The good news is that there is a way to tap into these values to increase acceptance of people who are part of an “out group.” The social science literature is clear: conversations in the context of friendship reduce prejudice. And it’s not just correlation; there is strong evidence that these interactions cause attitude change.

That’s the good news. The challenge is, these conversations aren’t always easy to have. They can be awkward, difficult, or risky. In the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equality, we have seen how difficult it is to engage people to have these conversations. As Matt Foreman of the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund says, it’s like we’re working toward equality with one hand tied behind our backs.

The Haas, Jr. Fund engaged LightBox Collaborative to research these thorny questions. Together we wondered: how can we motivate, engage, and support gay people in having these conversations with their straight friends and family? And what are the results of conversations, not just on the straight person’s attitude, but on the quality of the relationship and the gay person’s well-being?

We dove deep into these questions and learned enough to create a model mapping the conversation path toward greater acceptance and openness. Here are just a few of the highlights of what we learned about the journey:

Many gay people are no more motivated or influenced by appeals to rights and public policy than “movable middle” straight people are.

Instead, strong motivations for gay people to have these conversations include:

• Living openly and authentically
• Having better relationships with the straight people in their lives
• Concern for young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning

The conversations may be easier than we thought. Not only are casual conversations about ordinary life as a gay person easier to have than conversations that make being gay a big deal—these casual conversations also work better at increasing understanding and acceptance.

We heard from gay people who have had these conversations that their relationships with the straight people in their lives are better than ever, and that the discomfort of potentially awkward conversations is well worth gaining greater well-being and the freedom to be yourself.

Holly Minch and I have just returned from Creating Change, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s annual organizing and skills-building conference for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and their allies. While we were there we did a workshop on our research findings. What we heard back is that this line of research, learning, and strategy is necessary for creating the change we envision: a culture that is safe, welcoming, accepting, and fair for all people, including people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Several people told us how meaningful it was to see themselves and their experiences reflected in a study like this.

A 90-minute workshop—or a 500 word blog post—just scratches the surface of this research. We are grateful for the enthusiastic feedback we heard at Creating Change, and we are looking forward to the next steps: taking what we’ve learned and turning it into tools and strategies for action. If you are interested in reading the full report, sign up to have our blog delivered to your inbox. We’ll be blogging about our findings when the report is released.

(Image courtesy Flickr user Chris Blakeley, Creative Commons)
. . .

Cynthia Scheiderer is a LightBox Collaborator who has high hopes for many more courageous, authentic conversations.

Back then, I was working for the Sierra Club, which was particularly concerned about Gingrich’s policy proposals because it would have gutted a wide array of laws and regulations that protect clean air and water, wilderness, wildlife, and human health. It also provided new subsidies for logging national forests and exempted Big Oil from various environmental laws. In the eyes of the Sierra Club, the Contract On America amounted to a War on the Environment.

In fact, we had an enewsletter titled as such – which we called “the Daily WOE.” One of my responsibilities was to help publish the Daily WOE informing the media and activists of the emerging details of why the Contract really would be disastrous for the environment. We were telling activists they had to act immediately to organize and write their Congressional representatives or all would be lost. Those familiar with grassroots mobilization recognize it’s threats to the things people care about that tend to motivate the action needed to protect them. While it’s important to create urgency for our issues, in hindsight I think we can all agree that serving as the daily harbinger of woe for our constituents is perhaps not the best position for an organization’s brand….

Further, while the communications department was busy saying the sky was falling, the development department was appealing for funding with a message of hope—that our organization was busy saving the beautiful flora and charismatic megafauna of the world. Those familiar with grassroots fundraising are well aware that people tend to give to solutions, not to problems.

Yes, people are unlikely to contribute to something they perceive to be hopeless. Still, they need to understand the problem they can help solve—with their dollars or their activism. And both contributors and activists will be more motivated if they feel they can make a difference in fixing the problem. In my story from the Sierra Club, while each department was using a smart communications approach for our specific goals, we were, in effect, contradicting and cancelling out each other’s messages to our key supports.

Of course the last thing you want is for your organization to be caught talking out of both sides of its mouth. Get your departments talking to each other to align your messages for all your audiences, then tailor that general message to appeal to each specific target. Keeping an up-to-date editorial calendar is a great way facilitate and promote this coordination. Check out the latest version Lightbox Collaborative has prepared to help you align your organization’s voice.

Has this ever happened in your organization? What are your successes and challenges in aligning messages across your organization?

