PAF9151 Summer 2017 Online Community

In the Ted Talk: How Great Leaders Inspire Action, Simon Sinek explains his research on what makes some people and brands more successful.  He suggests that communicating the “why” related to a service or product provided, in any industry, is necessary to explain to potential stakeholders why they should also care about your vision or mission. He says that by talking about the reason for doing what you do inspires others to believe in what you believe.  And by doing so, you attract employees and support that share your interests, creating a very powerful foundation for a successful organization. This is a very relevant concept that should be applied to all nonprofit organizations. If they can communicate why they do what they do and why they are helping a particular population group, stakeholders will want to support you.

For example, in the Susan G.  Komen/Planned Parenthood case discussed in class, Planned Parenthood was successful in retaining their funding as well as growing their donor base-­ $3 million in three days, because of strategic communication. Planned Parenthood; their employees and donors understood their mission and were able to communicate it to individuals outside of their original base, emphasizing why and how their organization contributes to women’s health. In a previous class, a student wrote an OpEd article about the need for continued government funding for abortion services. Nearly half of pregnancies are unintended and her main point was that whether you are aware or not, you know a woman that needs this service. She stressed the “why” throughout the OpEd and I thought it was very effective in encouraging the reader to care about this issue and to petition for funding. Many of Komen’s supporters who care about women’s health identified with Planned Parenthood’s goals and were inspired by their reaction. Strategic planning and communications were essential to quickly enhance Planned Parenthood’s reputation for care and service during this time and led to their victory.

Since we touched on the topic of communicating our narrative in class, I got curious about how notable nonprofits use videos and outlets like YouTube to communicate their mission.
Of course, the larger the organization, the bigger the investment on the branding, in this case it was videos; scripted narratives and all other details that go in the design and shooting of a public service announcement to communication the brand.

The first PSA that came to mind was the ASPCA and Sarah McLachlan video that just makes you want to save every single animal that is featured on the video: https://youtu.be/IbFf-ej0gKI. It is amazing how much empathy that commercial can make you feel for the cause.

This short and to the point PSA for Habitat for Humanity, using children from families that apparently have been benefitted from the organization to appeal for donations also plays the empathy card. Seeing what a difference your donation can make from the children themselves makes it hard to not donate to the cause: https://youtu.be/3FxjBsmxm_U.

Lastly, one that always resonates with me is the story of Heather Mc Namara, a little girl who telling her cancel survival story made possible to New York Presbyterian: https://youtu.be/TFgNyey0RzA.

All three examples do a great job at communicating the mission of each organization, but also allow you to feel like you can be a stakeholder in their continuous success. You can be a part of the change, and that is a great narrative to communicate.

The Strategic Planning in Nonprofits (SPiN) Cycle is an interactive graph created by the Washington Nonprofit Institute that provides guidance for nonprofits to prepare, implement and evaluate their strategic plan. The Institute suggests that nonprofits go through this procedure every year; learning from their accomplishments and failures in order to improve the strategic plan to better suit the vision and mission of the organization. The SPiN cycle is divided in 3 segments: to organize, imagine and launch the strategic plan. Each segment has videos, documents, exercises and websites to help nonprofit leaders understand each part of the process.

My experience working with small or recently formed nonprofit organizations always made me interpret mission and vision as the same monster. Most of the time, due to limited staffing and the ambition to do it all, we would find ourselves reacting and not setting or following a plan. Although we would have a mission to abide by, a strategic plan of what we want to do in the short run and where that will take us in the long run was hardly, if ever discussed. Yesterday’s class made me realize that many nonprofit managers, specially if new, can misinterpret the mission as a general and overall plan, without taking the time to plan what it is the organization should do to arrive at its ultimate goal.
At the most recent organization that I worked with, we had as our mission the goal of increasing Mexican and Mexican-American enrollment within CUNY, but we also had as part of the mission the goal of increasing awareness of the Mexican culture, along with creating an academic binational link between the two countries. Our mission, I always interpret as wordy, but too rigid and broad at the same time. I felt that it didn’t take into account the bureaucracy that meant being an institute within CUNY and also the bureaucracy that aiming to be binational would constitute.
During the three years that I was there, we had no ultimate goal and no strategic planning, of what we hoped to work towards and where we wanted to be in X amount of time. We were trying to do everything that might have fallen under any of those three main points of our mission with limited staff and resources. We would take on projects just to take them, and quantity overtook quality.
I came to realize that the lack of clear direction can wear you out. Working on the fly and with no ultimate goal can make you feel like your work has no purpose. Having and abiding by a strategic plan I see as a more productive and rewarding way to run an organization.

