Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%
Episode 25 of Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio for February 4, 2011:
Branded! Best Bets For Branding & Promoting Your Nonprofit
Howard Levy, Principal of the Red Rooster Group, reveals how to identify, propagate, protect and exploit your organization’s brand.
Here are articles we’ll talk about:
- How to Develop a Nonprofit Brand
- Stewarding Your Brand The Board’s Role in Managing Your Nonprofit’s Brand
- Assessing Your Nonprofit Brand
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Durney talk to him. Durney welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host, tony martignetti we’re going to live today and i’m going to give you that number right now, the number to call his eight seven seven for eight xero for one to xero we’re going to live very shortly with taking calls for howard levy and that’s coming up very shortly, talking about branding and promoting your non-profit you remember last week the segments were i’m looking to savvy strategies for your search. We checked in with our non-profit job seeker leonora, as she got advice from paula marks recruiter also on the show last week, winter active websites that was scott koegler, our regular tech contributor, he’s, the editor of non-profit technology news, and he explained what true interactivity is and how to achieve it so that your website winds this week. It’s branded best bets for branding and promoting your non-profit howard levy is the principle of the red rooster group, which you’ll find at red rooster group dot com and he’s going to reveal howto identify, propagate, protect and exploit exploitation is good when we’re talking about your organization’s brand. We’ll start with the basics. What it is, where you find it and work our way through to your board’s responsibility. You’re bored and your brand, really, absolutely. Your board has responsibilities. We’ll talk about all that with howard in this hour on tony’s, take two at thirty two minutes after the hour. Beware of the self serving objective report that’s on my blogged, and itunes is up. You can go and get this show and said, drive to it on itunes, that’s on tony’s, take two. Right now, we take a break and then it’s howard levy co-branded best bets for branding and promoting your non-profit stay with me, talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day. 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Joining me in the studio with me is howard levy principle of the red rooster group howard’s, an interest industry recognized brand strategist specializing in non-profits he has over a twenty year career devoted to helping non-profits improve their marketing, he’s helped many organizations launch new branding programs, gained visibility, increased membership and increased, giving he’s, the founder of the non-profit brand institute, to help non-profits learn how to create a more effective brand. I’m very pleased to have him in the studio today, howard welcome, thank you very much. Pleasure to have you. We’re taking calls for howard at eight seven, seven for eight xero for one to xero howard, i hate to start with a stint in jargon jail, so i’m not gonna let that happen. Wei have jargon jail here on the show. I can keep you out of jargon jail, if you will tell us what is a brand that’s? A good question, tony and it’s. Not an uncommon one. There is a lot of jargon in the marketing and branding sector, so i’ll try to make this real simple. Simply put, brand is your reputation. So how do we get to a reputation by making a promise? Typically for a non profit organization, that means their mission, they’re trying to help people. They’re trying teo cure a disease, they’re trying to protect the environment, so the brand essentially, is how well they’re performing on their promise. Okay, they’re brand is their promise. How do they express that promise through a brand so that’s a great question, the way they like to simplify this is, in a word equation certificate picture three words the promise plus communication plus your experiences equals your reputation, and i’ll explain what i mean by that. So the promise like we just said, is really the main premise that the organization is in business, what’s the problem that they’re solving and how they go about addressing it. Some organizations have a really clear and compelling brand, so the red cross, we all know, is going to be there in times of disaster relief. One lap one laptop per child, for example, expresses their brand promise in their name. They want to be able to provide technology for children who don’t have it that’s an actual non-profit one laptop per child so the communication part what you were asking about, which is the next word in this sentence is how they go about expressing it because you could have the greatest idea in the world. This is the same for business, but unless you tell people about it, then they’re not going to know so non-profits can use their websites, their email, communication, their events and many other forms of communication to help tell people about what they’re all about and what their promises. So much of this is wrapped up in perception, right? Exactly. So the last part is the experience that they deliver now, how well are they actually performing on doing what they say they’re doing? If one laptop per child is not actually delivering laptops at a reasonable rate and giving them tio children in the appropriate venues, then they’re not fulfilling on their promise. If red cross is not there in times of disaster relief, then there’s a gap in the perception of how they’re coming across self. For example, after nine eleven, you may remember they actually had a little glitch whereby they had an outpouring of support from the public people gave them a lot of donations, and they in fact, had way more than they needed to fulfill the immediate need for that disaster. So what happened was they took that money, and they put it aside for the next disaster. People, though, complained about