This Is Iowa

Today I want to talk about the landscape you might encounter if you decide to help an emerging nonprofit with media (including social media) strategy. Over the past year, I’ve started branching out from my normal pr duties at a nonprofit and have volunteered my time to help new nonprofits draw media attention to their causes.

I haven’t been in this game long, but I’ve already noticed one major trait shared by those brave souls who throw caution to the wind and start a 501(c)(3). It’s happened enough times now that I’m calling it a pattern. And that pattern is this: these folks have created an organization that perfectly fills in the gap where either governments or other nonprofits come up short; they have thought about wonderful ways to market their products, i.e. catchy campaign names and sophisticated websites; they even know exactly what they want their first three press releases to be about. But, sadly, they have not spent one second considering to whom to target all of their marketing.

I’ve been very, very fortunate to work for orgs that are, across the board, staffed by excellent people with unquestionably good intentions. While their enthusiasm is magnetic, however, most emerging nonprofit leaders (in my experience) have not even begun to think about the media or their potential donors. They've spent so much time (rightly) poring over how exactly to get their products to the people most in need that they haven't thought through a comprehensive pr strategy. It’s as though they think that if you tweet it, they will come. Field of Dreams, though, pr is not. This is Iowa, not heaven. And you won’t be playing catch with Moonlight Graham anytime soon.

As the media manager, you have to focus your client. You have to be the good cop and the bad cop, all rolled into one, with special emphasis (especially at the beginning of your working relationship) on the bad cop – otherwise, you’ll get your client’s expectations pumped up all out of control ("Sure, no problem - if you want us on the front page of The New York Times, then your wish is my command!"), and the high bar will be set just a little too high.

I want to reiterate here that I am volunteering for these orgs, and that they have virtually no budgets; if you were working full-time for a well-funded nonprofit with oodles of money to spend, obviously my advice would be different.

To continue with my volunteering framework, it would be great if Time Magazine ran a cover piece on how your nonprofit is going to change the world, but don’t bet that it will; in fact, I can personally guarantee you that Time Magazine doesn’t give two hoots about your organization that has yet to issue its first press release. I’m not being mean: it’s just the brutal truth of journalism that until a buzz is already in full swing, most writers won’t give your org the time of day.

What I’m saying is that you have to bring your client’s expectations back down to earth. That doesn’t mean you should be a negative Nancy, though: assure them that at some point, once you’ve built up a track record for changing people’s lives for the better, Newsweek might be more willing to take a chance on you.

In the meantime, in most instances, you should start assembling more modest, targeted media email distribution lists. Email or fax your press releases to local and regional media: dailies, magazines, radio shows geared toward a field relevant to your nonprofit, local television media. If your releases are more event announcements than traditional press releases, many news services such as the Associated Press and Bloomberg run things called Day Books; see if you can get your event listed there. Search out reporters/producers who have a history of writing about nonprofits and charities. Start following local reporters’ twitter accounts, try to get them to follow you. Friend local media on Facebook. Start leaving comments on blogs written by folks working on similar issues so that maybe they’ll comment on your blog.

These may seem like obvious suggestions, and they are, but the tricky part will be to get your client to tone down their ambitions media-wise (after all, they’re ambitious people; they wouldn’t be starting up a nonprofit with virtually no resources if they weren’t!).

On top of this, your client may, in addition to targeting media, want to get the word out to potential donors that they are now accepting donations. But an exhortation of “Let’s send our press release to all of the members of the Forbes 100 list” on the part of your client should be met by you not with a chuckle, but with a firm, “Let’s try a different approach” because, let’s face it, nobody even knows who you are yet.

Not that the general public won’t know your service eventually, and not that Bill and Melinda won’t shower you with chests full of gold at some point, but for now, again, start small and work your way up the charts. Search Google for similar nonprofits or charities and figure out who their corporate sponsors are. Quiz your client on who they’d like to see donating to them (again, encourage them to think local/regional: everyone would love to have IBM for a sponsor, but let’s be realistic here). Look for grants in the area of your focus.

In other words, do your homework so the client doesn’t have to!