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.

Creating Your Own Reason for Being “Most Excellent”

Regardless of whether you are doing your life's work in the perfect job, or sweeping floors until you get your inheritance; work, like life, is still “earth school”.

The cast of characters you interact with; customers, co-workers, supervisors (bosses), viewed symbolically (impersonally), can provide a rich environment for self discovery. Taken personally, the workplace can become a melodramatic and sticky mess.

Like Bob Dylan sings, “you're gonna have to serve somebody”, so we might as well adopt a service attitude and use the opportunity to earn AND learn.

In the conventional workplace setting, if management follows wisdom, they have created a “bottoms up” info/organizational structure that encourages a frictionless interchange of ideas from those who interact with the public.

However, an idea box that doesn’t also act on the suggestions will quickly be seen as empty political posturing, which will backfire. It’s important to follow up by effectively enabling the change and then rewarding the idea’s creator. The atmosphere created in such a workspace entrains a sense of trust and gratitude.

The companies that will thrive into the 21st century must focus on price, quality, flexibility, innovation and sustainable development. They must see their human talent as business capital.

Making widgets for the sake of adding to the amount of consumable landfill stuff can be a soul shriveling prospect. There’s simply got to be a better reason to be your best. It starts by creating your own reason for being excellent.

Every person has an intangible balance sheet. An honest inventory can reveal your true assets and liabilities – which can be extremely helpful in determining where you can be of service and where you need some personal development.

The most valuable asset to cultivate in your personal balance sheet is integrity. It is simply the greatest gift we can give ourselves and the companies we work with.

In the book, The Corporate Mystic, by Gay Hendricks, PhD., & Kate Ludeman, PhD., it is noted that any “problem” that shows up in the workplace can ALWAYS be traced to a breach of integrity.

So how does one be a credit to their ancestors (be true to themselves) while being of service? How does one value one’s time, talent and accountability while they are carrying out the instructions of a supervisor who may or may not be interested in their point of view?

If we get caught in ours and other’s personal wounds, the workplace can be a regular soap opera of intrigue, deception, gossip and betrayal – a place for shadow boxing and diminished productivity.

If you find yourself wrapped up in low vibe drama at work, you can be sure that there has been a breach of integrity. The questions you must answer honestly are: Am I being authentic with myself? Am I being authentic with the people I work with or serve? Am I doing each and everything I say I’m going to do?

If you feel sure you are not the breach of integrity, ask someone else their opinion and be open to learning (rather than trying to save face). So now what? You’ve cleared your conscience, but that boss or co-worker is still ruining your life.

If you’re always in integrity, if your co-workers and supervisors know that you are always authentic, then you have nothing to worry about by drawing attention to issues that directly affect your ability to serve, not as blame, but out of an effort to improve the organizations ability to serve and be efficient. If you feel you can’t be authentic at work, perhaps wisdom would say that there is another company more suited to your personal values.

Without wisdom at the helm honoring wisdom at the front lines, there is an atmosphere of tension, distrust and feeling devalued, leading to “internal shrinkage” (theft) which is a common employee response to feeling unseen or under appreciated in some way.

Be the change you want to see in the workplace and constantly monitor your own integrity. The workplace may never become idyllic, but at least your part in it can be most excellent.

Volunteering: It's About Service

As the volunteer coordinator for the Maui film Festival, each year (since 2001) I’ve had the unique privilege to study how 250-300 volunteers respond to the opportunity to put their passion for service to work on behalf of the whole community. Even though volunteers have access to generous perks, the majority put their time into assuring the festival’s success, even over their own preferences, comfort and movie watching experience.

One of the central themes of the 2006 festival opener, Peaceful Warrior (based on Dan Millman’s bestseller, Way of the Peaceful Warrior) is that service is the highest path. We all strive to discover our talents, both obvious and hidden, and to bring them to the workplace for recognition and remuneration. When we finally arrive at that place of knowing that it’s really all about being of selfless service, it completely changes the quality and quantity of passion we apply to everything.

My ha nai daughter used to work for a local Maui company that sets up events. She was often sorting equipment in a warehouse when she wasn’t driving a truck or setting up or tearing down events. She was complaining one day about a veteran co-worker who said “it isn’t our job to make it easier for the warehouse people to do their job”. This “unenlightened” co-worker didn’t realize that she was talking to someone who also works in the warehouse…

Being of service is being present to the entire chain of events that results in a positive customer experience. It’s recognizing that we’ve moved beyond a commodity economy to an experience economy. Your customer is everyone from the person buying from you to the people who work with you or supervise you.

Your gifts are unique to you. Nurtured and cultivated, they will find their place in the world. Your commitment to being of selfless service is your gift to humanity. The person who’s job it is to empty the trash is the person who encounters the full trash can.

Just the other day I was filling out an information form that requested my occupation. I can never quite fit “somatic awareness trainer, media producer, volunteer coordinator, writer, musician” in the space provided. After seeing that one scene in Peaceful Warrior, I simply wrote: “service”.

The next time you’re struggling with your identity around “right livelihood”, take a new look around you with a service attitude and experience how good it feels to simply be of service. It’s OK to make the warehouse job easier. In fact, in doing so, your co-worker may bend over backward to make your job easier too. Then everybody wins.