What's working for nonprofits:

Despite the many factors preventing a thoughtful exchange of information between news media and not-for-profits, several not-for-profit organizations described successful strategies they have employed to engage news media.

Collaboration

A Promising Collaboration

Pooling Resources

Thinking Strategically

Offering an Opinion

Buying Time and Space

Just Say No

Savvy Recruiting

Collaboration
Collaboration is a strategy not-for-profits will be adopting simply to survive in the years ahead. While not-for-profits now occasionally work together on programming or administrative activities, rarely do they tackle communications challenges as a team. Instead, they collectively spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on production and distribution of communications "vehicles" such as newsletters, brochures, annual reports and videos, etc. In a single field of service (i.e., the arts, education, environment), they may, in fact, be duplicating each other's messages, efforts and investments, often in a bid to reach the same constituencies.

Why not collaborate? It makes sense. It can help not-for-profits working in the same program area to maximize their impact with limited resources. It can allow organizations to generate innovative responses to community issues, bridge conflicting viewpoints and disseminate information more widely. Working together puts more muscle behind key messages — the more voices that speak in unison on a particular issue, the greater the chances they will be heard.

The growing availability and shrinking costs of information technologies make communications collaboratives a realistic option. Organizations could consider collaborating on issues-oriented web sites. They could detail the services they offer on-line, collect information and solicit contributions as well.

Several Seattle-area AIDS-services organizations got together in 1997 to form an ad-hoc group, "AIDS Alliance for Accuracy." The group members developed key messages aimed at influencing media to be more balanced in their coverage. They believed media stories touting a possible AIDS "cure" in the form of new drugs and treatments was leading the public to believe AIDS organizations no longer needed their support. In fact, there is a significant portion of HIV-disabled people for whom these new treatments are not working.

Sean Oslin, then director of public relations and development for Rosehedge, a housing and health-care program for people with AIDS, was a member of the alliance. "The group allowed us to express our frustrations and coordinate our efforts in dealing with the media," he said. Alliance members relied on e-mail to keep each other abreast of media interactions they may have had or anticipated.

Oslin's advice to other organizations considering a collaborative approach: "Have a clear focus and expectations. A challenge for us was maintaining a sense of urgency, in being pro-active."

A Promising Collaboration
The University of Washington Human Services Policy Center, Children's Home Society of Washington and The Casey Family Program are developing and implementing communication strategies aimed at changing public and policy-maker opinions regarding child protection policy. Their messages focus on preventing abuse and neglect.

Richard Brandon, who heads the joint effort, said it is modeled along the lines of those employed by environmental groups. "They have had success in coming together around certain message themes such as 'protect the environment'."

The collaborators will convene representatives of the media, public and private agencies and communications professionals to define the opinions they intend to change, craft messages aimed at that outcome and identify how all the participants can mutually reinforce message delivery. Participating agencies will receive communications and media relations training.

The effort, which began in late 1996, will be phased in over several years with initial messages tested in several pilot communities in the state. The effectiveness of the messages will be evaluated through public opinion polls and focus groups over time.

Pooling Resources
Peter Donnelly, president of Corporate Council for the Arts, an umbrella fundraising organization for the arts, noted that over the years several smaller arts organizations have discussed pooling their resources to hire a communications professional who could help them meet their communications needs. "Smaller arts groups could easily combine resources and hire one press agent to work for all of them. They could share equipment, materials and printing," Donnelly said.

Thinking Strategically
The Pride Foundation (www.pridefoundation.org) took a pro-active approach when it learned it was to be the recipient of a $450,000 bequest. The money was left by a deceased aerospace engineer in honor of his gay son who had died of AIDS. Ted Lord, the foundation's executive director, recalled that the foundation could have just put out out a press release which might have generated stereotypical headlines such as, "Unusual bequest to gays/AIDS." But instead he and the foundation's two staff members saw the gift as providing a strategic opportunity to advance two of the organization's goals — eliminating homophobia and raising funds to support the foundation's work.

Lord convened a handful of board members and community volunteers to identify who among them had established relationships with reporters. They decided to build their news release on the "straight father honors dead gay son" angle, Lord said. They hoped to illustrate how "love and acceptance can conquer homophobia" and motivate others to honor those close to them who are gay with a contribution to Pride, he added.

After a few weeks of planning and developing information packets, the team scheduled a press conference. Prior to the event, those on the Pride team who knew reporters contacted them personally, invited them to the press conference, and faxed them a press release. They also did face-to-face follow-up with reporters when possible. The announcement generated several print articles and TV segments. As importantly, it generated 20 calls from people interested in learning more about planned giving. In the months that followed, the foundation learned it was to be the recipient of one $1 million and several smaller bequests.

Offering an Opinion
Savvy nonprofits are attempting to influence community thinking through guest editorials in local newspapers.

"Shaping public opinion is vital to reaching our goals, and media advocacy is a strong part of accomplishing our mission," said Nancy Bergquist of the American Lung Association. The organization places about two opinion pieces annually in various papers across the state. They typically speak to the opinion-page editor before writing to ensure they have a fresh angle and the right length. This interaction also helps to build the relationship.

As is the case with many communications strategies, results are hard to measure. However, Bergquist said the not-for-profit often gets calls from citizens after opinion pieces are published.

Buying Time and Space
Some very large, and wealthy not-for-profits have acquired their own FCC licenses, television stations and networks, thereby removing the need to work with inter"media"ries to get their views to the public. Think televangelists.