that, they said we’re giving specifically for with the expectation that is going toward the nine eleven relief, so there’s a gap between their promise of of using that money for one purpose, and i’m not using not delivering on that. All right? So they’re brand suffered now, given the communication to go back to that they were able teo recover by by actually performing differently by taking the money and putting it toward the nine eleven telling people what they were doing and the reputation they had developed over there hundred year history enable people to overlook this one time bonem infraction of promise, although red cross is kind of interesting example, i mean, they have troubles sort of perpetually because their congressional e, uh, chartered and so there’s greater oversight, but i understand you’re certainly understand your point about the nine eleven and the sort of perception gap there on and in that case, that was a lot of public relations effort to try toe um, recovered help the brand to recover from it’s perception problem, right? I mean, in a way, a brand is an insurance against crisis. If you have invested heavily in helping people to understand what you do, you communicating with them? Clearly, transparency is a key factor in authenticity and conveying really what you’re about it’s not about creating an image. That’s not true it’s about it. It’s i like the word identity versus image. Identity is what the organization really is. What are the organization’s values? What are you actually doing? And if you could communicate that clearly, people who identify with those values are going to support you. Okay? And that’s really the key. And if you have invested in the brand, then it’s got some resilience so it can overcome a perception problem that hopefully becomes temporary. We’re going tow when we come back from pardon me exactly when we come back from this break. Thank you for that validation. When we come back from this break, we’re going to talk about how to figure out what your brand ought to be or if, if it is your mission, how to express it best, that’s. Probably the best way to say how to express that brand best. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio, and i’m with howard levy. We have a three minute break. Hang in there, stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, waiting to get you thinking. Nothing. Cubine is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Geever are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com dahna welcome back to the show him with howard levy, and we’re talking about your non-profits brand we’re taking calls at eight seven seven for eight xero for one to zero if you have questions about your brand and how to promote it, etcetera for howard levy howard, how does how does a non-profit figure out what methods or ah, how it should be expressing its promise in its brand? It’s a good question we like tio start with research. Yeah, because you really want to start with something that’s authentic and not just, you know, be making something up with an assumption that may be incorrect. So you wantto do you really want to find out? Because you’re gonna be spending a lot of time and money in creating this brand and promoting it? You’re bored and we’re gonna talk about all that, so you don’t want to just do it based on what a few people think it ought to be, right? So you want to get a three sixty perspective, you know, from different different points of view, in other words, so the staff in the board usually have one one perspective, or maybe even to the staff. May have one since or even the executive leadership in the program, people may have different perspectives about it, so asking them is a good point of departure. So we like to do research and do interviews with the staff, the board and also others. The donors people are funding the organization and also the constituents. People who are using the services of the organization are benefiting from the organization and maybe there’s other people to, like media or legislators or other community groups or partner organizations. These are all people who are goingto having some relation or interface with the organization and may know it in some intimate way or may not know in an intimate way, and we want to know about their awareness in the level of awareness and their perceptions of it and so forth. And how do you let’s dive in a little deeper? How do you actually ask these questions, focusedbuyer oops. Is it printed questions? How does that work? We typically do one on one phone calls are in person sessions. So we have questions scripted for these different types of organ, different types of audiences, people that are in the organization, people. That are outside it and we’ll have some different questions other you can do focusedbuyer oops! We typically do the one on ones we also dio surveys. We recently did a survey for unorganised ation where we had questions online. We surveymonkey it’s a free tool and you can promote that through the organization’s newsletter or other venues hopefully reach people who know about the organization and some people who don’t know about the organization. If that’s your intent, some other things we do to gather information are a brand review essentially that’s taking a look at all the organisations marketing materials look at their current logo in their tagline will look at their website and see how well does it perform? Certain shins cannot collect donations online. How well does it expressed their mission? How much interaction is there? Can people post or do they post photos of events? How do they engage people online? Well, look at their other forms of communication, like their email newsletters, their print newsletters, brochures, and we’ll get a sense of our the communicating cousin consistently, you know, sometimes they are, and sometimes we’ll find some gaps that need to be addressed, but not only are they communicating consistently, but are they communicating the right message exactly the right manner consistent, but