking about You

Many thanks to Joel Nitzberg for thoughtful advice on networking for a new job.  Many of us know that whether we are promoting our organizations or ourselves, we need an "elevator speech": a quick summary of who we are and how we can make a difference to the person whose attention we have for only as long as it would take for a short elevator ride. 

Joel said that if I ask him to help spread the word about me, I need to give him an elevator speech about me.  It should take the form of "You should talk to Dennis because here's what he can do for you."  What problem can I solve for the person he's speaking to?  Would hiring me help their agency grow--or even, survive?

Have you ever crafted an elevator speech for someone else to give on your behalf?  How did you do it, and how did it work out?

"Transparency is the New Black"

Review of Share This!

Deanna Zandt has written a wonderful guide to social networks for people who don't feel at home there.  She explains what's new about building relationships through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like, and she encourages us all to participate. 

"Sharing is daring," she says.  By putting more of yourself out there, within limits that you consciously set, you increase your credibility with people who are just getting to know you.  As you become more well known, you win people's trust.  At the same time, she argues, sharing personal and professional information helps build a better world.  If someone reads and enjoys a tweet I send out about good communications AND they go to my blog and find my Jewish musings, then it registers that a person they respect can be serious about being Jewish (or gay, or a feminist, or...whatever you are.  Fill in the blank.)  It may be overstating things to say that this will change the world, as she does in her subtitle, but at least it will show what the world is already.

In any case, sharing more about ourselves is the direction we are all heading.  "Transparency is the new black."  So, better try it on and find a style of social networking that compliments you.  In the Resources section of the book, you'll find tips for individuals and tactics for organizations that she recommends.  Try a couple and see how they work for you.

Reading this book, I felt as if I were a traveler in a new and foreign country, with a helpful guide pointing out the landmarks and explaining local customs.  At the same time, paradoxically, I felt as if I'd come home.  Really being interested in other people, helping them with what they're doing, and offering them ways to help me too (or promote a cause we both care about): this is what I've always done.

Back in 1986, when Rona answered a personal ad I'd placed in a newspaper, I realized that we already had met through the local chapter of a progressive Jewish organization.  It would have been very awkward if I had kept that to myself and didn't tell her that right away when I wrote her back.  By letting her know, not only did I show that I cared about honesty in relationships right from the start.  I also (not realizing it at the time) let her see that she knew people who knew me and shared some of the same values that moved me.  That was the basis for beginning to trust me.  Reader, she married me. 

Organizations are also looking to woo people, and they will have to open up more to build lasting relationships with volunteers, supporters, donors, customers, or investors.  I would like to focus on helping them do it, online and off.

The First Step

I'm 55 pages into Deanna Zandt's Share This!  I've had two big surprises so far.  One is that the book has said very little about techniques or tactics for using social media: it's mainly about the attitude you bring to it.  I tried to summarize that attitude in my very first tweet:

Recipe for good conversation: Listen. Ask questions. Pay attention to answers. Contribute when you can keep the conversation going.

(And, I might add, be yourself.  Not necessarily your whole self, everywhere, all the time...but nothing but yourself.  People will trust you partly because you show you consider them trustworthy.)

Surprise #2: most of this is what I do already, face to face.  I would never dream of walking into a room and telling everybody, "Listen to me because what I have to say is the most important thing"--so why would I walk online and do that?  And on the positive side: I try to share information and ideas and make introductions that I thing people would benefit from.  Does it really matter whether I do that face to face, on the phone, by email, or on Facebook or LinkedIn?

What We Have Here is Tailored to Communicate

"Tell me a story."

Beginning in childhood, we all ask to hear stories.  They entertain us.  They delight us.  They help us make sense of a world that's been there before us and that's going on all around us, which we spend our lives trying to understand.  As adults, we discover new techniques for making sense of the world: measurements, statistics, correlations, theory.  Graphs and charts help us make discoveries.  Photos and artwork call our attention in ways words can't, and music touches us in places that words don't.  Still and all, when people mobilize to get things done, it's usually because we have seen ourselves as characters in a story.  The pictures, the numbers, and the words all come together and we see the present moment as part of an ongoing drama.  When the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," that was one of the shortest stories ever told...and one of the most compelling.

I've come to realize that in my work life, what I do best and what I like to do the most is to tell the story of an organization, to make its case, so that people want to devote their time, their money, their energy, their ideas to helping it succeed.  In my years at CAAS and in the nonprofit world, I've enjoyed many ways of communicating, from in-person and on-air interviews to written proposals, from helping Reflection Films produce a video about CAAS to helping Andy Metzger write articles about poverty for the Somerville Journal--and of course, writing this blog.

I'm starting a journey toward making Communications a bigger part of what I do every day.  Come along with me.  I'll share some of the sights and sounds and reflect on what I meet along the way.  Some of you may be experienced travelers who can give me tips for the journey and point out milestones as they pass.  All of you are welcome.