The Creative Activist

Climate change is back on the front burner thanks to the latest, rather alarming, IPCC report . This blog is about how nonprofits can respond to the latest climate news, to raise money for relevant programs, to design and test new programs, or to promote sustainable behaviors.  Whether you want to raise money, recruit volunteers, or convince people to recycle more of their stuff, it helps to know how to think about how best to sell your ideas. That much is common sense, to some extent. This post is meant not so much to restate what plenty of people know but to begin to organize that knowledge. With that in mind, consider the basics of effective marketing and how they apply to your project. I'll then have a few things to say about market research, a topic that fewer people are familiar with. Digital Marketing Basics for Climate Activists I can't offer a real introduction to marketing in one post. That kind of thing might even be insulting to experienced communications or develop...

This short article outlines a technique you can use to focus your efforts to solve social problems through advocacy, public education, program design, or social marketing. What follows is a framework for thinking about how best to attack a given social problem This process should be helpful whether you know what your options are or not. You'll answer a series of questions about the issue starting with the most obvious question of all.  What is the problem? What is the challenge or problem you want to tackle? This is a broad social problem, like domestic violence or climate change, or something a bit narrower. Avoid stating that the lack of a specific thing is a problem - no playground in the neighborhood, no soup kitchen in the neighborhood, and so on.  There are a few reasons for not including a solution in your problem statement. First, you were probably assuming too much about the social problem in question. You will never look at other, better ways to address hunger or bul...

No activist or nonprofit executive needs to be reminded that times are tough. The reactions to George Floyd's death and the economic meltdown caused by COVID-19 have raised questions and created challenges. And those things are in addition to the other big and small social issues that haven't gone away.  If your organization needs to do more with less or get faster results, there are a bunch of tools out there that can help. I think that's generally true at least. This series on Tools for Tough Times is my effort to offer some useful advice based on my experience and research. (See my revised bio at the bottom of this post.) This post is about asking the right questions. Future posts will explain some tools, techniques, and strategies that you may have read about in books like Thinkertoys, Serious Creativity, and Why Didn't I Think of That.  Questions: Whether you want to raise more money over the summer or really make progress on racial discrimination or animal rights,...

Everyone knows now that Donald Trump is taking his (mostly) conservative, business-friendly agenda to Washington, DC. While there, he will at least be able to start working with a House and Senate controlled by Republicans. I'm not taking a public position on whether this is good news or bad news, but I want to say there are ways for progressive activists to make things happen. Social Marketing Trumps Politics: The whole point of social marketing is to get people to make a change that would truly benefit them. Many challenges that Trump appears unlikely to address, or indeed to make worse, can be tackled by direct appeals to individuals. What do I mean exactly? Consider climate change. Conservatives are never going to support robust climate change policies that interfere with business or with their lifestyles. Many moderates would refuse to play along. Fair enough. Forget sweeping legislation. Redouble efforts to "sell" behavior changes that can benefit the climat...

The recent CVS announcement that the chain would stop selling tobacco products, prompted some thoughts on how best to reduce tobacco use. Public education and advocacy are sometimes put to good use, at least it seems that way. I wonder if some lateral thinking, or just some systematic investigation of the topic can lead to some better programs? The CVS decision may spark the desire to lobby other firms, to get them to stop carrying tobacco products too. This approach might appeal to activists, but has some challenges: 1. Access to decision makers 2. Shareholder concerns over profits 3. Lack of an alternative source of revenue, that makes sense for that business 4. C-level executives' natural conservatism about changing business strategy So, maybe working on corporate executives is not the best possible tactic. Maybe reducing the number of places that sell tobacco, through pressure is not the best strategy at all. What other strategies and tactics might be available? Othe...

This is just a quick sort of public-service announcement dedicated to some books activists, working in nonprofits or not, might want to read. These titles are not always easy to follow, but contain powerful lessons for activists. Do you want to know how to raise more money, set up a new program, or start a social marketing campaign? Well, first of all you need two things: (1) A clear goal, (2) some relevant technical knowledge or training, such as training in the basics of social marketing. Assuming those two things are in place, reading one of these books, and applying the lessons therein, will give better results. DeBono's Thinking Course (Edward DeBono) - A summary of many tools and techniques for thinking about problems, evaluating information, and generating new ideas. The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox (Richard Fobes) - A detailed methodology for defining (yes, you need to do that) and solving problems, with notes on how to evaluate ideas for potential effectiv...

