You’re Not the Only One With Issues. Our Group Therapy Can Help.
Do you ever ask yourself whether your colleagues understand what you actually do? Do you get anxious every time you have to redo your website? Do you wonder why your consulting firms just “don’t get it?” or why your foundation clients are so difficult? If so, the Group Therapy” sessions at our Fall Conference in Boston are just what “the doctor” ordered. As you’ll discover, everyone has issues.
To help, we’ve assembled a dozen breakouts, each of which has been designed so you and your colleagues can explore solutions to common problems you face on the job.
Look over the list of sessions, find the things you need help with the most, and show up prepared to kick around solutions. You’ll be better for it.
Below are the session descriptions, when they take place, and who’s leading them. At the bottom of several of the descriptions, you’ll also find links to videos featuring leaders previewing their sessions. We’ll be adding additional ones in coming days. For all conference videos currently posted, click here.
(All Group Therapy Sessions take place on Thursday, Sept. 22.)
Group One: 10:15 am – 11:15 am
Group Two: 1:45 pm – 3 pm
Group Three: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Group One Sessions:
What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Communications?
Session leaders: David Adler, communications officer, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Maureen Cozine, director of communications, New York State Health Foundation
One of the greatest ironies about communications, and communications professionals, is that sometimes the hardest thing to articulate is what we actually mean by communications.
We’ve all walked into meetings and been told, “We need a press release! Let’s build a new website! We need to make sure people know about this!” Often, we know that the tactics and goals aren’t lining up, but we can’t always explain why.
In this session, we will present a framework for thinking about different types of communications activities that foundations might engage in—public affairs, communications interventions and grantee capacity building—and the appropriate goals and tactics for each.
The session leaders will also discuss how these three types of communications overlap. Participants will be asked to contribute ideas about where their activities fit in this framework and whether there are other ways of organizing different types of communications activities.
The overall goal is to help session participants better explain to colleagues at their institutions what types of communications activities they can engage in, what appropriate goals for different activities are, and how those activities should be carried out and paid for.
Prozac for websites: How to better manage the overhaul and maintenance of your website
Session leaders: Jennifer Humke, deputy director, Public Affairs, MacArthur Foundation, and Akilah Williams, communications officer, Crown Family Foundation
Are you feeling anxious or overwhelmed by the overhaul of your website and the never-ending maintenance it requires once it is launched? Does the thought of creating and editing content make you feel listless and tired? Do you need to wind yourself up simply to get on the phone with your website designers? If so, this session can help you.
In this day and age, not having a website is not an option. The web has become the front door to most organizations. But the process of building or overhauling a website and maintaining it once it is launched can be difficult to plan for and manage. In this session we will discuss strategies for planning a website rebuild, selecting and working well with vendors, evaluating content management systems and technology platforms, involving non-communications staff and stakeholders, and approaches to mining and repackaging content to keep your site current once it is launched. We’ll get this conversation started by sharing successes, failures and lessons learned from their recent experiences overhauling and managing their organizations’ websites.
After that, it’s your turn. Come prepared to share your horror stories, lessons learned, things you wished you’d done differently as well as questions you’d like others to answer. The session is intended to be a conversation about developing best practices for building and maintaining foundation websites, and one that we hope continues after we’re back at our offices.
Achieving Kumbaya
How to more effectively and less painfully link communications and program within foundations
Session leader: Christie McElhinney, vice president of communications & public affairs, The Colorado Trust
Is your program staff from Mars, while your communications staff is from Venus? Or have you cracked the code in figuring out how to effectively link the work of communications and program within your foundation?
Communications can help to achieve key grantmaking goals within foundations if it is understood, valued and considered up-front, as grant strategies are being developed. Obviously, communications is less effective when used in a responsive, tactical manner late in the game.
In this session, everyone will have the opportunity to air and compare their own challenges. Importantly, we will also share strategies, processes and structures that are helping foundations to move the needle on integrating – and more fully utilizing – communications.
Please join us and share your thoughts and experiences – from small tweaks to major restructurings – on what works, and doesn’t, in linking these two functions.
Measuring Our Reach in a Digital World
Julee Newberger, online communications associate, The Annie E. Casey Foundation
Back in the day, we figured we knew how to measure the results of our media outreach. We had a pretty good idea of who was reading the Washington Post vs. the Washington Times, and who was listening to NPR — and we pitched our stories accordingly. Then we tracked and analyzed our coverage with our audiences in mind.
But now we find ourselves wondering: How do I measure our reach in a landscape of cryptic Tweets and whimsical Facebook posts? How many blogs on the Huffington Post are equal to one front-page story in the New York Times? Who is @yellowtractor and is it good that s/he’s re-tweeting me? And how do I tell our executive leadership that our print coverage is going down — but on Facebook, we are very well “liked?”
