Communicating in Philanthropy: The Hard Part
Guest Post: Minna Jung, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation and Vice Chair, Communications Network
Almost on a daily basis, I think about many of the same challenges faced by many of my communications colleagues at other foundations—especially, how to integrate communications thinking and strategies into the DNA of what foundations do.
This was a hot, hot topic at the recent Communications Network conference, especially at the Group Therapy sessions. (See a Network member’s comment on this, here.) The Network is comprised of communications leaders and staff who believe, as I do, that communications thinking and strategy is an essential component of what foundations should be supporting to create change. And yet, from what I could gather during the Network conference discussions, many of us spend a great deal of time having to convince our program colleagues and our leadership teams why this is so. In fact, we spend a great deal of time with them defining what the heck we even mean by “communications.”
When we talk about communications with our foundation colleagues, we are usually not just talking about one thing. We aren’t just talking about doing a press release or building a web site or what to do with this enormously thick report that just came out of the evaluation grant, even though we may mention these tactics. We’re actually talking about strategies. Their strategies. Which are, really, our strategies, too. We want to know, foundation colleagues: with all of the grants you’re sending out the door, and all of the relationships and partnerships you’re engaged in with other funders and grantee organizations, are you working from a shared definition of the problem you’re trying to tackle? What about a clearly understood theory of change? Does your program strategy depend on getting people to care? (Most do.) Do you know who you’re trying to get to care, and whether you need tailored messages and tactics and channels to reach them? Is this evaluation or this research study going to lead to stuff that’s actionable? Will it help people learn something they need to know?
These are the sorts of questions we want our foundation colleagues to think about. And if they work with us to find the answers, then sometimes, wonderful things can happen. Things like, convening incredibly diverse stakeholder groups who at one point couldn’t agree on what’s for breakfast and then hearing them start to speak a common language and coalesce around a particular set of solutions. Or, things like seeing essential bits of the message platform you helped create show up everywhere, even seeping into the words and the attitudes of top decision-makers on policy. Or, things like an actual shift, over time, in public opinion or attitudes about a particular issue that might actually signal a readiness for real change and action, because your foundation supported concerted and coordinated communications efforts, and gave these efforts enough time to take hold, and succeed.
And when you see these wonderful things, you feel good. Because you know that the communications for a particular social change effort worked in harmony with the program piece and the evaluation/learning piece and a bunch of other pieces so that at some point, the change actually happened. I’ve seen change happen like this. And I feel grateful that during my career, I’ve run across examples where program and other foundation colleagues really DO get communications.
Like: I remember one program officer looking at me in puzzlement, when I mentioned to her that communications officers at many foundations sometimes faced challenges in making the case for communications strategies and resources by way of staffing or budget. “Really?” she said. “But why? After all, isn’t having a communications strategy really the only way to unlock the power of all the content and knowledge produced out of foundations’ investments in social change? I mean, you can support the best project in the world, one that seems like a highly promising answer to someone’s problem—and you can fund people to evaluate it and prove how great it was—but how’re you gonna get people to care? How’s anyone going to find out about it? And how do you get anyone to care about big, complex problems if no one understands the problem, and therefore, no one can act to solve it? Dontcha have to give people ways to talk about the issues we work on, so that you can engage the right audiences and stakeholders, and create momentum for change?”
This response made my heart sing like a bird. I may have to import her to next year’s Network conference.
I know I’m not alone in fervently wishing that communications/program integration was a more common characteristic of foundation life. In a recent survey the Network conducted, we asked communications practitioners to tell us honestly how closely they work with their program colleagues. While some respondents said they were making progress, albeit slowly, we also heard from some who said communications strategy at their foundations is barely given much due in decisions about advancing the mission and left for the end of a big project, rather than built into ambitious grant-making efforts. More pointed commentary, and bemoaning lost opportunities, was reflected in this response from one person: “Program staff seem to be making decisions without thought to the importance of properly messaging our work. Initiatives are designed without any communications goals – or input asked for – and later the communications department is asked to cobble something together.”
Yup. That’s what I mean. Well said.
So, I’d like to leave you with some slightly provocative questions, to take on in the comments if you wish:
- Do you believe that program staff who don’t “get” communications can actually be converted? If so, how?
- Do you believe that communications staff can be effective at foundations when they don’t have a budget that is commensurate with what program staff allocate through grants?
- Do you believe that having your CEO on board with communications is the magic key to program/communications integration? Is there even such a thing as a magic key?