not what the audience is need to here. Exactly. So how do you then deconflict all these different opinions that you’re going to get from what what they’re currently doing and all these different constituents so it’s best to do? We find that with non-profit organizations is best to do this in a manage process, so we’ll put together a marketing team made up of people from the organization and typically that might be staff, and it might be some representatives from the board or other committees, and we’ll have them take a look at the findings that we assess from all this type of research, and we’ll walk him through it, and we’ll get their sense of how this is reflected in what they want to say, and so it’s a way of managing it so that it’s not just us, is outside consultants coming in or it’s, not them from an internal perspective, thinking that they know what’s best to say, we’re really providing the value, synthesizing all the information gathered from different points of view, but then filtering. It through the organization itself. Okay? And this is really sounds like creating sort of expectations about what, what people can i expect to receive from the organization may or expect to get back if there a donor or if their service recipient is it sort of building the brand around expectations? Yeah, in a way, it is, i think a lot of organizations, they’re very inward looking, here’s the services that we provide, you know we do x, y z what donors are looking for is what impact you have. What are the results that you’re actually having in society on, you know, are you fulfilling your mission? Many non-profit they’re set up to actually address a problem, but they’re really not actually addressing the solving the problem. They’re providing services toward meeting a certain populations need so we look at that and we say, you know, is more effective to actually just keep providing this service versus trying, tio we have a larger impact in society if i could simplify your example there’s that saying of ah, give a man a fish and he eats for a day teach a man to fish and he eats for life. So in the same way is the non-profit teaching people to fish or is it just providing the fish for them? So i think that’s something from the donor’s perspective they want to see are you actually teaching people to fish? What are the ultimate impact that you’re going tohave in society? So in identifying what your brand should be, then you really are also looking at what you’re delivering. This is a much bigger conversation. Then what is? Our logo and letter had looked like, what is it is? The promise is really the mission of the organization. So, you know, we do look at the mission of the organization. So if the mission is sound and their promises sound, then it goes into the next phase of that word. Um, um, phrase we had which is the communication part and that’s typically where we focus most of the efforts on so in cases where they need help in refining their promise, or their mission will address that, and in many cases that’s pretty clear. And then it goes to how do we express it effectively? Okay, so this really is a huge conversation for the organization and all. Its constituents tohave, and it needs to be a managed process. And that’s that’s, your work is with the red rooster group. Um, it does. And that’s why it’s important? I think tio have the process a clear process and toe to involve people and to really create the expectation of what the process is so that they don’t you think, oh, it is slapping on a new creating a new logo, putting that on the website and we’ve done branding we really are up to speed with what we need to do is really a lining your promise with how you communicate that across all the forms of communication. And so let’s talk about what some of those different constituencies sort of ar are expecting, i mean, in terms of board members, i will talk later about the board’s responsibility in the brand, but this could have implications for board recruitment, right? I mean, what do they expect when you’re inviting them to be on the board? Definitely, in fact, that’s a key point that people call us in order to redefine their brand or to define their brand is our board can’t express what we dio you know we do so many different things, people come on, they serve for a period of time or we have a new boardmember and really, we want them to be our brand ambassador. We want them to be our spokesperson in the community and really they should be boards boardmember is have their own spheres of influence in whatever worlds there i’m traveling in, and they can be great advocates for the organisation, but they need toe have the tools in order to do that, so they need to have a firm understanding of the mission. And then the mission needs to be clear enough that it could be expressed as an elevator pitch we could in business. We called an elevator pitch, you know, you’re going up the floors and you have, like ten seconds to tell someone in the elevator about your organization, you know, can you do that or not? Are their communications is there a presentation? Is there a brochure or there’s something that the boardmember is proud toe point to tell a business colleague who’s used to a certain level of sophistication? If they’re going, teo asked them for a large amount of money or a sponsorship for an event. So those are the kinds of issues that way address from the question that you said, how do you help inboard recruitment and facilitating board members as brand ambassadors? You know, you want to empower them on this obviously has implications that you’re alluding, teo, for your fund-raising you’re mentioning, you know, approaches to funders, that thinking of institutional funders, but also individual individual donors as well, exactly, and that’s, really the bulk of what precipitates examining brandy issues is how we articulated a message to that donors understand it, and that gets out through their events through their website through their e mail communication. So we like to do