(Image courtesy www.onevoicechorus.org)

. . .

Holly Minch is LightBox Collaborative’s chief engineer and founder and is happy to no longer focus on her daily woes.

Many organizations hire communications specialists, expecting them to do whatever it takes to publicize the organization and its issues. Back in the olden days, that meant producing newsletters and collateral, and getting stories into print and electronic media. With far more limited media and other ways to talk to members and other key audiences, it was a reasonable expectation.

Effective communications have always been integral to achieving program goals, but the job was largely left to the “experts.” Program staff mostly provided ideas, background information and fact-checking. Today, however, with media as diversified and interactive as it is, this model is not only unrealistic but unwise. Instead of leaving the job to the communications staff, your organization must build a staff that communicates.

Old media activities were more like lectures—pretty one-sided. But the new communications ecosystem is about sparking and participating in conversations—across multiple platforms—to build relationships with your audiences. A meaningful presence requires all hands on deck to monitor, participate in and respond to relevant dialogs. It’s what builds your organization’s credibility and influence.

Your program staff is probably already reading blogs, tweets and other content ripe for sharing. But do they take the next step and post it to the organization’s Facebook page or retweet it? The trick to effective communications today is ensuring that the entire staff feels responsible for its success.

Here are a few tips to get your team to contribute to the conversation:

• Support and align empowered voices. While it’s important for all communications to promote an organization’s desired reputation, staff members will be more motivated to participate in social media if their own personalities can shine through. Make sure your social media guidelines are clear and easy to follow, but let people be themselves, too.

• Coach your team to communicate for success. Today’s communications director should encourage the team to get in the habit of content creation. Now more a coordinator and cheerleader, it is up to her to infuse best practices in social media and storytelling throughout the organization’s work, and to encourage the entire team to come up with stories and ideas to post to the blog, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and wherever else your audiences live.

• Build relationships. Whether it’s old media or new, all staff should build the personal relationships with key reporters and bloggers that will improve coverage of your organization.

• Make it easy. While you want your staff to play an active role in the online conversation, including writing blog posts, you don’t want it to be all-consuming. This is where the editorial calendar comes in. It’s the best way to coordinate all communication activities online and off.

• Keep it on the agenda. Discuss communications opportunities at every staff and board meeting to keep communications front and center. In addition to surfacing upcoming conferences, events, and decision points ripe for media attention, it will help create a fertile environment to grow new ideas to work into the editorial calendar.

Communications: it’s not just for the professionals anymore.

(Image courtesy Flickr user KEXINO, Creative Commons)

. . .

Holly Minch is LightBox Collaborative’s chief engineer and founder and hopes that 2012 is the year of the empowered communicator.

I recently participated in an open-mic discussion about Occupy Wall Street as a “leader-full” (as opposed to a leader-less) movement. Hosted by the New Organizing Institute, the forum brought together a diverse audience of progressive activists who shared their experiences working within this communal method of protesting.

The Sunset of the Leader as Hero?

Traditional protest movements had clear, visible leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez. Candidate campaigns typically operate on a “top-down” model, with an inner circle of people calling all the shots and doling out very specific tasks to volunteers. Over many years, these campaign models essentially trained the media and the masses to expect attractive spokespeople rattling off poll-tested talking points. As a result, the Occupy movement is under a lot of pressure to put forth credible leaders who will supply a list of demands.

Goodbye Hierarchy, Hello Network

But OWS operates on an entirely different model. If it had an organizational chart, that chart would be round. Leaders remain behind the scenes, and decisions are made on the ground, by the participants. And while it’s true that Twitter has replaced the phone tree for peer-to-peer communications, the real power of online communication is what it enables people to accomplish offline. So, although protesters are uploading photos to Facebook and posting cell phone videos to YouTube, OWS really is an on-the ground experience. That’s where the decisions are made, and where strategy is decided. And while there is no ability for someone to come in and run the show, there is room for anyone to step into a leadership role. Many contend that this model of shared leadership makes the movement more resilient and more easily scaled, because there is no single leadership bottleneck.

Pros & Cons

This model is proving challenging for some, and inspirational for others. Several forum participants expressed frustration with a lack of direction: (Comments paraphrased.)

I’m concerned about the Occupy movement. Usually in a campaign, there’s a clear consensus, a clear ask. How can we measure the outcome when we don’t have a clear goal? How will we know if and when we’ve succeeded?

I’m less interested in whether we’re using Twitter or Facebook, and more interested in the fact that we’re getting pummeled politically. Where is there room in this process for a discussion about actually getting things done?