- Do you believe that the Network has a role to play in helping you make the case for communications at your foundation? If so, how?
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6 Comments
Mitch Hurst
November 3, 2011Great post. I’d love a response from a program officer capturing his/her perspective on how best to bridge the gap between programs and communications.
Communications Departments have brands within their institutions that are shaped by a number of factors. These factors include the traditional purpose of communications within the institution, including how senior leadership views its relevance; the expertise and credibility of individual communications staff; quality of internal communications about the role of the communications team/staff within the organization; and, strength of professional relationships between communications staff and staff from other areas of the organization, including program. The better communications teams develop their internal brands the more success they’ll have in opening the doors that lead to integrating what they do with program teams/staff.
I also think there’s an emotional divide between grant dollars and administrative dollars within grantmaking organizations. Administrative costs, and pressure to keep them low, are viewed as a necessary evil, while grant money is floating out there changing the world. It’s difficult for communications to evolve into a critical element of success if it’s relegated to being just another administrative cog in the operational wheel.
This raises management issues, budgetary and otherwise, but there may be a variance of integration points that could lead to better collaboration between program and communications staff and the successful outcomes that are more likely to result.
Susan Herr
November 4, 2011Thanks for this post, the content of which is so much on our minds. You asked some provocative questions so I’ll answer in kind…
As a recovering fundamentalist, I’m particularly sensitive to the suggestion that we need to “convert” program staff who don’t “get it.” Is this essentially paternal view (i.e. we get something that most really intelligent folks at our foundations) a fruitful way to advance common understanding?
I was further sensitized to the implications of this mental frame at the annual conference when a program officer Tweeted about his discomfort around the the us/them divide, a Tweet which was then read in a concurrent session advancing the DNA metaphor. Assuming we do our work well and we get more program officers to our conferences, don’t we risk alienating them through this us/them binary?
I assume the sentiments expressed by your colleague would be, if tested, widely held by program staff. It’s common sense! If that is true, the question isn’t how we “convert” them. It is how we can together create structures/frameworks/policies/resources which effectively, as Eric Brown would say, deputize them as fellow communicators.
For instance, as a former program officer, I created a wealth of content with the foundation trustees as my only audience. Is there away to take any of the analysis and insight that program officers capture on a daily basis and convert THAT for broader purposes? (I realize there are myriad challenges to doing this but they exist whether program staff “get it” or not.)
Obviously we are all either exploring or testing a million and one approaches to this now inescapable quandary. Eager to hear what others have to say.
As always, Minna, you’ve hit the dang nail on the head…
Prentice Zinn
November 4, 2011“Communication is program. Program is communications.”
How many times have you preached that line at your annual conference that I’ve never been to?
Folks, it’s not our job!
Like Mitch, says, unless we program staff become more deeply engaged in the strategy, development, and production of communications work for an institution, it will always be second banana.
The great divide, as you call it, is about ownership, priviledge, and prestige that has been passed down for generations like your great grandma’s ugly china.
Why the heck should we collaborate when the roles and rewards of our institutions and field discourage it?
And you communicationy guys isolated in your offices and meetings far away from us by the kitchen probably can’t handle going toe-to-toe with program staff anyway.
We program staff tend to be a pretty self-important bunch (big surprise)and feel that were are smarter than you. After all, we get to work on the big ideas and dish out the big bucks.
So you can try little initiatives, but unless you are embedded in hustle and bustle of the program world and there is a communications ethic, strategy, and enthusiastic corner office action linked to mission, we will fight you and win. We are just fine with the 1970′s model of managing communications.
We gotta get back to our brilliant internal communiques read by 10 people. (Thanks for the proofreading, by the way)
Besides, have any of you really seen any models of practice where the lines between program and communications staff are much more blurred and where integration and collaboration were not so superficial?
If it makes you pesky people happy, we will blog and tweet just to make it appear like we’ve got your back.
Just don’t make us cross that divide.
Caren Glotfelty
November 9, 2011Prentice Zinn asked, tongue-in-cheek I assume, whether anyone has really seen any models of practice where lines between program and communications staff are blurred and integration and collaboration are not superficial.
Well, I am raising my hand on behalf of myself as the Environment Program Director at The Heinz Endowments and my colleague, Doug Root, the Communications Director. We and our staff have been working very closely together over the last two years on a Heinz Endowments-led initiative to clean up our dirty air in the Pittsburgh region. You can learn more at the Breathe Project web site.