is look at having core messages that then permeate the entire communication spectrum. So so yeah, well, i just i just started picking back. So what organization should have a few core ideas that sort of everything else revolves around? Yeah, so for example, if they’re looking to establish themselves as the voice of authority in a certain sector and not all are but for example, if you’re performing funding medical research, then maybe you do wanna have a voice at the table when it comes. Tio congressional funding for your disease. So unless you can build up a certain level of cloud and credibility than legislature, legislators are not going to take you seriously. So if that is a key area that we identify, that should be part of the brand is speaking from authority about your issue, then we’ll look to communicate that in whatever we d’oh so in your newsletter instead of just having a story about someone that you’ve helped well, look att the resource is that the organization brought to bear in order to help that person, so it gives a little deeper to show that the organization has the wherewithal tio have an impact we beyond that one individual, but doing deep research can i give you another hypothetical? What about, say, a small college take a small liberal arts college, then they tend to all sort of be grouped together like i just did, you know, small northeast liberal arts college, how how how would they dive in and sort of identify themselves as different from the rest of the cluster? So brand distinction is the point that you’re really alluding. Teo s o we looked like to look at three, brand attributes we, as we call them a lot of jargon, you’re right. Okay, well, the word attributes people know on you’ll define that really distinguish the organization from others. It’s really key to understand that there’s a range of services that an organization may provide. So in a community college, they may have classes in various areas, right in various departments similar to other other schools. But there is typically something that is unique about that college. So we look to find out what that uniqueness is, okay, and that will come out in those conversations that you have rights, right? All right. Conversing with alumni boardmember sze faculty administrators. And i’m sure you start to see common themes that, you know, a lot of our students may be our first generation in college or got a grant for doing some certain type of research. Or, you know, we write called kids, go off to do one’s particular area or get hired by certain company. That’s found some part of the training very valuable it might be to do with the geographic location association with certain professors on their relationships. It could be anything. I mean, the idea really, is that think in broad terms, and then the key is understanding how that can be a value to your donors or in this case, probably student recruitment is usually a huge issue for colleges, which is why they wantto distinguish themselves. And so there i guess there isn’t any charity that can’t define itself and break away from the general cluster. I mean, animal shelters, you know, i don’t know churches there isn’t there you haven’t made a case that you couldn’t identify, i guess identify in a particular unique way. Some of them are tougher than others, okay, what are some tough one with that name? Names? Some of the tougher, not have none, and i don’t mean a specific organisation. They worked. But what what type of mission were they working in? That was hard to distinguish? Well, one’s social service agencies, which we deal with a lot, often provide a whole range of services, so they’ll, for example, provide services to senior’s senior care services. They might provide foster care services for for children. They might provide counseling services for adults going through troubled times. So right there, there’s, three different populations and three distinct services, but we’ve encountered a lot of organizations that have become full service in a way like conglomerates, whether they’ve gobbled up different divisions or started different ah, division’s, teo, meet the needs of a certain population, especially seeing that now and what i think is the tail into the recession. But for the past eighteen, twenty months or so, a lot of consolidation, right? Right? So just saying where you know, we’re a behavioral health care organization or something with a large catchall phrase is the way that many organizations go, which may sound good to them, but it doesn’t really help the donors to understand the specific things that they provide. So that’s an interesting challenge because you do want to provide them with the sense that there are larger and they are taking advantage of all these things so they can get funding at the same time they need to have a little bit of uniqueness. I’m with howard levy, and we’re talking about branding your organization and how important that is, how to go about it and then what to do after you have branded we have just a couple minutes before a break, howard what about the use of technology in? I don’t know, maybe determining what the brand should be or butt or but propagating the brand once you’ve once you’ve identified it, yeah, it’s a big concerns a non-profits and we find that a lot of the larger organizations are well refined in their sensibility about how we go about using technology, so we look at the, you know, the upper echelon organisations, they have departments, the whole interactive departments, they’re using social media, they have web development departments keeping the website up today, blogging, tweeting, it’s the smaller organizations and don’t have the staff to do it so that the tools are out there, and it is a huge opportunity for them to get feedback on their brand by by getting to a communication through surveys and tweets and blog’s and so forth a cz well, a cz disseminating their message and, um like this, we’ll talk about this a little later through facebook and other media where they can actually build up a base of supporters. Okay, we’re going to take a break, and when we come back, we’ll talk about that what the small and midsize non-profits khun do. Using technology, teo help propagate and promote and further their brand. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio stay with us. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. No. This is tony martignetti aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent technology fund-raising compliance social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr tony martignetti non-profit radio fridays one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcasting do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing effort. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is. We do whatever it takes to make our clients happy contact them today. Admission. Wanna one media dot com hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business, why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com dahna welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent it’s roughly thirty two minutes after the hour, and that means it’s tony’s take two for today itunes itunes is here, you can go to non-profit radio dot net and subscribe to the show. That means you’ll get automatic downloads of every new show, starting with this one’s, the first week’s show that will be sent teo delivered to you automatically, and you listen any time you like on any device you like, so that could be your ipad or your iphone or any any mobile phone, listen on your computer, get it and listen any time you like non-profit radio dot net will take you to the itunes page for the show. Also, i have a block post that i did this week, which is called beware of self serving objective report, an object of his in quotes, it’s getting ah good a number of comments from people who are aware of the fund-raising challenges that arts and culture organizations face on, and also some prospect researchers have commented, essentially, the post is about something that i got in an email, which suggests that arts and culture organizations should be spending approximate actually, they don’t say approximately spending at least twenty five percent of their time on prospect research. These air arts and culture organizations twenty five percent of their staff time on prospect research is ludicrous, i think it’s just dangling in front of them ah, carrot that they can never consume, never get to it’s just it’s, just impractical even for the larger organizations or largest arts and culture organizations, big dance companies, big theatre companies that we think of opera companies and there the outliers anyway. But even for them, i think twenty five per cent is is ah big stretch, but for a small arts and culture organization struggling to keep the keep the theatre rent paid and get the next show up and it’s just completely impractical. But i talk more about that in the block post, and as i said, it’s getting a fair number of comments, my blog’s is that m p g a d v dot com and again, that post is called beware the self serving objective report, and that is tony’s take two for friday, february fourth i’m with howard levy, we’re talking. About branded, you’re the importance of your brand. He is the principal of the red rooster group, which you’ll find at red rooster group dot com. And as i said before the break, howard let’s talk a little more about technology, but on the, you know, for the small and midsize organization, what tools are there that they can use? Well, i think for small organizations, you just taught it’s interesting you’re just talking about time that they have available and that’s probably the most precious commodity, i guess, other than their limited resource is itself, which both translate. The same is how did they use your their time? Tio maximize the effectiveness of social media because really, it takes a lot of time to develop an effective social media campaign. The bottom line is you have to be dedicating some portion of your time to creating the online presence to blogging on a regular basis to be twittering and so forth, you know, creating and maintaining right? It does no good to have a blogged that only gets one post every month or yeah, it’s twitter identity that doesn’t get posted regularly. Frequently. Yeah, it’s, not magic, is working. That’s really what it comes down to so that i think the key this two keys one is understanding what you looking to accomplish? So if you ask most organizations, they’ll say, well, we want to raise money so that’s good, but what’s realistic amount to raise online and how do you go about doing that? And also there are other things that you can accomplish online, i mean, creating awareness about your organization, creating credibility. We talked about that and how that could translate maybe to cloud full on advocacy issues, whether we talked about for legislators, teo, you know, on capitol hill or your state capital, but what about getting people to take some action on behalf of the organization, like sign a petition or send the letter or do something attended demonstration or so forth? That’s also very valuable and people are can be inspired to do that through social media tools. How should an organization decide whether it should let’s say let’s, let’s, take twitter? I mean, i think it’s, i think facebook is so common and we we have had guests in the past, including someone from facebook, andrew noise, one point talking about the value of facebook so i think that’s sort of understood having a facebook page for the organisation, but let’s take one, twitter, which does have to be updated pretty regularly. I mean, you should be tweeting at least a couple of times a day, i think. How does an organization decide whether it’s worth it to devote the time to create the twitter identity and then post regularly? Well, one thing you can try to do is take some steps in that direction. I think just starting often tweeting two times a day is really going to be on realistic for people who are not accustomed