Without a goal, this is mainly a spectacle. I noticed there has been a move encouraging people to withdraw their money from big banks, and that’s great. But it took two months for that to happen.

Despite these frustrations, others actually saw the movement’s ambiguity as a benefit.

The occupy movement has changed the dialogue in this country. The majority of Americans agree with the general sentiment of Occupy. Once we start getting specific on legislative requests, we lose people. You can see this with the Anti-War movement. People look at them and say, ‘We know what they’re about, so we don’t need to pay attention.’ The real power of Occupy is that it is inspiring others who agree with the general sentiment to step up and do something about it, such as the ‘move your money’ day.

The civil rights movement didn’t start off with one goal. It started because people were pissed off and said, ‘We’ve got to do something.” Eventually, goals came from that, but it took a while.

Not having goals and talking points is a strength. It inspires people to join for their own reason.

Whether you call it a leader-less or leader-full movement, the media and the masses are going to continue pressing OWS to produce leaders who will articulate clear goals. Many inside are urging OWS to resist that pressure. So is Lemony Snicket, a prolific children’s books author, who recently published “Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance.” Observation #10 states, “It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.” Perhaps the real victory of OWS is the shift of the power dynamic around who gets to be heard on the economy and our nation’s values.

(Image courtesy of flickr user Michael of Scott)

. . .

Renee Alexander is LightBox Collaborative Collaborator and thinks Lemony Snicket should rule the world.

Earned Media is Dead

OK, reports of the death of traditional media may be greatly exaggerated. There are still reporters out there with column inches to fill, but far less of them than there used to be. But many causes and organizations are finding that it’s a lot harder to get picked up in the local paper and/or the national news than it used to be. And traditional media coverage is now increasingly driven by conversation and content that starts off in the online space, on the communications platforms and channels driven by nonprofits themselves.

Content is King

So long live new media, which places your nonprofit organization in the driver’s seat. From email blasts to Facebook pages, in many cases it’s now nonprofits that find themselves with channels in need of content. Given the proliferation of low-cost tools, your nonprofit can spark conversation, share your message and advance your cause all on your own terms. But it takes content: you’ve got to feed those media platforms and seed those conversations. Relevant, compelling content attracts new advocates to your cause and deepens relationships with constituents, all without relying on a reporter to relay your message.

Align Your Team

Now that your nonprofit is the publisher managing your own communications channels, an editorial calendar can be a great way to manage your content pipeline. Our 2012 editorial calendar is presented as a Google spreadsheet. Each month has its own tab containing LightBox Collaborative’s ideas on 2012’s opportunities for your organization to share ideas and information and generate conversation.  We’ve included red-letter dates to help spark your creativity on the conversations that will advance your cause via new media and traditional media opportunities. Download a copy and customize with calendar hooks, program dates, events and other important dates that your organization can leverage for successful communications.

Tailor the Tool

As you map out your work plan for the year ahead, we recommend you also augment our list with a review of your organization’s 2012 work plans to identify key areas of focus. These can be gold mines of content for your communications platforms. At an upcoming staff meeting, you might create a chart for each month and post it around the room, then ask staff to mark key dates on the charts – including events, conferences, key issues up for consideration in the legislature, or program milestones. This way, your editorial calendar becomes a tool your entire staff can use to ensure that your communications efforts are in line with and supportive of your day-to-day work, which creates alignment and efficiency in your efforts for the year ahead.

Let us know what dates you think we should have on the 2012 radar. We look forward to hearing your tips on how you customized your 2012 editorial calendar.

(Image courtesy Flickr user theparadigmshifter, Creative Commons)

. . .

Holly Minch is LightBox Collaborative’s chief engineer and founder.

In honor of National Nonprofit Executive Director Appreciation Day, we’re pleased to share some ideas about the important role that organizational leaders play in effective communications, particularly during times of change. Since change is just about the only constant that nonprofits can count on these days, the topic seems an especially relevant one as supporting change becomes an ever more important part of every nonprofit leader’s job.

Our colleague Laura Peck at Claros Group has put together a brief article illuminating the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of communicating change and how leaders can support people through change. She also includes some hard-won lessons about communicating change to your internal team and external stakeholders:

• Have a clear strategy for communicating up front about the change.
• Recognize that resistance (certainly “theirs”, maybe your own) is a normal part of implementing change.
• Create involvement and opportunities for input whenever possible.
• Be creative in how you solicit feedback and engage people.
• Model the behaviors you are asking for in others. As Gandhi reminds us, “We must be the change we wish to make in this world.”

