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Giving USA: giving is lookin’ good

June 25, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

Giving USA, philanthropy, fundraising This morning, I got a whirlwind run-down on Giving USA 2013. Tom Mesaros, of The Alford Group, gave a lively overview of all those charts and graphs. (Shout-out to Pacific Continental Bank for making this info-packed, muffin-filled breakfast possible!)

Tom made many good points. One of his Great Big Points was that, as a country, we’re pretty darn generous. Total contributions were $316.23 billion in 2012. Not exactly chump change. 72% came from individuals. Foundations account for 14%. When you figure that lots of the foundation money comes from individuals, this paints a rosy picture of our altruistic acumen.

Tom also spoke to some of the challenges we face as a sector. Terrible note-taker that I am, I didn’t manage to get them all down, but one really stood out: the growth challenge.

Are people still hungry? Yes.
Are there still homeless children on our streets? Yes.
Is the environment still in danger of going up in smoke? Yes.

The list goes on and on. There is still significant unmet need. If we’re going to realizing our vision of a better world, we have to grow in order to meet his need.

Although we’re making a comeback from our 2008 ‘hiccup’, the report estimates we still have six to seven years to go before we hit pre-recessionary levels (adjusted for inflation, mind you). Cramped influx of capital with high unmet need. It’s kind of a conundrum.

Broken record alert: we’re only retaining 3 out of 10 donors. I feel like there’s a connection between this stat and the charts/graphs in the Giving USA Report and the aforementioned conundrum. If we can make headway on retention, imagine what that would do in terms of growth! Makes my heart palpitate.

Smart growth is complicated. Expanding and deepening engagement is complicated. I’ll give you that. But as I was sitting there this morning, I couldn’t help but think how much we’re under-utilizing a really cheap asset–language.

We’re using words anyway (at an average rate of 15,000 per day). If we made them count more, how much would that help with retention? With meeting unmet need? With engaging more people at a deeper level in this thing called philanthropy? Even if all we did was fixed our pitches, what impact would that have?

I wonder. I really, truly do.

The Language of Leadership

March 29, 2013 by Erica Barnhart

leadership, leadership development, storytelling, messaging, language, communication Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with the brave and audacious participants of the University of Washington’s Nonprofit Executive Leadership Institute (NELI). As one who believe that word nerdery will change the world, I invited the group to explore the language of leadership, a.k.a. “leaderly language”. (No, leaderly is not officially a word. Roll with it.)

We spent a chunk of time looking at how to use language to create messages that create stories that inspire action from both internal and external stakeholders. No small task, for sure. Yet one made much easier with a good S.U.N. Story in hand.

If you’ve never heard of a leader’s S.U.N. story, you’re not alone. It’s an acronym I made up to make it easier to remember Marshall Ganz’s recommendation that leaders always think of telling three stories in one:

Story of Self: why you have been called
Story of Us: why we have been called
Story of Now: the urgent challenge on which we are called to act

See? A SUNny story.

Ganz outlined this idea in his 2008 article, “What is public narrative?” It’s based on Hillel’s famous quote:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

Leaders who use language effectively have answered Hillel’s three questions and know how to calibrate their answers to the setting and their audience. The ‘us’ changes based on context and therefore the ‘self’ and ‘now’ must always be adjusted accordingly. For instance, the ‘us’ of you and a new donor is different than the ‘us’ that is you and your staff. Being able to share why you were drawn to your work and how that relates to the task–or moment–at hand creates a sense of intimacy and purpose.

A leader will have many S.U.N. Stories in their story arsenal. The art is knowing when to use which one.

If you want to see a great S.U.N. Story in action, check out the Harmony Project’s Margaret Martin’s Social Innovation Fast Pitch. That’s a whole lot of SUNny awesomeness, right?

[Hat tip to Andy Goodman for bringing the idea three stories of one back on my radar.]

The language of silence

December 19, 2012 by Erica Barnhart

Sandy Hook, silence, language We often look to language to help us make sense of the world.

When something like Sandy Hook happens, language fails us.

There are no words that can express the shock, the grief, the fear, the anger, the sadness that washes over us, for each of us in a different order and at a different frequency.

