This slightly thorny truth is even sharper today, since the internet has extended the longevity of a piece by making it easy to find even years from publication. One of the first Google results for my name is usually a profile of my architectural drawings in the New York Times… from February 1990!

When it comes to clients, this new permanence – making ancient news immediately available – can cause extra stickiness when dealing with bad press, an ill-advised quote or a lackluster interview. Accordingly, in helping clients tell their stories, it becomes paramount to make sure that they project their personal identity, in addition to their organization’s brand and mission – so that in 25 years, when someone asks their robot assistant to Google the organization, what comes up is a document of passion and personality, not simply a rote list of talking points.

One client of ours, many years back, inadvertently underscored the importance of injecting a little personality into a presentation. This nonprofit leader worked primarily with elders. She was passionate and dedicated 100% of her talents to her work, which was clear to everyone who met her. When it came to public speaking, though, she spoke stiffly and kept to her notecards, effectively stifling all the passion and fire she projected in person-to-person interactions.

With an organization like hers, filled with wonderfully touching moments, all funders, donors, families and elected officials would need in order to instantly align to her cause was a well-told, publicly shared story. Instead, each speaking engagement was a lost opportunity, a vacuum of boredom and polite applause where there should have been rapt attention and standing ovations. Something had to change.

We needed to find the key to opening up her usual boundless enthusiasm instead of having it clamped down when she donned her business hat.

We discovered that each evening over dinner, she would share the highs and the lows of her day with her children. Her motivation was to inspire them to do good in the world, and she readily shared her stories with energy and zest. Having heard this, we suggested that she paper-clip reminder photos of her children to the top of her next speech. From then on, she was a firebrand at the podium.

That was a crucial lesson for us to learn as a young firm. Most PR professionals will tell you their job is to tell clients’ stories. To be sure, it is – but when a client can be his or her own best advocate, it’s also our job to step out of the way and facilitate the client’s own storytelling. By helping our client project her innate passion and personality while speaking publicly, her advocacy was twice as convincing. And, unlike another dry press release, her testimony will remain vital as long as it’s search-indexed.

The post Helping Clients Tell Stories that Stick appeared first on the Winkleman blog.

Philosophers and thinkers from the Greeks to the Renaissance often used the position of rooms and objects in the construction of “memory houses,” mental structures intended to organize their ideas — the ars memoriae, or “art of memory,” as the Romans called it. Perhaps the idea first came to its inventor during a home move.

Each object in each room signified a portion of the total concept to be remembered, and their placements relative to each other represented the relationship between them. While I took stock of our possessions, I recollected the story of each. I came to realize that our lovingly organized photo albums, bookshelves, artwork and furniture told the story of our lives together and

A 1912 Corgi Classic Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. When I bought mine it was the first time I saved towards a goal.

individually. The wall of family photographs catalogs the people whose stories intersect ours, from my grandfather in his pharmacy in the 1920s and my wife’s rocket-pioneering grandparents to my son graduating from high school. The vintage toy cars, like my prized 1912 Corgi Classic Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, and political memorabilia harken back to past times and youthful enthusiasms.

The same principle would apply to an organization’s story. Some of this arrangement is literal — the way you style your office, which achievements you display to your visitors and in what order — but also the way that you manage and track your operations. In the short term, it enables learning and saves time. How did we run this event last year? What worked and didn’t work? In the long term, though, inventory and reflection define your values and build your traditions. Archives and stories, whether legitimate files required by law or scrapbooks of letters from clients and students, digital or paper, all contribute to a picture of not only who you are, but where you’ve been and the lives you’ve touched along the way.

During my days at Clark University, for example, we were tasked with a logo redesign. Other members of the committee suggested hiring an ad agency, focus groups and designers, but we couldn’t quite agree on what the logo should convey. To find our identity, we went to the archives and looked at our school’s history. We saw what we’d achieved in the past, and we were proud of that tradition. Accordingly, we found an elegant logo from the 1920s that not only fit our current concepts, but nodded to our institution’s humble regard for the past successes that enabled us to seek excellence in the current moment.

