On my first day as executive director of a small, aspiring foundation office, I sat at my desk and surveyed the situation.  For the four years previous to that I was part of a 70-person university foundation operation that completed a $770 million capital campaign.  Those rich, heady times were gone and so were all the resources.  

Now, I was the chief executive, major gift officer, planned giving expert, research department, communication department, annual giving guru, and, often, the administrative assistant.  My only employee was a part-time bookkeeper, who helped take care of the gift processing and donor acknowledgements.  Armed with my freshly inked MBA and an entreprenurial mindset, I rolled up my sleeves and went to work.  

I don’t think the challenges I faced were much different than what most non-profits still face today.  We were doing great things with our donors’ gifts, but we were frustrated with how little most of our prospective donors knew about it.  It certainly wasn’t because of a lack of effort.  

After spending weeks writing and editing our quarterly magazines or putting the final polishes on the fall mail campaign, I often wondered how many of our prospective donors were even reading the well crafted messages we so diligently prepared.  Did they realize how much blood, sweat, and tears we invested?

My main feedback was the gift envelopes that came back, letters containing updates from our alumni, and the personal visits and phone calls we made as we travelled to different areas of the country to meet with donors and prospects.  In all, those contacts represented feedback from less than 2% of the alumni base.  Even so, we quadrupled our annual income after three years.

We had a basic website and used a monthly e-newsletter, but for the most part relied on our magazines and mailings to communicate our message.  Sound fairly similar to what you’re doing?  Unfortunately, that’s not too far off from the majority of higher education and non-profit group’s current communication strategy.  So why is that cause for concern?

In economic terms - opportunity cost. Yes, we’re raising money but we’re doing it in a way that costs more and raises less than if we take a different approach.  This is even more relevant as digital media’s cost goes down and more people are using digital media in more aspects of their lives.

Let me put it in very simple terms.  We are cooking a pasta dinner one noodle at time, instead of inviting our guests to help us cook pots full of pasta.

The world is shifting.  More and more, we are moving away from the one-way communication approach.  Your organization is no longer on stage deciding what will be announced over the loudspeakers.  Instead, your donors and constituents want to be invited to a cocktail party, where they can contribute their thoughts and mingle with other supporters.

Digital media is that party.  As the host, you can roam from conversation to conversation adding your thoughts and hearing what others have to say (good and bad).  You can also, from time-to-time, clink your glass and make an announcement to the whole crowd. 

I know this - my biggest accomplishments have come when I was able to gather a group of key prospects in the same room and get them to rally around a vision for the future.  They took ownership of the idea and made it better with their insight and ideas.  I wasn’t the genius locked in a room making decisions in a vacuum.  I was the party host, who posed the question, listened intently, and then asked for their support to bring their ideas to fruition.

Do you think one-way communication creates lost opportunities?  How are you using digital media to raise awareness and increase support?

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 8:32 am and is filed under entreprenurial thinking, non-profits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.