Doing More With Less: 10 Success Tips for Non-Profits During Economic Uncertainty

At non-profits across America, Boards of Directors are asking their Executive Directors how they can do more with less. Conventional thinking tends to contract rather than expand around economic uncertainty; slashing budgets, downsizing people and limiting services. However, Americans are witness to a phenomenal challenge to convention. In a sea of information, for both not-for-profits and for-profits alike, it’s all about branding.

Q: When is the time ripest for getting your brand recognized and your message heard?
A: When everyone else is tightening their belts.

It takes courage and foresight to increase your visibility and services when everyone else is doing the opposite, but like all cycles, the ones who step it up now will be in a stronger position when the economy rebounds.

Your “Do More With Less” Game Plan:

1. Manage your email list via an email newsletter service provider such as Constant Contact, iContact or Email Now. The $30-$50 per month will more than pay for itself by improving your image and learning more about your target audience.
2. Make it really easy for people to; sign up for your eNewsletter, forward it to their friends and “donate now.”
3. Create an editorial calendar so that your message is delivered consistently.
4. Create a Blog so you have a searchable archive of articles that celebrate how your social services impact your community. Feature the first 2 paragraphs of your latest Blog on your eNewsletter with a link to the whole article. Link to your website from your blog and newsletter.
5. Monetize your Blog with contextual links to books and/or other relevant products with an Amazon “A-Store”. Earn referral fees.
6. Optimize your website. Cross promote all of the above outreach programs and place a donate now button on each page.
7. Choose a consistent voice for your marketing campaign. It’s important to have a website, eNewsletter and blog all cross-linking to each other. The voice of the writer is critical because your communication campaign is one continuous contextual message. Choose a professional.
8. Stream your message to the world. The proliferation of free online video streaming platforms like YouTube, Revver, Metacafe and (locally) HawaiiTVNetwork has removed the financial barrier for distributing video, which is the best medium for delivering an emotion message.
9. Embrace Social Networking. Join LinkedIn and/or Facebook. These are social net-works for professional people and will expand your connections, giving you more opportunities to promote your brand and link back to your organization.
10. Supercharge your volunteer program. Your volunteer base represents regular deposits to your organization’s social capital account. It’s potential to assure sustainability of your programs and services is unlimited and yet rarely optimized.

Begin your success strategy now with a strategic consultation evaluating your volunteer programs and communications strategies. Be sure you are connecting the dots between your services and potential supporters by engaging the vision, experience and technical resources of a communications professional that’s wired for success. Engage the services of Keith Ranney Solutions to assure sustainable achievement of targeted benchmarks.

Keith Ranney is founder & president of Art of Volunteering, LLC, an extension of his media and marketing company, Keith Ranney Solutions.

Sustainability on Maui

One of the most intriguing "take-aways" from the recent Sustainable Maui Expo was a presentation by Craig Elevitch, Project Coordinator for Permanent Agriculture Resources [Agroforestry.net] on the Big Island.

He showed a map (below, left) of North America with the Hawaiian Island chain way down in the bottom left corner. The message was that we base how we live in Hawai`i as if we are a part of North America. In reality, our only relationship to North America is ideological.


The next slide (above, right) places Hawaii in the upper right corner with the south sea island nations in the bottom left. From a sustainability perspective, we have much more in common with these ancient island communities which have been self sufficient for hundreds of years.

Unless you just woke up from an 8 year coma, you know that humanity is experiencing a profound shift of awareness. Maui residents are beginning to awaken to the profound irony that we are the most vulnerable Americans when it comes to food and energy safety.

The number of attendees to the August Sustainable Maui Expo represented a significant boost over previous initiatives. No doubt, October’s economic forecasts have people thinking much more about food and energy security. The cost of shipping food to Hawai`i, to both the environment and in real dollars, is finally acknowledged as pure folly in light of our amazing year round growing conditions.

What other ideologies do we cling to as Americans that keep us imprisoned by a simple story we tell ourselves repeatedly? Is it time to outgrow a monetary system that is designed to further the divide between the 5% who "own" and control 98% of the world's resources and the rest of us who are rich-in-spirit and cultural relevancy?

More importantly, what are we doing on Maui to return to the self sufficiency enjoyed by previous generations of Hawaiians just 40 years ago? Have you ever spent a day thinking about where every thing you consume comes from? Could you make it yourself? Your clothes? Your tooth brush? A simple candle? Toilet paper?!!! How will you live if no barges come to Maui?

Pot luck gatherings are a popular way to celebrate together on Maui and throughout Hawai`i. I’d like to propose a new twist to the local pot luck tradition; that we all make an effort to prepare dishes that we’ve grown ourselves. At first your dish might be guacamole, if you’re lucky enough to have avocado trees. Or, you add homegrown herbs to store bought ingredients. That’s a start. Over time, the goal is to create dishes from all local, organically grown ingredients, and to become a localvore.

For your health and our collective food safety, the time to start is now. Grow something for yourself. Expect mistakes and to learn from them. My personal attempts to grow cucumbers, zucchini and eggplant were less than satisfactory, but our beets, lettuce’s, kale, basil and parsley are winners.

Talk to your neighbors and encourage them. Integrate your plans so that your choices of crops are more complimentary than redundant. Share in each other’s bounty. We live in a South Pacific paradise that is artificially propped up by external inputs while dangerously compromising our capacity to be self sufficient by allowing poorly supervised open field genetic experiments. As Al Gore would say; "everything about that picture is wrong."

Let's make things pono (right) on Maui.