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nonprofit Archives - ChangingMedia

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We Lookin’ Good

By | Design | No Comments

Last week I attended an AIGA DC event, listening to magazine editor Scott Kirkwood and in-house designer Annie Riker speak candidly about their work elevating the design of the National Park Conservation Association’s magazine. What began mostly as a glorified newsletter has become an award-winning publication, blazing a trail that helped elevate the entire fleet of print design coming out of their in-house creative department.

Granted, the transition took time (eight years), and the vision of an employee who made it his passion to make the work better. It also took multiple small steps and taking risks on investing in the creative department, and, ultimately, its output. Kirkwood was pivotal in educating his constituents within the organization—regional offices, fundraisers and supervisors—and once these key players started seeing the results and hearing the positive feedback of the new and improved look, they became increasingly aware of the power of good design. Readers even commented on the revamp, something that had never happened before.

If people realize that design is a stimulant to increasing readership, raising awareness and opening checkbooks (smart businesses have even started buying design firms), why then, do so many nonprofits and organizations churn out lackluster communication pieces? If it’s a question of money, sure, I get it. And that certainly is a part of it. If I had to guess, for many organizations, it’s not because the money isn’t available within the organization—it’s because the cash isn’t allotted for things like a copywriting budget or for hiring better designers. Marketing and communications are the first to go in a pinch, with essential funds directed to solely carrying out the mission.

Of course there’s the “we don’t want to look too good” excuse. That one kills me. I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of someone no longer being interested in saving the whales because the direct mail piece they received has become more engaging, easier to read and incorporates storytelling. Can something be too professionally designed? What makes a memorable statement isn’t an expected solution. That’s not to say it has to be expensive or flashy. It’s sad when there’s such a disparity between an organization’s mission and its public-facing visual communications.

Twenty-five years ago, buying things like media and direct mail campaigns were expensive marketing tactics. With so many new (free) ways to reach potential donors now, it’s a disservice to not take advantage of them. Nonprofits need to have a strategy to get them to the next level. Think about the competition:

There are more than 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States. That total has doubled in less than two decades. Meanwhile a $500 billion bonanza of impact investing is helping pump out a steady flow of social enterprises. As if the space wasn’t crowded enough, many big corporations are finding a higher calling and becoming purpose-driven enterprises themselves, some for real, others for show.—Heath Shackleford, FastCoExist

The seminar course in the University of Baltimore’s MA in Publication Design program is structured around student teams launching a nonprofit and producing the creative to make it successful. This year I was excited to be a judge for the remaining five teams’ presentations. They were all impactful; the research and thinking that went into the concept and the writing and design of numerous supporting components was impressive to say the least. Business plans and budget planning were not part of the process, therefore I was surprised that the design, for the most part, was safe and expected. Maybe the students were being realistic as they’re all too aware of tightening budgets and scarcity of resources on the eve of their graduation. Had the assignment been to launch a new profit-bearing business, I wonder if the work would have reflected bold messaging and quirky executions.

While Kirkwood’s talk was poignant (and inspiring) for the creative community, he’d probably have some success sharing his overhaul stories with the non-designers (aka, the decision makers) running the nonprofits. Small changes can add up to something truly representative of the organization’s mission, but it takes an integrated team to take the summit.

IMAGE CREDIT. Geographer on Wikimedia .

Why Change Can’t Be Built In A Day

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | 2 Comments

Creating social change is not easy. Creating social change within the confines of cultural norms today is near miraculous. In my previous two posts, I have explored the challenges culture throws at social change makers. In part one, I explored the larger picture through the perspective of a national non-profit fund raising expert, Dan Pallotta. In part two, I explored the challenges on a personal level through my experiences using public art in Baltimore to create social change. In my final post in this series, I hope to suggest things that we can do as a society and as social change makers to make the process of lasting impact easier.

Compensation: Know what it is worth and ask for it.

Pallotta points out that society sees nothing wrong with compensating the developer of a violent blockbuster video game tens of millions of dollars, yet struggles to pay the guy ridding the world of malaria several hundred thousand dollars. Society knows how to keep score for the video game developer. Society has the company’s balance sheet. Society does not know how to keep score for the guy curing malaria. There is no balance sheet. Culture needs to consider that value goes beyond a bottom line. Change makers need to do our part to describe that value. On the personal front, Love Project artist Michael Owen and I had no idea how much work it would take to complete our “simple” project. We now know and as a result we understand better the value of such monumental tasks. We need to share this information with other folks: funders, artists, community developers and anyone working in the area of adding social and economic value through art. We need to help set the “appropriate” market rates for this type of work and ask for the appropriate rate.

Advertising and Marketing: There are more efficient methods than development.