to that form of communication and not doing allocating the time. So, i mean, start off with block posts this way, it gives you a way to think about your organization think about resource is like this article you’re commenting on, right? So there’s ways of having content that you’re not creating. You can comment on another article you could post another article or resource from another organization so that’s an easy way to get started. Another way is to think about how you can automate some of these processes. So for example, i’m going to tell you about something we dio i don’t is not a best practice, but it can work out a better practice. Those it’s not a bad practice that’s a bad practice don’t share if you don’t have to be best long that’s good, it works for us, good or better, but maybe not best. Okay, so what we do is we have our blogged feeds block post, go out as twitter as tweets basically, so any time we post a blogger post, it goes out on our twitter feed, so we’re not actually tweeting the way that you intended to tweet on use that tool, which is for a short missives that are very timely on targeted, but it does convey all the target in timely information that we do have on our on our post, and we have found that it is a way to generate a base of followers and things are being noticed and retweeted and that’s probably an automated feature. Yes, okay, so you’re so you’re doing a block post and it automatically is promoted threw it through your twitter feed. It goes afternoon on twitter and it also we so the idea is really, how can you automate your technology? Because that’s going to reduce the amount of time that you have to spend and re posting and redoing things so there’s, a lot of ways to do this. Another way, for example, is on arlington page. You can import your block posts directly there. So when we post a block now, effectively it’s going out on twitter and it’s going out, it’s appearing on are linked in paige. So is many ways as you, khun, get to automate these things, and they’re integrations with facebook and other social media applications. So in terms of addressing, ah, small, non-profit and what they can do is have a goal. Think about realistically what they could accomplish, and then try to automate as much as possible. And we’re well, i’m with howard levy principle of the red rooster group we’re talking about branding your organization, how important that is and how to convey it and we on the block post for this show. So you go to my blogging mpg a dv dot com on the block post for today’s show i have links to three of howard’s articles he’s written many, but there are links to three on this block post. How would one of them talks about using linked in for for your board? I’m pretty sure that i got that from any of our articles what’s the what’s the value there of using linked in for help, you’re bored. Well, i mean the board is going to be a key asset in your organisation, at least it should. And actually a lot of smaller groups don’t really fully take advantage of it. It’s more the mature organizations that air have a well developed board, but it’s something teo aspire to? How could you involve your board in your organization in a deeper way so they could help communicate your value and bring into don’t the donors and the funders like we talked about? So unease e way is through lincoln, at least form a lincoln group for your organization and have your board members link there so that when someone from their network there, business associates, are checking out their profile, at least they’ll see the organization i mean, that’s it should be a no brainer for for organizations to do that. And for small and midsize groups. I mean, that’s really easy to do you’re saying i don’t you’re saying you’re suggesting the larger ones, but i think for smaller organisms, which are smaller, you could okay, they could certainly create a linked in group just for their board, and then that doesn’t become an easy freeway. Teo seventeen information to your board. Yeah, and hopefully will help the board if you have an active board. Hopefully the president is taking a bit of a leadership role can actually use the linked in forum to communicate with the other board members. So it’s inspiring a little bit of online interaction that could then spawn out to other people. Eventually, you might wantto use that group to bring in other people, for example. Okay, i was thinking of it just for the board. But what if you had one that is on ly for the board? I’m thinking of these burdensome board packages that that’s pretty good alliteration, you know, my love of a liberated, burdensome board? Ah, i don’t know, all right packages off to suffer with that that people that organizations do sometimes once a month, and they’ve aboard me once a month. But even if it’s only once a quarter they’re they’re they’re bulky. There typically in a notebook, they take along a lot of staff time to prepare and then and then time to print. And then they always fedex them, which is expensive. And you have a board of a dozen people or mohr and you’re doing this every month or every quarter. That’s really burdensome, but you could just use your linking group to upload a file, right? You do have to be careful about what’s public inwards. Private group is private. No, it wouldn’t work. Yeah, if it’s, i’m not quite sure how that works. Actually, i’m posting files. But you do bring up a very good point. Which another piece of jargon i’ll call brand infrastructure and that’s ah, like you saying communicating internally is also is important as reaching donors and other outside audiences. So in terms of the whole brand process, we look att what systems are in place in order to facilitate communication among the board and among the staff and among other parties that would not be shared with outside sources, so we’ll try to put together and internet, or at least an online archive for somewhere to post these things. You’re referring to board notes but also brand assets. So where the copies of the logo files