We formed this collaboration when a program-led evaluation of $25 million in grantmaking over 15 years showed that, despite good work by our individual grantees, neither the air quality nor the culture of denial among our leaders and citizens had changed much in that time.
With the support of our president and board, Environment and Communications have together developed and implemented a sophisticated communications and outreach campaign. Jointly we have organized events and other mechanisms to reach out to regional leaders across the business, government, and nonprofit sectors to build awareness of the problem and its impact on health, quality of life and economic competitiveness. We are now focusing on increasing awareness of many solutions already underway, and we have gained the support of many of our most influential business and civic leaders to develop an ambitious action agenda for the future.
We collectively appreciate that the blogging and tweeting of our Communications staff are essential to keeping the issue on our region’s front burner, but so is the behind-the-scenes research, relationship-building and advocacy work of our Environment Program staff and grantees.
And while I have the floor, I will add that our other program areas–Children, Youth and Families, Education, Arts and Culture and Innovation Economy–are finding ways to join our Breathe Project collaboration. They see the impact we are having and they want to be a part of it.
Sylvia Burgos-Toftness
November 4, 2011Minna,
Your post had me alternately dancing in my chair and holding my head in my hands. Yes, we need to get people to care enough to take action! Yes, we’ve got to communicate effectively in order to share news about opportunities and lessons learned! And yes, narrowly-defined communications tasks often pop up as after-thoughts – after the speech has been delivered, after the research report has been delivered, after the invitation to a break-thru meeting is posted. In each instance,Communications staff didn’t have an opportunity to help leverage the grant, intensify impact, or build relationships. Pain.
Minna, your questionsare leading me to appreciate nuances within our challenges.
Do my colleagues value what our Communications dept does? Yes, and no. They appreciate news coverage, annual reports that elicit comments, Emmy-nominated documentaries, conferences that get high points,and well-designed publications. This is the stuff we can all see and hold.
But what of the strategic perspective, questions and counsel we provide? Such as: Where does this meeting fit in with the overall grants strategy? Who should be invited to an event? and when? What’s the outcome, the behaviors we want from which key publics six months or a year after a meeting or publication? What indicators should we track? Who do our key publics trust? What are their communications habits? Who’s the influencer on this particular issue? How do we support his/her work to advance the cause? Shouldn’t the research grant include dollars to market the report thru the researcher’s networks? How can we support the VP’s keynote presentation next week so that it’ll boost interest in a conference nine months later?
That’s how communications practitioners tend to think. My goal is to help all staff understand how their jobs become more powerful when they ask similar questions at the very start of any work they do – grants strategy development, project, event, meeting.
My challenge, then, is to understand and speak to my colleagues’ responsibilities, pain points, and opportunities. Can I demonstrate that a communications mindset will help them >attract target nonprofits >minimize mis-aligned inquiries, >excite target funders to join in specific projects, >encourage peers to share lessons learned, >identify and tap demand for lessons generated by grantees, > encourage out-of-the-box conversations?
Right now I’m drafting (and redrafting) a small handful of plans. I’m trying to lay them out so that they’re about advancing the arc of our programmitc work, and about sharply communicating our brand distinctions. I’m not calling them communications plans. I’m trying to make it clear that these are efforts to promote behavioral outomes among key publics. Communications is a strategic approach within the plan.
I feel as if I’m learning a new language and tripping over my own tongue. Am I making this too complicated? My intent is to think this through – that’s the hard part – and then deliver an approach that’s logical,simple, fundamentally critical to their success. I want them to think “This is just what I needed,” and “of course.”
Minna, thanks, again, for your terrific post. Oh, and yes. I think the Communications Nework can play a very important role. How about a panel of VPs of Communications and Programs at a COF conf? How would they describe their perspectives? I mean, we’re in the same car. Is it about who we think is at the wheel, and whose reading the map?
Minna Jung
November 7, 2011Susan: your point about “conversion,” and the inherent paternalism in using that word, is well-taken. Let me put it another way: what if the mutual love and collaboration between communications and program just ain’t happening, despite the best efforts of one or both? What breaks through the barrier, or is there a point where we acknowledge defeat?
Prentice: all I can say is, um, okay. Regarding your comment about blogging and tweeting just to keep us happy, I’m going to take the high road and say, don’t do it for us, do it if it makes sense within the context of a strategy. But, here’s hoping you knew that already?
And: program officer quoted is Anne Weiss, now a team director, at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I know of others like her, and if you do too, email me or name them in the comments. Am noodling over some thoughts for next year’s conference.