CEREMONIES & STORIES
My twin boys brought a small stomach flu from Boulder home for the holidays. First Matt, then Jeff succumbed. My turn was Tuesday. Fortunately, advance preparation assured that 24 hours of downtime for either playing with the kids or being knocked out by flu wouldn’t hurt the festivities at my house. Linens were pressed, candles placed, center piece assembled, shopping completed, side dishes only needed to be heated. (Thanks, Bob, for grilling the bird and, Joan, the pies were superb.)
Nothing could stand in the way of our celebrating all that we have been blessed with this year! Naturally, part of our Thanksgiving is to share what each of us is grateful for. Celebrations and ceremonies have always had a place of special importance in society and organizations, too. Ceremonial expressions affect us on a subtle, often unconscious level. They bond a family; they connect community.
All non-profit organizations can employ ceremonies, internally and externally, to
- Create a feeling of affiliation
- Provide recognition
- Promote interaction
- Highlight accomplishments
- Convey a message
- Challenge and inspire
To achieve these goals a ceremony must be more than a ritual; it must be meaningful. The essence of a ceremony is the program and the two major components of a program are the characters and the narration. These two elements provide the purpose and message of a ceremony. For this reason, it is important for organizations to find their voice.
Good examples are everywhere.
“The Secret Life of Bees” novel and film drove home the fact group loyalty and personal identity are enhanced and reinforced by the use of ceremonies.
Our local private school, Roycemore, has a charming tradition relating to its events modeled after the Palio di Siena. The senior class presents its coat of arms to the kindergarten class, which will carry that banner until their graduation in twelfth grade.
Adler School of Professional Psychology President Raymond Crossman heralded ceremony in his inaugural address four years ago, “I believe that it is a brilliant and useful academic tradition for the stakeholders of a school to come together … to consider together who we are and who we might be.”
For the Adler School's recent commencement, held in the beautiful Chicago Symphony Orchestra Center, author and keynote speaker Alex Kotlowitz stressed the importance of telling stories. At this ceremony his stories informed the audience and became another part of their shared experience. Stories are “Essential to understanding from whence we came and where we are headed….Stories capture not only the present… but as Elie Wiesel suggested, help us understand the past which informs the future…” http://www.adler.edu/UserFiles/File/Keynote_Address_by_Alex_Kotlowitz_102608.pdfI'd be interested in hearing stories of your ceremonies.
CONVERTING MOBILE DONORS
Boomers and GenXers can't live without email; Millennials (now referred to as Generation O) can't live without their mobile phones. Barrack Obama used a cutting edge text message campaign to sway voters and encourage financial support – John McCain didn’t. On Election Day U.S. subscribers transmitted more than 1.2 billion text messages between 7 p.m. and midnight EST. Last year, total mobile Web users grew by 23 million. For non-profit organizations, this is an incredible new communication tool.
One example: R & B singer Alicia Keys had a big hand (thumb might be more accurate) in raising money to fight AIDS through one of the first text message donation efforts. During her "As I Am" concert tour she showed a clip from her film "Alicia in Africa: Journey to the Motherland" and encouraged fans to donate $5 by text messaging the word 'ALIVE' to 90999. She raised $40,000 from around 8,000 people with the mobile giving campaign. (Go to http://www.mgive.com/, the service provider that enabled a small donation to be charged to the donor's cell phone bill, collected from cell phone carriers, and distributed to the non-profit organization.) This was a valuable fundraising mechanism for Keep A Child Alive's efforts to combat the African AIDS pandemic.* The long-term and larger considerations for organizations are whether mobile donors can become long-lasting contributors and whether they can become larger donors. While mobile fundraising can bring in money with little expense, fundraising is about relationship building. Mobile fundraising circumvents relationships.
Incorporating mobile communications into existing customer relationship management systems is critical. So far, mobile donations are micro-gifts, effective for impulse giving and emotional calls to action. Handled correctly they might lend themselves to a monthly giving option. I particularly like the ability to activate supporters on issues or events, as Obama did.