stored so that they’re not on one person’s computer, that everyone can access them that needs to sew when they’re creating a new document, they khun see what the typefaces are the colors, the logo’s, the templates and things like that. Having this kind of brand infrastructure in place is really crucial to maintaining the brand over a long period of time. Yeah, we’re investing a lot of money in creating it wast want to keep it active on, and i think what you call propagating the brand right let’s, talk a little about the board’s role in the brand i’d like to bring them in. You ah, well, one of the articles that you’ll find on my block for this show is howard’s article the board’s role in managing your non-profits brand. So we’re going to talk about the what he has there, the four p’s that you’re bored has to take on in terms of its brand. And of course, i love alliteration. So, you know, i’m drawn to the four piece, so want to tell us what the four p’s are, first of all, howard, so there are different ways. Well, i just want to say also that the board, um it’s every organization is different in terms of their board involvement in their brand process, so some of them are going to have ah, much stronger role that the board will play and some of them are fairly hands off, and they kind of rubber stamp something that the organization does. So this is all taking in the in the sensibility of the organization, okay, but the the better practice and we’ve had people on to talk about toward practice, right? Better practice for your board and for your organization. Is that the board be involved in important initiatives of the organization? And co-branding is one of them, right? Okay, i understand your viewpoint is different cultures, different accusations, but i want to make the point that the board ought to be involved in this. Yeah, so some of the areas there are producing the brand. So in terms of this process we discussed in terms of this the discovery of doing the research we should be involved and be interviewed and so forth beyond some representation on the marketing committee, probably one or two people from the board on the committee that’s responsible for i’m going through this process, so you have the producing part. You have the projecting part which has had a weak now communicated through the website through email and so forth. So in helping to identify those different areas, you have the protecting part which is really interesting. The ideas of brand is your reputation and that’s something that’s to be protected because that’s the goodwill that you can parlay into corporate sponsorships or other valuable things. So we’re headed into a break shortly, so we’re going to talk more about the protection part leader lead us into the fourth, the fourth key, which is parlaying, parlaying your brand, right? So that goes into this sense of now you have some equity, your value built into the brand. How do you parlay that into cause marketing or other opportunities? Okay, so this is really all around just in the minute we have left before the break. It’s really all creating a sort of marketing mindset is that? Do you think that’s right that term? Yeah. Okay, well, that’s a help myself martignetti ease martignetti is marketing mindset. I wish my first names start with a name. I’ll just rename myself mark martignetti is martin marketing mindset? Is that what we’re doing here? Marketing mindset. It’s. Exactly. Helping the organization to transfer the way that they think about their organization, from sitting back and being passive and thinking that people are going to give them money because they’re doing good work to being proactive and thinking and themselves is ah, marketing machine. Yeah, essential because there are too many organizations that are sitting back, and the proactive ones are the ones who are going to attract volunteers, board members and of course, gif ts, this is tony martignetti non-profit radio with howard levy. Stay with us. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Altum i really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness can help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join Joshua margolis, fitness expert at 2 one two, eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com duitz oppcoll do you want to enhance your company’s web presence with an eye catching and unique website design? Would you like to incorporate professional video marketing mobile marketing into your organization’s marketing campaign? Mission one on one media offers a unique marketing experience that will set you apart from your competitors, magnify your brand exposure and enhance your current marketing efforts. Their services include video production and editing, web design, graphic design photography, social media management and now introducing mobile marketing. Their motto is, we do whatever it takes to make our clients happy. Contact them today. Admission one one media dot com. Talking. I’m back with howard levy, and we’re talking about your brand. We, uh, ended right before the last break with howard’s article the board’s role in managing your non-profits brand again, you’ll find a link to that article on my blogged the block post for this show, and i think how would we should spend a few minutes on the last two of the four piece, which are protect anne and parlour? Because i feel like we’ve talked a good amount about producing and projecting your brand? What what did you do? Your thoughts, they’re about protecting the brand well, the brand is really a valuable piece of intellectual property for the non-profit i mean, if you think about all the good work that the non-profit does, you’re building up a fair amount of goodwill, right? We talked about the brand being a reputation, so if your reputation is positive, that’s something that’s worth some money, so you really want to be able to protect how your brand is portrayed. So one of the things that board khun do it just is a general responsibility in terms of the oversight of the organization is just