One of Pallotta’s over-arching themes is how society perceives overhead in non-profit work as evil. Society needs to know that overhead may actually work to fight evil. The current methods of non-profit fundraising are ripe for corruption and cronyism. Development, the protocol for traditional non-profit fundraising,  is about relationships with people who already value you or your work. This mindset is supposed to reduce the amount of effort (dollars) spent on raising money as you are not working to find new supporters, but rather expanding the “charity” of the current supporters of the cause. This sounds great but not only does it lends itself to support coming from family, friends and the business acquaintances of the executive director’s spouse, it suggests the pool is only so wide and yet infinitely deep. In for-profit business, a development mindset would be ludicrous. It suggest that the pool of customers never expands; it just grows in depth. Business does marketing because it is easier to make the market wider than it is to make the market deeper. We as change makers need to make some noise on this issue. We need to fight for the opportunity to market and let our funders know that expanding the pool alleviates financial stress on them.

Risk: Failure is a part of learning even in social change.

A trend in start-up business these days is to “fail fast” and change. The notion is that it is better to figure out early that an idea is not going anywhere and move onto the next thing than to linger and waste resources on it. Mr. Pallotta points out that in for-profit that failure is seen as a pivot point, or learning opportunity. In non-profit, failure is viewed as a moral lapse of judgement. Society needs to understand that failure is still a learning experience in non-profit just as it is in for-profit. We need to accept and encourage risk, meaning failure might happen, so that we can grow. If social concerns are still with us, there is still opportunity and a need to try new methods of change. We must learn in order to create change.

Time Horizons: Be real about achieving social change.

Adding value that goes beyond the bottom line requires long-time horizons and there is always someone else behind you ready to take the money from the funder. Society (funders, the public, and organizations) needs to grow in our understanding of realistic expectations for change. We know that Rome was not built in a day, but do we know that the social ills of Rome were never solved? Change makers need to be realistic about the change that they can deliver and over what time. We need to do our part to demonstrate progress whenever possible. We need to embrace accountability and be able to clearly articulate the progress that IS being made. We need metrics and we need to know what they mean. It should be the goal of every organization to make their “balance sheets” available, and I do not mean financials. Funders also need to do their part to express realistic expectations and commit to the long term with organizations. Change will come but it will likely not happen tomorrow.

Social Capital Markets: Ownership of doing good.

When a non-profit organization wants to grow its infrastructure so it can deliver more services or products it relies on the same pool of dollars as it would for programming. Operations and build money are treated as one and the same. For-profit business would find this inefficient. Society needs to rethink the financial opportunities for social change makers. Yes, we are doing that with crowd funding platforms but these are limited by imagination and regulations. Could we imagine a platform that allows for distinctive “ownership” of social good? Could we create reasonable regulations that open up funding for social change? These are in the works but we must again accept some risk and allow for learning and growth so that our efforts to deliver social change can be made more efficient.

Social change is hard. I do not think that will ever change. But as a society, we can rethink our perspectives on delivering that social change and make it far easier. Many hands can lift a far greater weight when we don’t hold ourselves back.

ruler

Why We Measure

By | Art & Social Change, Art That Counts | No Comments

Moving briefly away from the nitty-gritty of metrics, I want to spend some time on the bigger-picture: namely, why we measure and what is measurable.

Why do we measure results of an art project or nonprofit? Artists and nonprofits seek out metrics for several reasons — to provide required metrics for a grant application or report; to prove that donations were used well; to evaluate programming for renewal or expansion; to establish their successes and shortcomings in achieving their mission.

Basically, these motivations can be divided into two types:

  • because someone else wants the data (e.g., donors, grantmakers, government agencies).
  • because the artist/organization has an interest in self-assessment.

In the case of the former, groups have little to no investment in the data itself, only in the outcome. In the latter, however, the motivation to establish the value of the organization or project indicates an investment in what is measured and the story that can be told using that data. (Also, as I wrote previously, frustration with the metrics required by funders can result in organizations getting invested in adopting metrics relevant to their specific mission and programs.)

As Andrew Taylor wrote recently,

If you care internally about good decisions, and metrics will help you (and they will, if they’re specific), then measure. If you are specifically aware of external value that will flow your way if you can express your impact in specific ways, then measure. If neither of these is true, then really, don’t bother. Measuring won’t make a measurable difference.

Measuring for the sake of measurement sends you down a rabbit hole of wasted time and energy. In order to achieve metrics that are worthwhile and reliable, requires establishing goals, monitoring/soliciting data, sorting and analyzing the data and sharing it with stakeholders/leaders. These are not simple tasks, as highlighted by Bill Gates in his 2013 Annual Letter for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:

You can achieve amazing progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal-in a feedback loop […]. This may seem pretty basic, but it is amazing to me how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. […]  I think a lot of efforts fail because they don’t focus on the right measure or they don’t invest enough in doing it accurately.