As an organization, you must sometimes confront the question of modifying your presentation. Whether it’s a logo redesign or a total brand overhaul in preparation for a capital campaign, the next chapter of the story is impossible to write without reading the ones that have come before. Commitment to an archival perspective enables you, as a leader, to help your organization find its way forward.

For your sanity, it is important to remember that becoming a good archivist doesn’t necessarily mean keeping everything. Any compelling story requires development, and whether by loss or by the introduction of a better idea, sometimes this development requires us to let go of possessions, practices and people. While packing to move, I left some things behind, things that weren’t crucial to my life now because they didn’t contribute to the story of who I am. In doing so, I freed up a little space — blank pages, if you will — on which to continue the next chapter of my story.

The post Nonprofit Management is Archival: Telling Your Organization’s Story appeared first on the Winkleman blog.

I’ve been involved in nonprofits for my entire career, and in all of those years, nearly every client, coworker and student has been there for a bigger reason than just a paycheck. Recently, however, I’ve noticed a return to a disturbing and saddening trend – nonprofit CEOs and executive directors caught with their hands in the till. Although I’ll decline to name examples, I’m sure you can think of a few.

Why do so many heads of nonprofits get into trouble?

Don’t be distracted by the trappings of wealth

I think it has to do with perspective. When you work as hard as many nonprofit leaders do, you may become disenchanted with the discrepancy between your lifestyle and many of your biggest donors. Seeing the chairman of your board drive up to the board meeting every week in his $90,000 car may be a distraction. Although you entered the business of nonprofits to help people, the allure of a brass chandelier in your office can become blinding, and the money to pay for it seems readily available, although earmarked for a program for children.

To counteract this siren’s call, it’s important to maintain your perspective. Rather than meet at a pricey restaurant or club for lunch, for example, one client of mine had VIPs eat the same food the nonprofit serves its consumers, right in the same cafeteria. The lunch effectively reminded the donors who their efforts and support were helping and their reasons for involvement – all the while keeping the heads of the organization humble. Doing so allowed everyone involved to be inspired and motivated by the organization’s real purpose.

While I can’t say for sure what motivates the reprehensible behavior of nonprofit heads who skim or cheat, I know that these episodes offer an important lesson. A career of nonprofit management can be very high stress and often underpaid, relative to your major donors. Rather than succumb to the pressure and temptations, the best thing for a nonprofit lead to do is to remain true to the goal of his/her organization and to remember why he/she chose that path. Suddenly, a brass chandelier seems less attractive.

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Summer’s trappings of relaxation and fresh starts can create new energy. Leveraging summer’s predisposition for sunny events and team outings to set an energetic tone for the coming year can be a boon to nonprofits. To some, that means volunteer appreciation and team activities, and to others it means taking a chance on something unusual.

A student I advised last year implemented a zero-based programming approach to better regulate her communications with stakeholders and to reassess what research she truly needed. She scrapped her existing strategy and started from scratch—building her programs item by item and quantifying and qualifying each element. She found that with a different perspective and creativity, she was able to produce more zing for less money.

To encourage her team to buy into the new programming approach, she built a six-month reviewinto the restructure – immediately after a lighthearted summer/winter pie-baking contest in both cases – promising to go back to the old way if the zero-base approach couldn’t be reenergized in January. The memories and creativity of the good-natured baking competition reminded her team of the generative and inventive atmosphere they established when they first worked through zero-based building that previous summer.

Like the client who waited until February to bring back the memories of his team at the agency’s summer cookout, this student saw remarkable dividends from her new approach – despite the initial reluctance by her team to change the status quo. Making the process fun with a mixture of brainstorming, sweet treats and pie-in-the-sky ideas that inspired much laughter encouraged the team to generate a comprehensive program that they believed in and totally owned. And it worked – the staff is now gung-ho and even more energized than before.