I invite you–as a fellow human being witnessing and experiencing this tragedy in your own way–to take a little time to simply be silent. I invite you to notice all that you feel, wish for and dream of–for yourself, for your loved ones and for this world–when you allow yourself to stop looking for words to make sense of it all.

In that silence we can all–hopefully and in our own time–reconnect with our belief that it’s possible to make the world a better place. And that it’s up to us to make it so.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

Show don’t tell (Neo fo ym vaforite twetes)

August 21, 2012 by Erica Barnhart

Room to Read believes world change starts with educated children. Their focus? Literacy and gender equality in education.

In a stellar example of show don’t tell, they posted this tweet:

Hwat wdulo hte lrodw kolo lkei fi ouy ocldu otn erda? Noigmeths kile stih. #RTforLiteracy (Each RT=$1 to @RoomtoRead) bit.ly/ILD2011

Translation: “What would the world look like if you could not read? Something like this. (Each RT=$1 to @RoomtoRead) bit.ly/ILD2011”.

140 characters of awesome, that’s what that is. They showed you how confusing and disorienting it is when you can’t read something–a feeling you can’t easily describe.

Words are valuable. Using them to show rather than tell? Priceless.

I won’t give to non profits who use poor grammar

July 23, 2012 by Erica Barnhart

Last week, Kyle Wiens wrote a post for Harvard Business Review that unleashed a torrent of comments (724, at last count).

Kyle runs iFixIt and Dozuki. He hires a lot of people. He gives every single one of them a grammar test. For him, it’s a litmus of a candidate’s attention to detail. If you don’t pass the test, you don’t get hired.

This approach wouldn’t work for everyone, Wiens admits, but it works for him and, boy howdy, did people have opinions about his approach.

Most didn’t disagree that grammar is a pretty good proxy for attention to detail. What bugged them was that, in their opinion, Wiens didn’t use good grammar in the article itself. Nor syntax. And his word choices weren’t always up to snuff. None of these things are earth-shattering. Irksome, perhaps, but not huge deals in the Grand Scheme of Things.

So why all the outrage? Everyone has their “thing”. Maybe yours is when someone uses “alot”. (The word doesn’t exist. It’s “a lot”.) Or “its” instead of “it’s”. Or maybe typos are like fingers on a chalkboard for you. These small things are a big deal to people. They represent something bigger.

A poorly placed comma may not fuss you a bit–but it’s not about you AND it might be costing you big time when it comes to engaging donors, volunteers and supporters. They all have their “things”. Do you know what they are?

4 questions, 3 words, 1 message

June 9, 2012 by Erica Barnhart

At the NDOA Spring Conference, I gave a presentation on Using Messaging to Engage your Community.

I challenged the group to pick three words that define and differentiate their organization. And then weave those into their messaging across all platforms–elevator pitch, social media, brochures, case for support. You name it. Those three words should come through. Concise, consistent, compelling. That’s what this approach gets you. That’s why it’s effective.

Here are the four questions to ask to get you to the three words:

Why do you exist?
What do you do?
Why you?
Why now?

What are your answers? What are your three words?

Using Messaging to Engage Community

View more presentations from Erica Mills.

Just stop saying just

July 15, 2011 by Erica Barnhart

When did misusing the word ‘just’ become so popular?

Just is either an adjective (“That was a just response to the claim.”) or an adverb (“We just submitted the grant.”) But we’ve started using it as a weird, apologetic qualifier.

“I just wanted to check in and see how that report is coming along.”

“Just a quick note to say we’re still interested in meeting.”

“It’s just me.”

In all of these instances, it’s being used to say, “Hey, I don’t want to bug you…” It’s a subtle apology. Sometimes subtle apologies are in order. But there’s a disproportionate use of the word just to the amount of apologizing that needs to be happening. Especially when it comes to nonprofits and their work.

“We just wanted to let you know that we tutored 827 students this year.” This sentence could have been plucked directly from many a donor communication piece. If you’re the donor, you want to hear that your money is having the impact you wanted it to have. You don’t want your attention diverted to what didn’t happen. By simply taking out the word, it changes the entire tone.

“We wanted to let you know that we tutored 827 students this year.” Heck, without the word just, I’d be tempted to throw in an exclamation point.

So, please, just stop using just. You have no reason to apologize.