There are ways to synchronize donor profile information each time someone opts-in through a mobile phone and replies with an email address. (For those of you who can understand this: a Mobile Application Service Provider, like mgive.com, which charges for setup, monthly usage, and per-message usage, contacts say Convio's Constituent API -- Application Programming Interfaces which supply the technical hooks that link applications together for the purpose of sharing data -- which sends email address and source code to Convio's database that eventually makes it into an organization's donor management database.** Whew!) Organizations can track the conversion of small mobile donors or mobile advocacy participants, measure gift giving and provide basic reporting which can lead to actionable insights.
Rev up your thumbs, folks, and see how this new fundraising mechanism evolves.
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*Over 28 million people are dead and 15 million orphaned; an African child dies from AIDS every minute.** Thanks Arbor Solutions, Inc.
FIVE LESSONS
You can’t turn a corner without bumping into an election post mortem. My recent favorite is HR guru Liz Ryan’s lessons for managers in her Nov. 11th Businessweek column. (Muchas gracias!) She points out that Barack Obama's political organization “built and sustained an impressive level of coordination, communication with supporters, and thoughtful media relations that observers say has set a new standard for campaign leadership in the 21st century.” Can we do the same for our organizations?
Her top five leadership lessons are as pertinent for fundraisers and non-profit managers as for corporate execs. Here they are:
1. Don't skimp on infrastructure.
The technical, logistical, and on-the-ground organizational structure of the Obama campaign enabled the broad-scale "civilian" donation efforts, virtual-phone-bank program, and other just-in-time human and financial contributions that continued right up through poll-closing time on Election Day. Managers who focus on a robust, flexible business infrastructure built on sturdy mechanical and technical platforms and supported by clear, logical processes don't end up having to waste time patching holes and fighting fires….
2. Keep the mission top-of-mind.
Daily crises can make it easy for a leader to take his or her eye off the ball. The Obama campaign stuck fast to its mission of spreading the message of change, even when tempting opportunities to veer off-topic presented themselves (the temptation of slamming John McCain's choice of running mate, for example). It paid off well for the campaign to stick to its game plan….
3. Fight the right battles.
The economic crisis threw an enormous monkey wrench into the campaign process in September, and it's clear that Obama's decision to stick to his campaign efforts throughout a week of tumult in Washington was the right one….
4. Make every person count.
Organizational leaders proclaim—but don't often enough build into their management practices—the notion that every person on the team is important. The Obama campaign's emphasis on small donors and small acts of volunteerism won the day for the Democrats. In this election cycle, Americans for the first time opened their e-mail in-boxes to see what looked like personal messages from the candidate. That seemingly personal connection and easy access to concrete action (via Donate Now and Volunteer Now buttons) made it simple for people to act on their beliefs.
5. Keep your cool.
… cool prevailed as Obama's opponent seemed to become more biting and curmudgeonly at each public appearance, raising questions about his leadership capabilities in a crisis. Given the nature of some of the slurs repeated about Obama … angry responses would have been understandable, albeit unwise. Could you let an onslaught of personal remarks slide? If the game is won, the personal slurs amount to little or nothing.
Share this with your colleagues. And, may your organization and our country become as well-oiled a machine as Obama’s presidential race.
RISK AVERSION
What can we learn from President-elect Barack Obama’s all-volunteer economic recovery advisory group that can be applied to non-profit organizations? The question they face is one many non-profits are asking themselves right now. Given the depth and breadth of our economic problems, will the new administration tackle issues of health care, education, energy independence, climate change all at once or stagger these major initiatives over time? For non-profits, do we add fundraising activities and fundraising staff or do we tighten our belts and make due with what we have or less?
Scrutinizing “the other guy” is an easy and cheap way to learn something -- how the experts behave, what thriving businesses do, how successful non-profits perform. This past Sunday’s New York Times was instructive in itself. Thirteen of the 22 pages of the front section of the Times had full page ads. Eleven of them were full-color, which is quite pricey. They are spending that kind of money during this time of hardship.
