Different Drummer

Image: Seamartini Graphics, dollarphoto.com

It ain't easy being an iconoclast, but I've known there is more than one way to beat a drum since I was a twelve-year-old percussionist in the school band. Here are three examples of how marching in the opposite direction of conventional wisdom can work to the benefit of nonprofit organizations.


1. Too-long e-newsletters
Over the past few years, I have produced many e-newsletters for nonprofit membership organizations and cheerfully ignored the conventional advice to keep them short. Short is good - sometimes. However, if the most important information members are seeking is when certification classes will be in their state, that can lead to a longer newsletter. Or if a very important reason for doing a newsletter at all is to give smaller, resource-poor organizations visibility to and access to the expertise and resources of the larger organizations, that newsletter can become "too long." Obviously, these e-newsletters are not going to be read head to toe. But if the entries are short, well organized and well-indexed, length alone does not have to be a bad thing. Sometimes these long newsletters can actually have much higher than normal open and click-through rates.

2.  Off-prescription uses of software
I recently noticed that a federation of nonprofit organizations uses some software in an unusual way to support fulfillment of posting employment ads on their website (which is a member benefit). There are any number of software programs for building forms, but they used a popular survey program to enable members to provide their own information in a consistent manner. Not only is this a great upgrade from their former pdf process, but it uses software with which they and many of their members are already familiar. I personally applaud this creative approach.

3. Securing adequate lead time
We find ourselves in the age of agility. "In a business context, agility is the ability of an organization to rapidly adapt to market and environmental changes in productive and cost-effective ways."1 Agility is good, yet all too often agility becomes the excuse for doing things with too little thought and in too short a time frame for successful results. That is better described as "procrastination."

Events, publications, membership campaigns and fundraising campaigns all require and deserve adequate planning and lead time. The process of securing adequate lead time can painful, but once that lead time is in place and the calendar understood by all the people involved in a project, that project goes more smoothly. And if there is a need for agility along the way, due to major environmental changes, there may be time to embrace needed changes and still produce a project worthy of your organization and its mission. Demanding and securing adequate lead time will not make a leader popular...until the results are in and project participants find themselves ahead of the curve next time around.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_agility

Barbara Yost is the vice president of BYword and Design, a Colorado business that offers marketing and fundraising support to nonprofit organizations. She is a 2015 Certified Solution Provider with  Constant Contact, the leader in online marketing.