In this session, we will identify the most pressing challenges in measuring our organization’s reach in a digital landscape. The discussion will include how we link communications and social media strategy to an organization’s overall goals. Questions will be asked. Lives will be changed.
The audience will break up into small groups that work through challenges submitted by participants. Together we will tackle real-life problems, but instead of doing our own work, we will do each other’s work. Then we will go back to the office and take all the credit.
> Video
Group Two Sessions:
It’s Not You, It’s Me. (No, It’s Really You. No, It’s Really Me): Foundations and Consultants Dish on How to Work With Each Other
Session leader: Minna Jung, communications director, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Communications staff people at foundations and nonprofit organizations regularly work with communications firms and consultants. Foundations can have pretty specific communications dreams and ambitions, but we often don’t have the staff bandwidth to execute these strategies ourselves. So foundations hire communications firms and consultants for any number of purposes—message development, the design and execution of campaigns, media relations, web site building, communications training for grantees. As with most things in life, sometimes the relationship works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes foundations feel as if they’ve met the communications consultant or firm of their dreams; sometimes they feel like they’ve run into a buzz saw of endless billing and missed deadlines with no actual results. Communications firms and consultants, on the other hand, may care the most about the type of communications work foundations sponsor, because they are motivated by mission-driven work. But then they get frustrated by foundations with good intentions but lack an overall clarity of goals and strategy.
This session will feature a lively conversation moderated by Minna Jung of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Kristen Grimm from Spitfire Strategies, and Patrick McCabe from GYMR LLC. Participants will come away from the session with ideas and suggestions on how to successfully manage the relationships between foundations and consultants (and will also feel somewhat lighter, if some past demons were successfully exorcised). People will be asked to share candid, constructive stories and feedback about the opportunities and challenges inherent in the relationship between foundation (client) and consultant (contractor). One caveat: we ask that people refrain from specific attribution when the feedback is negative (e.g., “I’ve worked with X Firm, and BOY, do they suck). The goal of the session is to help foundations and communications consultants, yes, understand each other a little better, and work together more productively in the future.
Plugging into the digital era
Session leaders: Laura Brahm, senior content strategist, Open Society Foundations, and Jeff Stanger, director, Center For Digital Information
What should a 21st-century communications team look like?
Foundations no longer simply pitch stories to journalists or fund media projects; we are increasingly becoming the media ourselves–communicating directly with audiences through the web and social media. And communications staff are located at “ground zero” for these activities. At the same time, responsibilities are expanding as program staff increasingly get involved with social media. Consequently, communications staff roles are in flux, and skill sets can vary widely: some colleagues are experienced in traditional media outreach, some in digital advocacy, some in print publications. The offline staff need to be thinking digitally, and the online staff need to coordinate with offline products and actions. How do we rethink and reorganize our communications team in the digital era? What might our job descriptions, organizational charts, and workflow look like? How do we create structure, consistency, and coherence in a radically decentralized age?
As a group, we’ll discuss/brainstorm the following questions:
- What are our current priorities as foundations communications staff? What do we do? Who does what?
- What about 5 years from now? Where are the trends going?
- What tasks and responsibilities do we get rid of? What will disappear? How do you replace those actions and roles?
- Where can we find new models?
- How do we convince foundations to evolve along with us?
We’ll then break into groups to design an ideal org chart. If you were to start with a clean slate, what would you do?
The goal of this session is to come away with fresh ideas for:
- Clarity about what the essential communications roles are today and how they should be structured within your organization
- Greater alignment of roles, tools, and larger goals and priorities
- A more harmonious and effective workflow
- How to start making the above a reality
Building communications into a foundation’s DNA: Walking the walk
Session leaders: Sylvia Burgos Toftness, communications lead, Northwest Area Foundation, and Eric Brown, communications director, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
“I’m stuck. My foundation is fully committed to bringing communications into the organization’s strategic framework. My president has even made this a 2012 high-level goal. I feel appreciated and respected by management and colleagues. I’ve been privileged to participate in nearly every large initiative. Yet, I feel as I’m operating at 70 percent. I can see that we’re not harnessing the full value of strategic communications.”
Maybe you’ve experienced some of this: you’re pressed to gather up the strings of disjointed projects–expensive. You get late notice on events, speeches and sponsorships– lost opportunities. You see a convening being designed as a stand-alone event–not leveraging and integrating it into the longer-term foundation/programmatic objectives.
Familiar? Why does this happen? How do we help move our organizations to the next level? What strategies and steps can we take to move from theory and intention to day-to-day practice?
