I know. I know. This video has already made the rounds. It’s been out there for a while. But I have to say its one of the most moving examples of how good creative can help deepen a cause, and how web 2.0 can take that good creative far and wide. If you haven’t seen it, I would love to hear your reaction. If you have seen it, I would still love to hear your reaction (I would be curious to know if it stuck with you as long as it has stuck with me).
I often think about a special moment with my collaborators, Dana and Padraic. We had given ourselves two days to develop a plan. Two whole days to do nothing but imagine what we wanted to accomplish and envision how to make it happen. It was time well spent. What emerged in that short period of time has guided us for the last eight years.
This is why we have assembled a Strategy Intensive this summer for nonprofit organizations. An intense and focused time, without distraction, to build an individual donor fundraising plan. We see this as an opportunity to bring together groups of organizations to work together to share and refine strategies as well as to further deepen our understanding of how each individual organization add so much to whole.
Go here to learn more abou the workshop. It will be based in Saint Paul, MN but we are encouraging folks from all over to come and join us for what will be a very productive and fruitful two days. I don’t think we should underestimate what can emerge from having time to plan.
Bus Board Campaign for Opportunity Partners
We’ve been working with Opportunity Partners since last summer. The folks on their team (both board and staff) are outstanding collaborators. From the get go they took a hard look at what was already an excellent organizational identity and recognized that they needed to expand its relevance beyond their participants, family members, and partners to a wider public. In short, they wanted to elevate their cause from self-sufficieny for people with disabilities to transforming the potential of people with disabilities into community opportunity– “proving the everyone, when given an opportunity, can add value to our world.”
After conducting focus groups and interviews, Creation In Common brought the board and staff branding taskforce a messaging brief and they immediately turned it back. They had just recently completed a strategic planning process and they began to realize a future that was more than just providing vocational opportunities for people with disabilities, but used advanced learning, deep community supports, and meaningful work as a way to redefine ability– to create a world where the “dis” in ability no longer exists. This led to the bus board campaign (sampled above) as well as the new organizational tag-line: “Ability Redefined.”
Visit Opportunity Partners online at www.opportunities.org
You can’t get anyone to do anything, if they don’t want to. Especially when it comes to fundraising. But you can help people play to their strengths.
Fundraising isn’t a solitary act, its a process that requires a group of individuals to play multiple roles and work together toward the same goal. The above chart identifies these roles. The secret is to spend time figuring out the right casting. This requires us to observe our board and staff in action, to talk to them about what they enjoy doing, to observe how they listen to others and well they communicate. Most importantly, we want to engage our board and staff in a way that they feel most comfortable, allowing them to naturally connect to the role.
Creation In Common
Carlo Cuesta