to make sure that the brand is being used in a consistent and professional way, right? I mean, if it’s used it in inconsistently logo appears one way on the website in another way on the newsletter, then you’re not really building up the kind of recognition for the organization that you want in a way you’re undermining the professionalism of the organization, right? You’re creating a fractured viewpoint that donorsearch e this organization doesn’t really know what the heck they’re doing, you know, they’re the each male piece i get looks a little bit different, yeah, something like that. S so i mean, this is all in business terms. They think they talk about valuing a brand and having equity and actually sell brands for a ton of money, literally millions of dollars like when pan am the airline went out, they actually sold the name and the logo for millions of dollars. Bear stearns, i think it was in redoing their i’m sorry, i think it was merrill lynch with the bull and they were going to redesign it think they had valued it at some x amount of millions of dollars. So it’s a non-profit you have a lot of good will. In what you’re doing, and if you can develop the communication part of the branded logo and the way that you’re using it, then you’re going to be able to dahna leverage that somehow and that goes to the next part of the parlay in-kind going right? So you may have heard of cause marketing there’s a lot of different ways of going about leveraging the goodwill that you have so causevox eating relationship is where corporation will somehow leverage the goodwill you have in exchange for something. Now i want to distinguish between a sponsorship where a company just gives you money. They’re not expecting anything in return other than maybe listing on the website, you know, your look, their logo appears somewhere, right? So that that’s a sponsorship cause marketing is where there’s more of a reciprocal relationship where the corporation is actually gaining some of the goodwill and you’re gaining some of the knowledge, expertise or distribution to access to their the corporation’s audience? Okay? And that let’s let’s apply that to the small and midsize non-profit that isn’t going to be able to attract, you know, big corporate attention, really, but that could be done with ah, local company, right? A smaller local company? Yeah, yeah, even retail stores anywhere that has a high volume of traffic and specifically ones that are attracting the type of people that you’re looking for. So, i mean, you mentioned an animal shelter, for example, so the animal lover where would an animal lover go? You know, maybe a local big local petco. Yeah, exactly. So if there’s some some relationship that you can have with that other business that will benefit both parties that’s really where you can take advantage of having the brand equity, okay? And in just a minute and a half we have left are so you have maybe some advice for funding for the for this sort of research that goes into creating the brand once you give some suggestions that way. Yeah, well, the typically funders wantto don’t individual donors want to donate teo own organization and have their money go directly to programs. But there is a growing realization that capacity building this new phrase that having this organization’s infrastructure be sustainable over the long term is in everyone’s interest, because if they’re out of business next year, that no that’s not going. To benefit anyone. So so we’re slowly funding that funders air supporting capacity building and brand development is part of capacity building. Okay on dure finding that on the individual level, individual donors to some degree interested in that mostly it’s like they’re getting grants from a parent organization, umbrella organization or a funder. You know, a major funder, mate, could be a large individual funder or, you know, a foundation of some sort that’s interested in the long term viability of the organization. Okay, some help out there. My guest has been howard levy. Howard is the principle of the red rooster group, which you’ll find at red rooster group dot com. Howard, thank you very much for joining me today. Thanks, tony it’s been great. Excellent. Thank you. Um, next week we have resplendent resource is the founders of idealist dot or ge national resource directory and philanthropy alive. We’re going to share how their work can help your work from job listings to finding the right consultant to collaboration and cooperative buying. So have three different organizations to profile next week on resplendent resource is you can keep up with what’s coming up. Sign up for our insider alerts by email. You could do that on the facebook page. You go to facebook and then the name of this show, and while you’re there you please click like you become a fan of the show, of course. Itunes at non-profit radio dot net subscribed there. Listen to the show at any time. The creative producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is claire meyerhoff, our line producer and the owner of talking alternative broadcasting is sam liebowitz, and our social media is by regina walton of organic social media, who expertly does some of the things that howard was talking about in terms of cross posting my blogged and facebook and twitter all done for the show. Bye regina walton of organic social media. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio, where we always have in mind big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent stay with us for next friday’s show, which will be one p m to two p m eastern here at talking alternative dot com or, of course, on itunes. Listen, one way or the other next week. Dahna you’re listening to the talking alternative network, waiting to get you thinking. E-giving good. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medication? Then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Are you feeling overwhelmed in the current chaos of our changing times? 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