Certain economists underscore the need for a lot of federal spending. Sound like John Maynard Keynes? Dr. E. Kathleen Adams of Emory University explains that Keynesian economics, which helped pull us out of the Great Depression and stresses the use of government tools to stimulate the economy and direct government spending, is perhaps our most effective fiscal policy tool. This could mean businesses hire, families spend, and the entire economy thrives once again.
For non-profits, cutting back on fundraising is the best way to reduce your income. The paradox is, if we stop spending money to make money and stop investing in the future, we risk further hardship. Death by risk aversion!
http://recessionwatch.blogspot.com/ is sharing what is happening in other countries during this global recession. Feel free to share your experiences with them and with me. 847/227-7174 or Katmiller1000@aol.com
H I G H HOPES
A new Johns Hopkins Listening Post Project survey done between September 8, 2008 and September 22, 2008 of over 1,000 nonprofit organizations working in areas of children and family services, elderly housing and services, community and economic development, and arts and culture asked nonprofit executives what a new national administration could do to equip nonprofits to help Americans deal with the economic crisis.
“Heading the list of priority measures identified by these executives were four specific measures:
• Restoration and/or growth of funds for their field in the federal budget;
• Reinstatement and expansion of tax incentives for individual charitable giving;
• Federal grant support for nonprofit training and capacity-building; and
• Reform of reimbursements under Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs to ensure that they cover the real cost of services.”
The vast majority of nonprofit executives reported little improvement in government policy toward their organizations in the recent past, and pin high hopes on the Obama Administration to establish a more supportive policy environment for their work during the worst recession since the Great Depression. Can member groups like the Alliance for Children and Families, the Alliance for Nonprofit Management and the National Council of Nonprofit Associations make those suggestions happen?
ELECTION RESULTS
I sit here tonight on the cusp of one of the most momentous events of my lifetime contemplating those who are not alive to see Americans voting for Barack Obama.
On April 4, 1968, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, depriving the world of one of the greatest moral authorities of the twentieth century. He was thirty-nine. King had achieved so much at such a young age that it is hard to believe that he has been gone longer than the brief time he spent on this earth. He spoke out not only on segregation and racism against African Americans, but about many other issues of the day, from police brutality and labor strikes to the Vietnam War. Given the current state of the world, we would all benefit from hearing Martin's voice, if only he were alive today. . . .
That paragraph is from “What Would Martin Say?” by Clarence B. Jones. Stanford Professor Jones was Rev. King’s personal attorney who brought the Letter From The Birmingham Jail out of the Birmingham jail. In this book Prof. Jones considers what Dr. King would say about the serious issues of today: Islamic terrorism, the war in Iraq, reparations for slavery, illegal immigration. I’m sure Barack Obama would like to know.
Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman disappeared at approximately 10:00 p.m., Sunday, June 21, 1964. The next day their burned-out station wagon was found in a swamp; their bodies were found 44 days later, buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Schwerner was 25 years old; Chaney and Goodman were only 21. Goodman had been in Mississippi only one day before he was kidnapped and murdered. If only those boys could have known that their sacrifice would make it possible for a black man to be a serious candidate for the highest office in the country.
Medgar Evers, state field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), became one of the first martyrs of the civil rights movement when he was shot in the back in his driveway in June, 1963. His death prompted President John Kennedy to ask Congress for a comprehensive civil-rights bill, which President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the next year.
Viola Liuzzo was a white 39 year old Detroit mother of five stirred to participate in the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march. I can’t imagine how frightened she was being chased down an unfamiliar highway in Lownes County, Alabama, by Klansmen bent on killing her for giving rides to local marchers. Two shots through the car window killed her immediately. Many credit this heinous act with catapaulting the Voting Rights Act into law.
Medgar Evers children got to watch him die. Now I hope they and Viola Liuzzo’s children will watch a black man become president.
Other people were not directly on the civil rights front lines, but were just as committed. Buelah Horton, a Howard University nursing graduate, was my mother’s friend and colleague. Her son Douglas and I shared the same birth day and various family celebrations. If only Buelah and Douglas could have lived to see this day.
Who will you be thinking of when the election results are in?