Others have spent huge sums to purchase programming time. (This is distinctly separate from purchasing advertising.) In one of the highest profile examples of this strategy, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Princeton, N.J.) in 1994 paid NBC $2.5 million for a two-hour block of prime-time television to explore health-care reform. That sum was determined to be the fair market price for the commericials that would have aired during that period. The foundation awarded NBC an additional $1 million to promote the program.

Foundation officials said they decided to try working with commercial television because many polls were showing that the American public was deeply confused about health-care reform. Under the terms of the grant, the network agreed to provide a "full and fair exposition of the facts" so that audiences could draw their own conclusions, to keep the content of the show educational, and to present all viewpoints fairly.17

Two independent studies conducted following the broadcast found that an estimated 30 million Americans watched the program. A majority said it presented fairly the problems about the health care system and different points of view on how to solve the problem. One-third of those polled disagreed with this assessment. Many thought the program did not provide enough information about how health care choices might affect their families.18

The Casey Family Program offers an example of how this strategy was employed locally. This operating foundation, headquartered in Seattle, in the mid-1990s broadened its mission of providing long-term family foster care to also include advocacy for improvement of public and private services for children in the nation's foster care system. On any given day, nearly half a million children in the United States are living in some form of foster care because their parents are unwilling to care for them. This number has increased by 65 percent over the past decade.

Learning of the foundation's intent to implement an advocacy agenda, Seattle public television station KCTS-TV approached Casey. The station's intent was to explore how it might help Casey to tell the story of children in foster care and their foster families, and raise public awareness of issues related to foster care.

"We didn't want just a film," explained Susan Weiss, Casey's director of advocacy and program development. "We wanted a film that could serve as a focal point from which we could build awareness and raise out of invisibility the life of children in foster care," Weiss said. The result was a powerful 60-minute documentary, Take This Heart, that KCTS-TV produced and that premiered nationwide in January 1998. The film's producers spent eight months capturing the experiences of three children and their sole-parent foster mother to illustrate both the challenges and rewards that such families face. (The film subsequently was cited by the Council on Foundations as one of the best documentaries of 1997 produced with foundation support.)

Casey worked collaboratively with several other foundations to put muscle behind this initiative. The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation joined Casey in providing the primary funding for this national awareness effort. Together, they invested about $750,000 in the project. They produced outreach materials to educate and help the public provide or support families that provide foster care. The Benton Foundation provided strategic communications assistance and development of a website as part of its larger campaign to call attention to the needs of America's children.

The collaborators' investment was used to fund grants of $20,000 each to five cities, including Seattle, and mini-grants of $3,000 each to 30 cities for outreach and coalition building. Locally the money was used to develop the Foster Care Coalition, a group of public and private sector providers and individuals convened by KCTS-TV.

Weiss reports the foundation is pleased with the efforts: "Building public awareness is a long-term endeavor... what we've done is build a foundation for ongoing awareness through community coalitions with a commitment to seek solutions. We've hopefully put the issue out for the long haul."

On an even smaller scale, is the success achieved by AIDS Housing of Washington upon its completion of Bailey-Boushay House, a skilled nursing facility for people with AIDS, in 1992. The organizers chose to use newspapers as a way to get information out to the community. They reduced the size of a commemorative program distributed at opening ceremonies and ran it, at a not-for-profit rate that cost approximately $13,000, as a supplement in selected editions of The Seattle Times and The Post-Intelligencer. Not only did this enable organizers to get the word out about the new project, with the exact tone and content of the organizer's choosing, it generated some cash and volunteer contributions as well.

Just Say No
One of the best practices for many organizations is to make a strategic choice to exploit avenues other than news media in order to reach target audiences. "The value in understanding newsroom culture is not so much that you can get a story as needed," said Mike Robinson, director of communications for United Way of Pierce County. "Rather, when you really know it, you may develop alternative (ways) to carry your message. It's relatively inexpensive to promote a not-for-profit — if you stop wondering why they won't print your story in a paper that reaches only a segment of the audience. They key is to think very hard about which people — not how many — need to know about your organization," he said.

A former newspaper editor himself, Robinson admits he was "just as casual about covering (not-for-profit) issues as the next editor" when he had that job. Ironically, in his current job, he's faced with strategizing how to get visibility for United Way agencies in news media — and everywhere else. Again, recalling his newspaper experience, Robinson noted: "The last time we did a serious survey at my former paper, we learned that the most regularly read item in households in the community was not the newspaper, but church newsletters." Consequently, business and community newsletters are popular "vehicles" for delivering United Way agency information to targeted supporters.

Savvy Recruiting:
For many years, reporters' demands for autonomy have been built into media organizations' codes of ethics. Most codes discourage reporters' involvement with not-for-profits or community causes. (The reporters' professional organization, the Society of Professional Journalists, restricts its own public service campaigning to defending the concept of a free press.) Some media organizations are more relaxed than others in enforcing such a code. And, in fact, some media organizations may encourage their news reporters to become involved in community causes. For example, Micki Flowers, health reporter for KIRO-TV, has served on the AIDS Housing of Washington board for several years.

According to Betsy Lieberman, executive director of AIDS Housing, Flowers has "a very keen understanding of how the press views what we do. And even though she can't promote AIDS Housing within KIRO-TV, she's helped us make the right connections to people within the media industry." Another executive director said having media personalities on one's board is, "a gigantic help." Such journalists typically are "opinion leaders, so when they're out in the community, they are talking about us."