Graduate Class on Media & Nonprofits

This is a condensed version of my lecture.

I had the opportunity to guest lecture a Temple University graduate MSW Management and Planning Practice class. I focused on The Importance of Media for Nonprofits. Since I am a brand consultant and have been working around and with media for the past 20 years, it was a perfect fit.

Nonprofit Stats

• There are 1.6 million nonprofits in the U.S. (2012)
• From 2000-2010, the U.S. nonprofit sector grew faster than business and govt
• There are over 15,000 nonprofits in Greater Phila.

Nonprofits do what the govt cannot: be innovative and fill gaps that the local/state/federal govt is too inefficient to respond to. The presence of nonprofits points to an active citizenry and a healthy democratic system. Anyone can start a nonprofit but not all of them are created equal. Some die a quick death, some die a slow death and some find a way to stay alive on life support. However, some thriving.

Why Use Media?

Nonprofits use the media to acquire resources, build legitimacy and maintain a public image. Raising funds has to be the backbone for nonprofits since many of them do not receive govt support. They have to turn solicitations into resources (money, buildings, etc). But developing influence is just as important. For example, I was at The Union League with my teenage son who was speaking on a panel about innovation in Philly public schools. There were various nonprofits at this event. The moderator works for NPR. The Sunday Breakfast Club, who invited my son, is made up of influential business leaders and politicians in Philadelphia. Rubbing shoulders with them may allow one to slowly build a relationship or raise awareness about some issue. Putting forth a presentable image of your org is important in business and politics because people want to be associated with someone or some org that is serious about doing good things well. Reputations can rise and fall based on associations.

The media can be used to raise an orgs profile to do any of these things. But Philly also has an overabundance of nonprofits competing for shrinking funds.

What is a nonprofits response to shrinking giving?

Strategy

It is important to know how to approach the media. They are thirsty for ratings so stories have to draw eyeballs. Or do they? One thing I learned as a former Communications Director is that good relationships with the media often can mean positive stories about your org. That means taking an interest in the stories a journalist pursue and asking what stories interest them at the moment. Helping them do their job may open the door for some attention to be thrown your way.

Unfortunately, local TV news always lead with negative stories (even though crime has been declining for the past 20 years.) Their human interest stories tend to show up near the end of the broadcast. Since print is declining and moving online, it is important to track their online presence. Where are the media outlets on social media? Where are the journalists on social media? One big advantage today is that media professionals leave digital footprints all over the web. Following those footprints may tell you what kind of stories they are following and who they are talking to.

Communication through Technology

It is important to look at how technology has affected how we receive media in the last 200 years. Marshall McLuhan developed media theories that still apply today. One of his ideas was the concept of cool and hot mediums:

1. Cool mediums encouraged a listener/dialogue paradigm. You had to listen in order to respond. This included morse code, the telegraph and the telephone. This technology dictated high participation: someone needed to be at the other end responding to your communication.
2. Hot mediums eventually developed requiring a passive response. Radio and television, which incorporated sound and images for a mass audience, heavily influenced American culture. It required low participation.
3. But I want to suggest a third concept. Warm mediums can alternate between the listener only experience and the listener/dialogue experience depending on your preferences. This is want the internet has to offer. It simultaneously embodies the hot medium of low participation (websites with audio and video) and the cool medium of high participation (social media).  The internet enables the user to blur the lines between hot and cool mediums enabling it to influence cultural norms in unpredictable ways.

 Brandraising Chart

The chart above comes from the  book Brandraising by Sarah Durham. I am also using this book in a Resource Development class this Spring. She uses a triangle to explain the 3 different levels of a nonprofit org. An org is looking for media attention on the Identity and Experiential Levels. But if the Organizational Level is confusing and dysfunctional, it will often come out in the Identity and Experiential Levels. Examples of this are contradictory messaging, lack of clarity, fuzziness of vision and mission, etc. No slick amount of marketing can hide confusion for long. Once the media smells blood in the water, they will snoop around until they find something. This happened a couple of years ago with Invisible Children, a nonprofit dedicated to exposing the brutality of the Lords Resistance Army in Central Africa under its leader Josephy Kony. Their short films went viral because teens shared them on social media bringing this org to the attention of the media. After being closely scrutinized, many in the media raised important questions about their practices. The negative publicity almost sank this nonprofit.

Even though Invisible Children had well produced films, a good website and were receiving great publicity for their cause in the beginning, inevitably the question that someone eventually raised is, were they being true to their mission and vision? Many concluded, no.

To take a look at a technology chart I developed showing the development of media technology from the 17th century, click here.