Nonprofit Bridge

Many of us in the nonprofit sector aren’t as effective as we could be in interacting with our constituents because departments of our organizations aren’t working together.  Often each department will have its own agenda, and offline and online strategies are handled by different areas.

In No Constituent is an Island, Steve MacLaughlin suggests that we stop thinking about offline and online and simply treat them as different channels.  Steve offers some interesting analogies, such as how we would react if we deposited a check at our bank but its online system had no record of it, or if you bought tickets online but when you arrived at the event, the box office could not access your purchase information.

Social media guru Beth Kanter offers a similar perspective in Silos Culture Inside the Walls of Nonprofits Prevent Effective Social Media Use.  She describes the experience of a nonprofit staff member who tried to promote a social media policy within their organization, but encountered departmental turf battles.  The volunteers who had asked to start using Facebook to promote the nonprofit eventually started on their own;  the organization only became involved later.   Social media brings up even more challenges since some of us still think it deserves a place with other tools we use to interact with our supporters.

With the increasing popularity of social media, some are asking if email is on the way out, e.g. Will eMail Fundraising Die.  But just as direct mail is still effective, so is email.   These tools work best when part of an integrated strategy.  To accomplish this, our nonprofits have to change how we’ve traditionally worked.  One way to do this is to have frequent cross-deparatment projects and meetings – not long, drawn out lectures but quick updates so each area is aware of what other parts of the organization are working on.   This is why project management is so important at nonprofits to help staff across departments and locations to learn to work collaboratively.

Constituents don’t view us as different departments but as one organization.  It’s time we started to treat ourselves the same way.

Tags: Beth Kanter, Facebook, integrated, multichannel, Steve MacLaughlin

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 6:40 am and is filed under ephilanthropy, fundraising, project management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.