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News and Announcements
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Goodman Center Opens 'Virtual
Doors' In September
New Educational
Center Helps Nonprofits Communicate Their Value
The
Goodman Center,
a new online education venture dedicated to helping
“do-gooders learn to do better,” will open its
virtual doors in September. The Center is a
collaboration between
Lipman Hearne,
a leading national marketing firm, and
Andy Goodman, a
well-known communications
consultant, and host of
the Communications Network’s
webinar
series.
The Center’s online offerings will be designed to
teach nonprofit professionals how to effectively
communicate the significance of their causes.
“The greatest strength nonprofits have is the
passion their employees bring to their work,” says
Goodman. “But in many cases, nobody ever taught them
how to be professional communicators. These courses
take everything we’ve learned about the art of
capturing attention and put it in the hands of those
who have something genuinely important to say.”
The courses will offer guidance on how organizations
can convincingly reach out to stakeholders through
storytelling, strategic communications, market
research, brand management, compelling
presentations, and other topics.
Click
here
for more.
Communications Network Founder
Honored
College Announces
Chair in Public Interest Communications Named for
Frank Karel, Veteran Philanthropy and Foundation
Communicator
During his
distinguished career as a foundation communicator,
Frank Karel achieved a number
of firsts. Among them, he helped to
pioneer the concept of “strategic communications” in
philanthropy as well as serving as the founding
chair of the Communications Network. In
recognition of his lifelong commitment to advance
the use of communications to spur improvements to
society, The University of Florida’s (UF) College of
Journalism and Communications has announced The
Frank Karel Chair in Public Interest Communications.
The chair, the nation's first of its kind, will
enable the university to create a curriculum and
support other activities, such as research, focused
on the use of communication tools and strategies to
advance organizations' missions and goals in the
nonprofit and public sectors. The chair is made
possible by a $2 million grant
from Trellis Fund, a foundation chaired by Betsy Karel, Frank Karel’s wife.
The university plans to use a portion of the grant
to recruit an accomplished practitioner for the
college's department of public relations to teach
and guide students preparing for careers in public
service.
John Wright, Dean of the College of Journalism and
Communications, noted that Karel “helped pioneer the
field of public interest communications in a long
and successful career with such organizations as the
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, the federal
government’s National Cancer Institute, and the
Robert Wood Johnson and Rockefeller Foundations and
thousands of their grantees.”
Linda Hon, executive associate dean and public
relations professor at UF, termed Karel “a
visionary.” Said Hon: “He saw and demonstrated that
communications can be used for shaping public policy
and mobilizing public will and support to advance
education, health, scientific research, the arts,
and many other activities critical to human progress
and survival.”
The College intends to fill this professorship with
a leading professional from “the relatively small
cohort nationally of experienced public interest
communications practitioners,” Wright added. “This
new chair will enable us to develop and evolve our
teaching and research in parallel with what’s
happening in this dynamic, exciting field.”
The University of Florida’s College of Journalism
and Communications is a national leader in the
professional education of future journalists and
other communications practitioners. It has programs
in advertising, print and broadcast journalism,
public relations, and telecommunication production
and operations, as well as graduate-level programs
in science/health communication, documentary, media
law, political communication and international
communication.
Foundation Center Produces
‘Tell All’ Volume about Philanthropy
Where would you go to
find the “big” stories in philanthropy in 2007? Or
to learn who the movers and shakers were in the
field last year? What if you want a list of who’s
blogging about philanthropy?
 To
answer questions like that, the Foundation Center
has produced a handy 100-page
Philanthropy
Annual: 2007 Review
– what it’s billing as the first in a planned yearly
summary of the “issues, people, organizations, and
giving trends that are shaping the philanthropic
field.”
According to Sara Engelhardt, the Center’s
president, “This volume will benefit anyone with an
interest in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector.”
The new compendium provides a full overview of
organized philanthropy in all its forms. Highlights
include:
• Topical issues covered in the mainstream and
philanthropic press during 2007
• News of individuals who have dedicated their
professional lives to working for the public good
• In-depth interviews and commentary from widely
respected leaders and thinkers
• Key statistical information about U.S. grantmaking
Also included is a handy desk reference section with
contact information for sector resources, including
regional associations of grantmakers, grantmaker
affinity groups, nonprofit academic programs and
centers, the philanthropy press, and the Center’s
Cooperating Collections.