Nonprofits are always charging ahead. The reason nonprofit-oriented folks can take on such daunting challenges with success is that they neither take no for an answer nor think to rest until they have reached the top of the mountain. Both my student and that client are cut from this cloth. They also figured out something important: changing your approach and saving some summer for the winter can pay off in a big way without slowing you down. In those winter months, routine and darkness might press in, so bringing back the creativity of summer can totally invigorate a team. Frankly, I’ve never encountered a person or nonprofit to be averse to warmth and change.

The post Summer Nonprofit Management: Creativity for Year-Round Sunshine appeared first on the Winkleman blog.

Under3PR, a collaborative service from Winkleman Company and Coa Design, was inspired by the interests and challenges posed by my students throughout nearly two decades of teaching at Columbia University’s Institute for Not-for-Profit Management, Mailman School of Public Health, United Jewish Appeal, and Fordham University’s Center for Nonprofit Leaders. Each student’s organization shared the acute need for quick, strategic and affordable guidance to targeted challenges.

Through public relations, marketing and graphic design, Under3PR addresses the most common issues facing small nonprofits and businesses. Projects range from drawing media attention for a program, branding and social media management to crisis response and counsel on leadership continuity – and everywhere in-between. Like many of my students’ organizations, prospective clients must have revenues under $3 million and a short-term project that fits within Under3PR’s targeted parameters.

Our test drive for Under3PR came to us in the form of Heart Gallery NYC. A small nonprofit, Heart Gallery NYC uses the artistic talents of renowned photographers to raise the visibility and public awareness of children in foster care seeking their “forever families” – all on an annual budget of under $500,000. Laurie Sherman Graff, Founder and Executive Director, needed help drawing coverage for a press conference but had limited funds. Heart Gallery NYC was a perfect opportunity for Under3PR – small budget, acute project, good cause – so we set about being perfect for it.

Our PR expertise packed Laurie’s press conference with reporters and photographers.

“The media coverage was awesome, and the professionalism of the Winkleman Company team was so apparent and appreciated! I look forward to continuing to work together on future events,” Laurie wrote in an email to us the day after the conference. As Under3PR, our team brought together the right television and traditional media to help tell these children’s incredible stories to a broad, multilingual audience of potential families.

Working on a project basis can be the right approach, especially when a challenge may be outside the scope of small business or nonprofit managers who is already too stretched for the cause/goal that drives them.

When a small organization comes up against a roadblock, it can’t afford to slow down. Under3PR will help you navigate and resolve those roadblocks.

Please see our full menu of Under3PR offerings or call Katherine at 646-234-8077 to discover what we can do for your business.

The post Marketing like the Big Guys for Small Businesses and Nonprofits: Announcing Under3PR appeared first on the Winkleman blog.

Would I have read an email from my student? Yes, of course I would. While there is an immediacy to email, it doesn’t linger. Once read, I’d jot a note in my planner and move on to the next task. The message wouldn’t just sit there on my desk, subtly demanding action.

Neither do most of the items that come in the mail – bills, circulars, trade publications, credit card offers and so on. There are also those donation asks with fake handwriting printed on them, just to trick you into looking long enough to notice. All of us receive too much email and junk mail – just imagine how much the media, foundations, industry leaders and business owners receive.

On top of all of this noise and bustle, voicemail, text messages, Facebook posts, Linked In requests, Twitter and RSS feeds form a stimulus shield that can make it very difficult to get someone’s attention, as we discussed in our last blog entry. Only around 20 to 40% of emails are ever even opened.

When you really need to captivate, some neat penmanship on crisp cardstock or applying a highlighter on selected lines and a few Post-its in your annual report can often do the trick. But there really isn’t anything that beats a personal, handwritten note.

Your target audience, whether it’s a donor, trustee or a favorite aunt, will definitely open one – and these days, it can feel almost novel and nostalgic to even tear open a card-shaped envelope. A handwritten note shows that you took the time and effort to share with them. Your audience will understand that you wrote the note specifically for them because they personally are your priority. It’s flattering to feel important.