Share the article with your favorite change leader or your team and take a moment today to show your appreciation for the nonprofit leaders who have dedicated their careers to a cause.

(Image courtesy Flickr user chintermeyer, Creative Commons)

. . .

Holly Minch is LightBox Collaborative’s chief engineer and founder.

Just as light needs to include a full spectrum in order to show the world around us in its true colors, an organization’s communication needs to include a full spectrum of messages in order to best illuminate its work. At LightBox Collaborative, we look for three types of messages in any organizational story: purpose, impact, and approach messages.

We’ve noticed that that while most nonprofits do a pretty good job with purpose messages and approach messages — talking about their mission and how they do their work — they often give short shrift to the vitally important impact messages.

It’s easy to understand how this happens. Purpose messages explain the problem the organization is in business to solve, the reason it exists; these messages describe the cause that inspires many of us to work at a nonprofit. Approach messages are about the work the staff is eyeball-deep in every day: the programs or services the nonprofit offers. These messages are easy for most of us in nonprofits to talk about.

Impact messages, though, are the ones that help you tell the most compelling story about your organization. Impact messages explain what your organization offers, not in terms of programs and services, but in terms of impact and results.

For example, perhaps your organization developed a new math curriculum aimed at helping kids from low-income families improve achievement and access to higher education — an important purpose. Maybe you came up with creative ways to recruit 50 volunteer math tutors from local colleges to help out — an effective approach.

But the best story is in the impact message: you provided tutoring for 200 students at a middle school and their math scores improved by an average of 20 percent. Individual students talk about enjoying math, and parents talk about how homework is getting done.

Impact messages can be a challenge to develop. They require that an organization find time to quantify and evaluate what it is doing. This also means listening carefully to your community to learn what people think about your work. The effort is worthwhile because impact messages help audiences understand why the work of the organization matters.

We recommend that nonprofit organizations work hard to develop compelling impact messages as part of a full spectrum of communication. Impact messages can be the beacons that enlighten your audiences about the difference you are making in the world.

(Image courtesy Flickr user Lauren Manning, Creative Commons)
. . .

Cynthia Scheiderer is a LightBox Collaborator with a flair for crafting powerful impact messages.

We’re being asked, again and again, to speak about the building blocks of strategic communications. First it was the more than 200 program staff (most of them not communications folks) at one of our clients, who were all eager for practical tips. Soon after, I gave a pair of well-received talks on communications strategy at CompassPoint’s Nonprofit Day. Then, LightBox collaborator Lauren Girardin spoke to YNPNsfba about taking nonprofit communications to the next level.

We realized that these groups and many others are in a similar position: they need effective communications, but they don’t necessarily know where or how to start. Luckily, we have lots to share on the matter.

Picking the subject of our first video training was easy. At LightBox Collaborative, we see sound strategy as the core of every successful communications effort. The GAME Plan is our favorite tool to teach do-gooders how to articulate goals, identify key audiences, select the best messages to move audiences to action, and determine the best means to engage them.

Watch LightBox Collaborative’s first communications video training: Your Communications GAME Plan

Although our video trainings will be chock-full of information, videos alone can’t replicate the insights revealed during in-person training or consulting. Each nonprofit or foundation’s best-fit strategic communications will be unique. But, we hope our new series of video trainings will help by illuminating the path ahead for your powerful strategic communications.

We’ll share more video trainings on various communications topics over the next few months. Which communications, strategy, messaging, and marketing topics would be most valuable to you and your organization? What do you want to hear from us?

First there was no coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Now there’s tons of coverage and it’s endlessly frustrating. The media keep asking, “What do they want? What are their demands? What will make them go home? Why zombies?”

Ok. I admit, quite a few of us are asking that last question.

But it’s really frustrating that it’s so hard for the mainstream media to wrap their heads around an action that is organic, loosely organized and not sound bite ready. Sure, there’s the rare reporter who gets it and some articulate protestors, but the media is mostly churning out crummy coverage that misses the point and dismisses the effort.

It’s as if most reporters can’t figure out something that anyone who has ever been in line at the bank can tell you: people are fed up with the lack of opportunity and the imbalance of power that has been brewing for years. It’s come to a head in a double-dip recession and a post-Citizens-United election environment — and so people have taken to the streets.