Philanthropy Annual: 2007 Review
can be
downloaded
free-of-charge or purchased
here for
($19.95).
Survey Finds Majority of PSAs Air When People are
Likely
to See them,
Not Just In The
"Wee Hours" Of The Morning
A new survey explodes the commonly held belief that
television and radio public service announcements (PSAs)
are “relegated to the graveyard of ad space” when
most people are asleep. Instead, the survey
conducted by
WestGlen Communications
found a majority of PSAs run during normal “waking
hours.”
In tracking when television 72 PSAs actually aired
during 2007, WestGlen found that more than 67
percent ran between 5 a.m and 10 p.m., with the
balance airing between 1 a.m and 5 a.m.
“Our analysis proves that PSAs are not just
relegated to the graveyard of ad space," said
Annette I. Minkalis, senior vice president, PSA
Services, for WestGlen.
Westglen’s analysis of when PSA’s aired on radio
also showed a large percentage running during
daytime hours.
For more on the survey,
click here.
Report Urges More
Philanthropic Support For Grassroots Communications
Efforts Aimed at Achieving Social Justice
A new report, "Raise
Every Voice,” produced by the
Progressive Communicators
Network, suggests that increased
philanthropic support to bolster the communications
capacity of grassroo ts and other single issue
nonprofits can help further the successes these
organizations are achieving to advance racial,
social, economic, and environmental justice.
According
to the report’s authors, by helping progressive
organizations build their communications capacity,
“the movement for positive change in this country”
can be strengthened. The report notes that
“foundations and donors play a critical role in this
investment process, not only with the actual funds
they contribute, but also for the signal they send
that strategic communications plays a central role
in all strong organizations and change-making
initiatives.”
Click
here to
download a copy of the report.
Read the latest issue of Network
Notes:
Few know if they're getting
attention
Survey Shows Only 37% of Nonprofits Track Marketing
Impact
Newly released survey findings show that few nonprofits
are tracking the results of their marketing efforts.
Nancy Schwartz, president of Nancy Schwartz
& Co., who conducted the online survey of communicators
working in or with nearly 350 nonprofit organizations
and foundations, said the findings show that "many nonprofits are driving
blind...they have no idea what's working and what's not,
or how to target their resources."
Schwartz, who also writes a blog,
Getting Attention,
which is focused on helping nonprofits develop their
marketing savvy, added that while evaluation is
challenging, "it is just as crucial as getting campaigns
out there."
Evaluation options, according to Schwartz, include the "purely
qualitative – such as a communications audit and
audience research via focus groups – to the quantitative
such as counts of unique visitors to Web page A versus
page B, or advocates who emailed their representatives
in response to e-campaign A vs. e-campaign B."
Nonprofits that don't evaluate, are basically throwing
their marketing resources into thin air. Her advice:
"Build evaluation into every marketing budget and job
description."
Click here to read
the full survey results.
Read
Network Notes
January 2007
Winter 2006
Network Opens Message Board
The Communications
Network recently added a new "message board" to the website. The new feature is intended to promote the exchange of information and ideas throughout the Network. If you are familiar with using a a message board, you'll find the Network's boards are similarly easy to use.
--To get to the message board click here.
You can also get there by going to any page
on the Network website and clicking "Message Boards" on
the left hand menu.
--You do not need to take any action if you just want to
read messages in a forum. However, to post new messages, reply, or
start new threads, you need to register (and to do that
just click "register" in the upper right tab found on
the forum home page). The only information you need to
provide is a user id and a password. The rest is
optional.
--Also, once you've registered and logged in and have
selected to read messages in a forum, you'll have the
option of "subscribing" to that or any of the other
forums. (The option to subscribe found in the upper
right tab of each forum's welcome page.) Once you
subscribe, you'll receive copies of postings via email
from other forum visitors (in other words, you'll be on
a listserve.) You have the option of unsubscribing
at any time if you don't want to keep receiving emails.
--To respond to a posted message in any of the forums, simply click "reply" in the upper
right menu bar.
--To start a new
conversation within an existing forum, click on the name
of the forum, then click "post" on the link on the upper
right menu bar. If you want to start a new forum,
please email your request to
brucet@comnetwork.org
The ground rules for using the forums are simple: only
post information, or ask questions relating to the forum
theme. Please do not use for any kind of solicitation.
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