But what’s the right measure? And what is actually measurable? It’s fairly common for nonprofits and community art projects to be able to establish some basic facts and figures relating to attendance, demographics, and dollars raised. Sometimes these are enough to demonstrate impact or value in a short-term way, but, in general, the results side of nonprofits remains complex and difficult to measure. Just as website analytics have evolved beyond mere clicks and page views to developing a relationship ladder (e.g., converting visitors into subscribers), nonprofits should be willing to investigate and pillage the metrics used by other industries:

All efforts can benefit from these approaches — in both looking beyond our immediate sphere for inspiration, and in stepping back and asking exactly why we want to measure in the first place.

IMAGE CREDIT. CC photo via Flickr user cAtdraco.

Commando Design

By | Design, Social Media | 2 Comments

I admit, I’m having a few withdrawal symptoms from my week in Colorado, working pro bono for Yampa Valley Data Partners. I was one of nine graphic designers selected to attend the inaugural Steamboat Design Camp, held in picturesque Steamboat Springs. Back in Baltimore, there is no pre-work hike traversing waterfalls and taking in gorgeous vistas, no daily breakfasts delivered by fellow generous Yampa Valley Design Guild members, and there’s definitely no trace of black garlic infused scotch for added inspiration. What is left simmering, however, is the inspiration and energy from doing said thing, and a slight transformation of perspective—inside and out. We accomplished what we set out to do (reminding ourselves that sharing stories and trading tips wasn’t going to get the real work done), which was come together from various backgrounds and different parts of the country to collaborate and learn and ultimately deliver an identity system for our selected nonprofit.

Our client was Yampa Valley Data Partners, a regional nonprofit organization of Routt and Moffat counties that provides community information and data to small business owners, developers and other community members. YVDP facilitates discussions and regional forums based on indicator data and issues critical to the community. In layman’s terms, this translates into a lot of charts and graphs, which is a challenge in itself. But Executive Director Kate Nowak’s bigger issue was an outdated logo and lack of consistent branding; something that wasn’t helping raise awareness about the organization or its mission.

On day one we started learning as much as we could about YVDP and jotting down ideas and sketching doodles. By late that evening we were transferring those thoughts to computer comps and adding color palettes and tagline suggestions. (Why we didn’t go with “We have more elk than people,” I’ll never know.) We discussed and critiqued and somehow decided on our top three to present to the client without scratching each other’s eyes out. Kate was overjoyed with our efforts and gave good feedback and asked the right questions in return. We then split into two groups in order to divide and conquer the rest of the materials. The logo team further refined the brand and built out the brand guidelines and stationery, and the publication team developed various collateral pieces and ad templates.

Collectively, we did a lot in five days. It would have been fun to take it further, to go beyond the list of everyday templates and items necessary for running a business, understanding that sometimes those are the most essential and should take priority. The subject matter itself practically begs for a microsite or app to help present such complex information in a user interface designed with the audience in mind. I wanted to do more research; find out why the community didn’t know about YDVP and ask those who did, how they used the information for their respective projects. To find out what marketing channels or media outlets would provide the most bang for the buck. But yeah … it was only five days.

We all came to Camp for various reasons, although one common thread among us was the desire to participate collectively. Many of the other attending designers work alone or have had little experience working with other designers in their community. Collaboration is a controversial theme in many graphic design discussions. In Ellen Lupton’s AIGA article, Why Collaborate?, she comments, “I’d love to collaborate, as long as I can work alone.” Can’t say I don’t share some of her sentiment.

Does collaboration achieve a better design end-product or does it potentially water it down by combining ideas and introduce mediocrity by way of democracy? When design is something so individual and subjective, how is a consensus reached? In other fields, there also might be many ways to solve a problem but the clear solution is the one backed by evidence and which minimizes risk. Collaboration as a concept in design is monumental, but it takes skill to execute it successfully and gain productive insight from it. We can reach higher and do better work when we partner with others if we let down our guard and listen. (And if everyone makes a comparable contribution.)

I’d encourage every designer to try forming an impromptu team and help out a nonprofit or tackle a social issue. See what bubbles up. You’ll walk away learning a lot about yourself in the process.

About Steamboat Design Camp: It’s a camp for designers that want to use their creativity to benefit a Steamboat non-profit organization. Coordinated by the Yampa Valley Design Guild, SDC is an intense collaborative design experience–from initial meetings to energetic brainstorming…design iterations to the final launch party. It is also a chance to get inspired, and see firsthand how the designs you do can bring positive change in the very communities we all work and live in.

Thanks to Todd and Lisa and the rest of the Guild for organizing this inaugural event and I hope that it continues to inspire and encourage social designers from all over in the future.