Please pull up a chair and join us in this session. What are your challenges, experiences, ideas and successful approaches? Eric Brown will serve as our Jungian facilitator. It’ll be professional, open, honest. What’s said in Boston, stays in Boston.
Culture Shift – Learning to act as a network
Session leader: Dan Brady, communications manager, Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers
The principles of crowd sourcing and networked activity all sound well and good but, as with any collaboration, the implementation can be messy, complicated, and even uncomfortable. The greatest challenge of learning to work in new ways is the inevitable resistance to culture change. Why should we do this differently? Who will participate? How much will they contribute? What is the motivation to work together? Who is responsible for the work? What’s in it for me?
Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril, and Potential of Networks, a recent study by the Knight Foundation and the Monitor Institute, offers a thorough examination of how networks work today, how they might in the future, and what role philanthropy can play in building and strengthening networks among both grantees and foundations.
In this session, we’ll break into groups to identify common barriers to network participation and look for solutions as to how these hindrances might be overcome. Using the tips and tools for network-centric grant making laid out in the report, we’ll examine the real world application of network action within philanthropy, including examples from the Communications Network, the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers, and others.
Group Three Sessions:
Winning over your boss with Marketing Ju-Jitsu
Session leader: Katya Andresen, COO, Network for Good
It’s the question we all ask: “How do I convince my boss to (fill in the blank)?”
Get a black belt in boss persuasion in this interactive session. Stop trying to change set minds and start using your boss’s values and psychology to advance your communications agenda – whether it’s investing in social media or divesting from ineffective programs.
The session will begin with a brief overview of the psychological, behavioral economics and cultural cognition principles that are critical to effective persuasion (each illustrated by true stories). Then we’ll dive into the heart of the matter: solving your problems.
Participants will anonymously share what ONE thing they wish they could convince their boss to do. We’ll then work together in groups to address some of the top challenges with marketing savvy and keen political instincts. Participants will leave with two great resources co-created during the session: solutions to common office conundrums and a set of solid gold operating principles for successful internal marketing.
Winning Words: Changing hearts & minds begins with the right message
Session leaders: Doug Hattaway, Hattaway Communications, Daniel Silverman, director of communications, The James Irvine Foundation
Many non-profits that conduct advocacy around complex or controversial issues have difficulty developing messages that will persuade policymakers and the public. In this session, we’ll discuss challenges faced by foundations and our grantees in developing winning messages on our issues–and we’ll explore tools, techniques and ways to think about tackling common message challenges.
To kick off the discussion, we’ll present a method for crafting messages that speak to people’s hopes and values, while employing a narrative structure to communicate at multiple levels. Participants will apply this “aspirational narrative” approach to a vexing message challenge.
If you’re interested in this message workshop, please suggest a tough issue for the group to tackle! Send your idea to Doug Hattaway at dhattaway@hattaway.com
Letting others do the talking: tactics for decentralizing communication without inviting chaos
Session leader: Marc Fest, vice president communications, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
How can you motivate colleagues outside the communications department to share stories that illustrate the impact of your organization’s work? “Coordinated decentralization of communications” promises enhanced communications capacity, more visibility, and, generally, a more effective organization.
But decentralizing has its risks. Think of recent examples of corporate employees who got fired because of tweets. Also, persuading your colleagues to contribute information and stories can be difficult. So can getting everyone to adhere to the same script when it matters.
Join a session to learn about and rehearse strategies and tactics that you can use to meet the challenges of coordinated, decentralized communications for a highly visible and high-performing organization.
Harnessing the social media monster
Session leaders: Margaret Figley, communications officer, The New York State Health Foundation, and Nancy Schwartz, president/publisher, Nancy Schwartz & Company
These days, one can’t attend a communications conference without hearing about the importance of having a presence in social media. However, foundations struggle with determining what distinguishes useful information from just contributing to the noise. In trying to harness the social media monster, foundations face four major issues:
- Developing a clear strategy for posting information on social media sites
- Questioning how—or whether—to keep up with the Joneses (i.e., trying to gauge which social media sites they should join and which are passing novelties)
- Finding opportunities to shine the spotlight on staff members other than the CEO on social media sites
- Determining who their audience should be and how to target them
In this session, participants will take part in a discussion about their social media trials and tribulations. They’ll be asked to share their experiences with the four issues listed above, and to discuss additional challenges they’ve experienced. Once participants have aired their grievances, Nancy Schwartz will help them to develop social media strategies tailored for the unique problems foundations face. This will include tips on creating a social media policy for members’ respective organizations, a list of useful resources, and a social media checklist to help members select which social media tools are right for their organizations and how to manage the various social media voices in their organizations.
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