As we are talking about communication strategy and strategic planning, I thought I’d share this video that I watched for one of my previous classes, as it seemed fit for the topic. It is not necessarily targeted towards strategic planning. Nonetheless it is highly correlated to communication strategy and to at least two aspects of communication strategy mentioned in class, “who is the best messenger “and “best form of communication “.  This video shows how Intermarche which is one of the largest supermarkets chains in France used communication strategy to reduce food waste, mostly of fruits and vegetables. Intermarché launched “the inglorious fruits and vegetables”. A campaign to rehabilitate the imperfect fruits and vegetables by celebrating the beauty of the ridiculous potato, the hideous orange or the failed lemon… As form of communication they used their own local poster and radio-campaign, they got their own print and film campaign, their own local poster and radio campaign, their own in-store branding. I thought this was amazing. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

This week’s reading covers strategic planning and strategic communication. Strategic planning is a process I’d contend that should be done before communication strategy is done. Strategic planning involves everyone in the organization and it’s crafted around the mission statement. It provides guidance, concrete description of the impact and goals that the organization wants to achieve and help with resources allocation.

On the other hand there is communication strategy. One of the aspects of communication strategy in a nonprofit is branding. Branding is the process of developing an intended brand identity. Brand identity is how you (the maker) want your target audience to think, feel, and act with respect to your brand and brand image is how your target audience actually ends up thinking, feeling, and acting relative to your brand. As outlined in the readings, nonprofit leaders need models that allow their brands to contribute to sustaining their social impact, serving their mission, and staying true to the organization’s values and culture. Branding played a huge role in the case study of Komen and Planned Parenthood. Branding is a tool for managing the external perceptions of an organization. I felt that the position that Komen took when she decided to defund Planned Parenthood affected  her organization’s brand, thereby rendering  her to lose  funding and some of stakeholders and impacted the organization’s core performance.

Branding is important for any organization, small or big. Branding is more than picking the right color, font, picture, and etc. Branding is essentially the message you give off to people. The type of branding that I find most important is the intangible branding, how you make others feel about your mission and message inside, not the logo they see on paper. What I’m trying to say is that your brand should be more about why you will serve your audience and how you will keep creating what you’ve set out to do. There are so many organizations that sell coffee, why is your coffee any different than your competitors? There are so many organizations that provide social services to the low-income community, why is your nonprofit any different than the community organization in Ohio or London?

The linked article 4 Key Reasons Why Branding is Important highlights the below:

1. Branding provides a competitive advantage
2. Brands provide a stable asset
3. Brands provide economic value
4. Brands set expectations

If you spend time understanding and creating your brand by aligning it with your mission, you will be able to set yourself aside from others. This is how Apple is able to make so much money and continues to appeal to its audience. By appealing to the audience you are able to create a more than temporary ground for your organization (here to stay!). And you will obviously continue to generate revenue because of having a competitive advantage and being stable. Uncertainty does not bring in cash flow like stability does. Lastly, your brand will essentially create expectations for your audience. They will look forward to innovations and something different from you. It does not matter if you are creating machine or providing social services, your brand should have realistic and achievable expectations.

The role of the mission in guiding the growth and direction of a nonprofit organization is to keep believing in the mission. In other words, we all have passions in different areas, but this does not get us far. We need to have a passion for something (mission), have the right set of army (people who also believe in the mission and things your organization does), and make sure we have a reason behind why we do what we do.

This also allows us to discuss what is required to bring the mission to life for each stakeholder audience. Your audience is more interested in understanding your “why” instead of “what” or “how”, whether you are selling a product or selling your mission to stakeholders. Ultimately, you need to know why you do what you do. Simon Sinek mentions that “the part of the brain that controls decision-making and not language” is the “why” part of our brain. So if a nonprofit organization (or any organization) wants to appeal to their audience and bring their mission to light, they would need to answer the “why” question for people. This will allow stakeholders to have more trust and confidence in you, and hopefully end up funding for your causes.

Strategic communications can expand an organization’s mission and impact because it allows all parties to be on the same page. Collecting and communicating data on time is important for an organization’s growth and future because an appropriate and beneficial action can only take place if the issue is detected on time. Melinda Gates gives us the example of Coca-Cola and how successful they are worldwide, even in developing countries where people do not even have basic necessities. Coca-Cola is able to strategically communicate how their product is doing and using that data to take a strategic decision and action. Moreover, the Komen and Planned Parenthood controversy is important to discuss too. If Planned Parenthood was not strategically communicating within their organization and to their audience then it would not have been as prepared as they were when Komen decided to defund their organization. Being able to communicate and deliver to their audience what they want to hear, Planned Parenthood was able to stay true their mission, not bash Komen, and get back their funding from Komen. Ultimately, I think it is imperative for an organization to keep true to their mission and always think several steps ahead. Keep everyone informed and do not stray away from what you believe. An organization is able to inspire their staff, audience, and stakeholders by believing. Strategic planning and communication will not only help your programs but also help your organization if an unexpected situation arises.