The robin’s egg stationery is still sitting there. It’s only been a few days, but every time I look at it, I’m reminded that I can help this student. Her note makes me want to react. She’s taken the time to let me know of her appreciation and that she doesn’t want to be forgotten. The least I can do is to make sure I don’t.

The post Analog Social Media: The Power of a Hand-Written Note appeared first on the Winkleman blog.

Between email lists, social subscriptions and the occasional direct mailing, people are increasingly hounded to help out their nonprofits. The Onion, a satire newspaper, lampooned the phenomenon last year in a video about a kidnapped nonprofit staffer whose many emails for help went unopened.

The 2013 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study reflects the same reality – email lists, Facebook likes and Twitter followers all grew over the past year, 15%, 46% and 264% respectively – but email engagement is down. Everyone’s shouting more, so it’s harder to be heard.

The problem boils down to being concise. Your subscribers want to pay attention – they did subscribe, after all – but the competition for a moment of their time is stiff, so you should use it well.

Take a look at these two telephone ads. The first is from 1922, touting the many functions of a Northern Electric telephone:

The second is from 2012, advertising an iPhone 5’s myriad uses:

These ads make the exact same claim, 90 years apart: “Our telephone does it all.” Where the first does it by listing the multitude of purposes to which the telephone can be put (including my favorite, “shelf”), the second gets right to the point. A smartphone has more potential uses than a Northern Electric telephone, but there’s no sense in listing them to an audience that’s likely familiar with them anyway.

A nonprofit’s audience is the same way. They know what the organization does, and they want to help, at least a little bit – but they only have a second to decide whether to trash the email or follow its call to action. Be brief.

The post Messaging in the Age of Noise appeared first on the Winkleman blog.

When the dust cleared and the blog roundups finished commenting, though, what was left?

For that much money, you’d expect your audience to take away a pretty significant message. Increasingly, though, it seems Super Bowl ads focus on gags, special effects and flair without really trying to communicate.

One of the things a Z10 can’t do

Although this year’s batch had the usual mix of funny, flat, fantastic and forgettable, there weren’t a lot of brands trying to tell us about themselves. Perhaps tellingly, one of my favorite ads this year was for the BlackBerry Z10 – a spot that focused on what it wasn’t saying.

In that light, AdWeek’s Six Questions video this week seemed especially relevant: they broke their usual format to ask, “Will the big Super Bowl spot ever die?”

I think the most on-point comment in AdWeek’s video comes from Nissan’s Erich Marx, who points to social media spaces as the proving grounds for an ad. He’s implying that the strongest showing a Super Bowl ad can enjoy is to engage viewers offscreen and to capture their conversation online.

Erich is right because the best marketing is a guided conversation. To wit, two of the most successful pieces of advertising from this year’s Super Bowl weren’t even on television.

One, for the home carbonation device-maker SodaStream, managed to steal the show without even paying for airtime. In fact, that’s sort of the point – “If you love the bubbles, set them free,” says the ad, cheekily acknowledging the Coke/Pepsi blockade on soda as well as soda advertising, both on Super Bowl Sunday and in general. Commenting on not being allowed into the TV conversation created another one online: SodaStream netted 4.3 million views on YouTube so far.

The other most successful piece of the year also plugged itself into the social conversation instead of buying attention-time on the air. Oreo and ad agency 360i managed to steal the show by capitalizing on the unexpected power outage in the third quarter with their socially shared “You can

Oreo’s fleet-footed ad

still dunk in the dark” ad. The windfall? 16,000 retweets, 22,000 likes and 7,000 additional shares on Facebook – not to mention a well-shared Buzzfeed article and thousands of points on Reddit.

At about eight million dollars a minute, advertising should pack a pretty hefty punch. Certainly, there’s still an audience to be found glued to the set on game day, and plenty of people tune in just for the ads – but as with all marketing, the wisest path isn’t just to the viewer’s eyes and ears, it’s to their tongue (and social accounts) as well. Don’t just talk to your audience. Get them to talk.

The post Social Super Bowl vs. the $4 Million TV Spot appeared first on the Winkleman blog.