The issue is: there are issues

The problems manifest themselves in different ways for different people. Many can’t find a job that pays the bills. Some people have lost their homes. Others are doing okay right now, but are frustrated by the fact that if calamity befalls them, they know that Congress won’t bail them out.

The problems are as numerous as the protesters. But the through line is this: Where is our safety net? Where is our bailout? And when did our country stop supporting and — as it often seems — caring about people who are not ultra-wealthy or ultra-connected? There is no single demand or set of demands that can address that question. It requires a culture shift and a reorientation of our priorities as a nation.

Are communications professionals part of the problem?

And it’s my fault that the media can’t figure that out. Well, me and people like me.

Communications professionals have been helping nonprofits and grassroots organizers design winning media campaigns — with bullet point messages, concise calls to action, and prepared spokespeople. The media eat these campaigns up. We win some and we lose some, but when we do get coverage, the media usually has the story straight.

But by preparing so well and always giving the media what they want, the way they want it, have we rendered them unable to understand a grassroots movement without a central messenger? Media look for the single fact sheet that will answer all their questions about the Occupy Wall Street protests, and in this case there simply isn’t one.

What’s the solution?

When I see coverage like this, I usually want to jump in, develop the talking points, frame the story, and pitch it so the media can deliver it. But this time is different. I feel solidarity with the premise that there are far too many issues, too many problems in this country, and too many opportunities for solving them than should be boiled down to make Occupy Wall Street media-ready.

I am not sure if this means I am losing my edge or just finding the exception that proves the rule. Yet, I find myself feeling like I am part of the messy media coverage of this historic moment and wondering how I (and you other communications folks out there) can be part of the solution.

(Image courtesy Flickr user _PaulS_, Creative Commons)
. . .

Amanda Cooper is a LightBox collaborator who recognizes she is one of the lucky ones in the 99% because she gets to do the work she loves and earn a living from it. For now.

If you whiled away your summer engrossed in guilty-pleasure books that turned your brain to mush, fear not! The folks at LightBox Collaborative have gathered our favorite messaging and strategic communications books to help you get your brain primed for the work ahead.

Here’s a sampling of what our wonky LightBox colleagues fess up to reading and re-reading this summer (tucked discreetly inside a dog-eared copy of People so we didn’t ruin anyone’s vacation with reminders of work):

• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. A study on memory, emotion and motivation, Made to Stick finds that making a story memorable depends on simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories. Their follow up, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, gives practical advice on engaging the rational mind and the emotional mind in creating change.
• Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steve Johnson is a fascinating tour of the flashes of brilliance and creative breakthroughs that take our society and culture to new heights, and the patterns that underlie these good ideas.
• Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications by Sarah Durham. Founder of the firm Big Duck, Durham says it is important to have an integrated marketing and fundraising plan based on a foundation of clear mission and relevant strategy. Fundraising, advocacy, and other nonprofit programs all can benefit from a clear organizational profile, a solid identity, and smart outreach.
• Straightforward: How To Mobilize Heterosexual Support for Gay Rights is written by law professors and husband-and-wife team Ian Ayres and Jennifer Brown and offers practical, makes the case for why straight people need to speak up and act for equality. Well-researched and practical, they focus on strategies that change incentives in favor of equality.
• The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World. Funny that there’s a paperback to give us lessons about blogging, SEO, and e-newsletters, but The Yahoo! Style Guide is available for most e-readers, too.
• Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff. Another “classic,” this one from 2004, Lakoff’s book shows us that the winner is often the one who makes the rules, which in the case of communications is the one who chooses the language to define the terms and parameters of the debate.
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. It’s hard to believe that Malcom Gladwell’s definitive book on viral communication is already 11 years old. Yet today it sits at third on The New York Times bestseller list for paperback business books. The notion of the tipping point, mavens, connectors, and stickiness came from this classic, and some of us make a point to go back to it again and again. We wouldn’t be surprised to find copies of Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw on LightBoxers’ nightstands either.
• The Seth Godin collection. We worry about one of our colleagues needing serious chiropractic care one day because we suspect that she constantly lugs all 10 of Godin’s international bestsellers around — along with other smart books, the last five issues of The Economist, and who knows what else in the enormous satchel she carries! Godin’s Purple Cow is the easiest to spot among all of that material, and All Marketers Are Liars Tell Stories is a wonderful read about how authenticity is the best marketing of all.

What’s on your back-to-school reading list?

(Image courtesy Flickr user o5com, Creative Commons)
. . .

Cynthia Scheiderer is a LightBox Collaborator with a flair for asking the right questions – and discovering answers that work.