The Super Bowl is on peoples' minds today, for some reason that escapes me. End of social commentary. There was a power outage that lasted 34 or 35 minutes. A few minutes into the blackout up when an Oreo ad reminding us that we eat Oreos in the dark. The details are at this Getting Attention blog post. http://gettingattention.org/2013/02/agile-nonprofit-marketing/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gettingattention+%28Nonprofit+Marketing%3A+Getting+Attention+Blog%29 My post is about some observations sparked by the post. The point is that the Oreo add exploited a situation in minutes because they were ready for these sorts of opportunities. The same philosophy could be applied to nonprofits. Take any event, big or small, that is relevant to your cause. What can you tweet or post or email out that takes advantage of this event? Any happening associated with the event, or the buildup to it, or the immediate aftermath is fair game for some comme...

This post is just an opportunity to propose a new way to create programs, policies, and social marketing campaigns that (we hope) work better and cost less in terms of both time and money. Scientific activism is just a process for formally organizing our thinking about social change efforts. That's about all. It can help to have a system or a framework for organizing the work needed to start a new program, a new nonprofit, or a new advocacy effort. I think this scientific activism framework should be based on specific principles: 1. Data orientation - Use of numbers, rates, proportions, and percentages to inform decisions and guide our evaluations, of what to do and what works once we get things going. 2. Leverage - Related to above, we should look for ways to intervene that will produce the most change for a given level of effort (or spending). 3. Targeted innovation - Related to #2, we should champion social and technological innovations that get at the root of social pro...

Branding is something that seems to stress nonprofit execs year after year after year. Branding? Isn't that more of a product thing? Well, if you want to stand out from the other nonprofits out there and somehow rise above the other "noise" in the world, you have to work on branding your organization. That branding thing could, and actually does, provide enough content for several peoples' blogs. This post merely serves to introduce the concept of branding and point at a cool marketing book. The marketing book is Pop! Create the Perfect Pitch, Title, and Tagline for Anything by Sam Horn. Horn's book contains a bunch of lessons and techniques you could use to market your organization or a specific project or program. "Pop" is an acronym for Purposeful, Original, Pithy. The book is organized around lessons on how to be each of those things. The book wraps up with seven chapters on how to keep peoples' attention once you've got it. Fundr...

Using the holidays to promote your cause and communicate. Could be used for fundraising too! Christmas and New Years Eve are obvious targets, with Thanksgfiving being popular too. Other holidays in the USA and of course in other countries where you may operate make good reasons to reconnect with people on your email list, or promote in other ways. Is there an event where tabling would be appropriate? Could you just put some 8X11 posters in the area? Is there any possible tie in with an upcoming holiday and your cause or mission. Why aren't you using that? We are all, in the USA at least, familiar with ads for food donations, ads that talk about how many people are at risk of going hungry this Thanksgiving or Christmas. Look for a holiday that offers an excuse to do one of the following: 1. Remind people what you've accomplished. 2. Tell people what you want to do in the near term. 3. Report on what you are doing now. 4. Talk about a related issue. 5. Ask people to do ...

Actually, this post is about cheap and creative ways to use social media to get your message out. Some of the advice related to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube might seem like old news but bear with me. I think things will hang together pretty well. Your organization is using social media I hope? A Facebook page, Twitter Feed, and YouTube channel aren't substitutes for real-world engagement with people. As long as you realize that social media is part of an overall marketing strategy and may, in some cases, be a sensible backbone then you are fine. So, assuming you are working hard in the real world and trying to make good use of social media too, here are some ideas you might like to try out. Facebook - Do have a fan page. Like other pages and comment on their posts. Focus on allied organizations, and potential strategic partners. LinkedIn - Create a group related to a cause or issue or challenge if there isn't one. Do join and make connections here. Look for people who...

The core of most nonprofit work is the program of some sort. Conservation, education, and emergency assistance seem to be the most popular program goals. When a program exists there may be room for improvement. Heck, there is almost certainly room for some improvement. If you have an idea for a nonprofit you will want to develop your core program, or refine your program idea. You already know how to brainstorm ideas, or research them. The next twenty or so posts will help you do a better job of finding program ideas. I'll help by describing a bunch of brainstorming tools you can use. The tools I cover here will be the same ones you may have read about in my long and rambling posts on better fundraising. If you are tuning in late, that's fine. The techniques I want to show you are simple to learn and will come with actual program design examples. I'll get into a few techniques that did not come up in the fundraising section. When I was skimming through Michael Michalk...

I was reading a Chronicle of Philanthropy article about online strategies that work in a bad economy. The article presented four different strategies and a nonprofit that used it successfully. This post is about the strategy of using specialized Web sites. Put up a site just for a certain crisis, event, issue, project or program. The Chronicle details how Partners in Health did this for Haiti earthquake relief. Any issue, whether a crisis or not, whether global or local is a potential candidate for replicating the Partners in Health approach. Events of global and local significance are fine subjects for a site. You are probably already familiar with World AIDS Day or World Water Day. Those global events and many others are the subject of special Web sites and advertising campaigns both online and in print. Local events from the mundane, like the beginning of a new school year, to the momentous. A crisis is another good reason to put up a specialized Web site. The epic flooding in...