I've been corresponding with an old friend (and...don't tell him this...something of a hero of mine), Jim Anderson. Jim and his wife Annette have spent their retirement helping people. They've volunteered in schools, and made a number of trips to Africa. Jim has chronicled his latest trip in a blog.
We've been talking about a friend of his who has a small nonprofit organization. The organization is having trouble getting the word out. I shared with him the experiences we've at work (also a nonprofit) with communications, marketing, and PR. He pointed out that this was all fine and good for an organization that already had some resources, but what about those with very little? What then?
My response included:
In one sense, I think you're right: the rich do get richer. Of course, it is relative. A non-profit with a low multi-million dollar budget isn't necessarily "rich" by US standards, but that would be an impossible sum for your friend. There are other cliches that apply: "you get what you pay for" and "you have to spend money to make money." Probably more than a grain of truth there.
But putting aside the cliches, I think there are some possibilities for low-budget, grassroots publicity.
First, I think there is power in blogging, and the communities that have grown up around this and other recent web technologies. Blogging is essentially free (assuming, of course, access to a computer and the internet). I don't think that a nonprofit group needs to have a fancy website. But, they do need a compelling story. Good thing, then, that humans are hardwired to respond to stories. So one way to get the word out is to simply tell compelling stories. (Of course, that assumes some competency in writing.) Blogs were born for storytellers.
The next way to spread the word is to become active in the online "conversation." Read other blogs on the topic and communicate (with email or blog comments) with the authors. Find discussion boards or wikis and participate there. Make sure that people know that the organization exist.
Next, make sure that you provide people with a "call to action". Do you want them to volunteer? Give money? Tell others? There are some interesting services out there that can help organizations accept donations online. Amazon.com comes to mind. Their "honor system" allows people to donate money, and they have other programs that could be of use, too. Other options like this may exist, too.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the group needs to be doing something compelling. What's the message? I'm betting that people don't want to hear about yet another problem in Africa. (Cynical? Yes.) What is different about this group? Is it working? Is it effective? (At work, we've been touting some recent positive external evaluation results...data really catches people's eye.) It doesn't have to be high-tech or "innovative" to catch people's eye. I love Water 1st's approach. They have a simple message (clean water is the foundational step to end poverty and disease), and rather than fooling around with fancy technology, they've innovated on the process side. They're using very basic technology (it works, and people can fix it when it breaks) and they put women in charge of managing the water projects in the local community (women feel the pain in the labor it takes to get water and in the disease that affects children, therefore they're more likely to support the project). Low tech, high touch. Brilliant stuff.
Bottom line is that there needs to be something interesting going on to attract people (and their dollars). The good news is that if there is something good happening, attracting attention gets easier, because people like to tell each other about the interesting things they see.
From Stradivari's Genius, as Tony Faber describes Johann Salomon giving violin lessons to King George III.
When the king asked his teacher how he was doing, Salomon is said to have replied: "There are three levels of skill in violin playing: an inability to play, the ability to play badly, and the ability to play well. Your Majesty, I am pleased to say, has already reached the second level."
I'm pleased to say that I've probably reached George's level, too.
And, I think the sentiment probably applies to many skills. And that's what makes learning difficult things fun...
Regular readers (all three of you) probably know that I'm a bit of a web analytics fan. Recently, I've seen a number of fun new twists, including heatmaps. The basic idea here is that you drop a bit of javascript onto a HTML page and everytime someone clicks the javascript logs it. Then, through magic, an image is created that shows roughly where people are clicking on a page.
The end result isn't anything much different from what ClickTracks (which I also use) has been doing for a while. And I think Google Analytics has it, too. Sure, the heat maps are a bit more nuanced, and they look cooler, but they're both driving at the same point.
Anyway, I recently signed up for a nifty hosted heatmap service, Crazy Egg. (How Web 2.0 is that name??) So far, it is pretty easy to use, and I like the results. I have the nagging idea that it might not be tracking all the visits, so I'll need to check that against my logs at some point.
Then, today, my trust web designer Jonathan sent me a pointer to a roll-your-own heatmap system. I haven't tried it out, but it is pretty cool that someone has put together all the pieces to provide this feature. That isn't to say that there isn't some value in having a company like Crazy Egg host a service like this, but it is also nice to be able to customize it...
Yesterday the second monitors I ordered arrived for everyone in the office. So, now we all have two 19 inch flat panels on our desks. The native resolution of these puppys is 1280 x 1024. By my calculations, they're throwing out a combined total of 2,621,440 pixels.
If you've never used dual displays...well, you don't know what you're missing. Highly recommended. And, with prices as low as they are (we got Dell monitors, BTW), it is a small investment towards making people more productive.