Finger-wagging at organizations with nice offices and large administrative staffs, or at organizations that don’t answer questionnaires isn’t helpful. I’m all for transparency, just the right kind.  In general, I find this kind of bean-counting misleading and counterproductive.

Click here to read the article published in the Toronto Star on November 16  http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1087637–audit-of-charities-encounters-resistancere

I wonder if Jim Collins’ 2005 essay Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great is still available – a great piece in which he debunks the prevailing belief (among those pushing for standard measurements) that nonprofits are “in desperate need of greater discipline.”  Collins believes “many widely practiced business norms turn out to correlate with mediocrity, not greatness.  So, then, why would we want to import the practices of mediocrity into the social sectors?”

“We need to reject the naïve imposition of the ‘language of business’ on the social sectors” — Jim Collins

Nonprofit performance can be measured, says Collins, but “what matters is not finding the perfect indicator, but settling upon a consistent and intelligent method of assessing your output results.”  The basic idea Collins promotes is being “accountable for progress in outputs, even if those outputs defy measurement.”  Regardless of one’s fiscal orientation, a great organization, says Collins, “is one that delivers superior performance and makes a distinctive impact over a long period of time.”

Donors do want to know their funds are being used wisely; rightly so. Nonprofits do need to build a sense of trust that they are actually achieving their missions. And that’s what people really need to know: Are they doing their job?  The so-called “business intelligence,” with its focus on administrative costs, isn’t getting that message out.  Unfortunately, most nonprofits don’t tell their story effectively enough to persuade people that they are achieving their mission – and that donations are being used wisely.

By not telling their stories they can’t build trust. And that’s the real problem.  The prevailing characteristic of most nonprofits is expecting people understand who they are, and expecting those audiences will support their work.  Or expecting a media outlet will want to tell their story (measuring the number of “mentions” has never been my idea of a meaningful yardstick). Development teams would rather just organize events or “ask” for money (or, considering some organizations’ guerilla fundraising tactics, shake people down).  There simply isn’t much focus on telling identity-building stories that build the trust these organizations need to demonstrate their success.

Nonprofits need to work harder to ensure donors don’t see their organizations as black holes.  To establish a sense of belief that donors’ dollars will be well-spent, nonprofits need to focus on effectively engaging the public; effective branding that connects people to the organizations unique ideas. To effectively build trust, and demonstrate that nonprofits are relevant and worthy of support, organizations have to think harder about outreach through content development. Mission-connecting communication that highlights unique knowledge will be the key enabler in the in the effort to demonstrate relevance, build trust, and achieve fundraising goals.  Leverage what you know to create compelling, inspiring objects that build trust and sustain long-term relationships that result in sustainable giving.

Relevant reading from the Contrabrand archives:

• The Nonprofit Imagination (2006) wp.me/pqoXT-11.webloc
• Dilemma du Jour (2005) wp.me/pqoXT-Z.webloc
• New Money, New Demands (2001) wp.me/pqoXT-X.webloc

Attention deficit isn’t the problem, it’s information-overload; we have way too much to process. But there is an answer, says Steven Rosenbaum: “curation.” His book Curation Nation: Why the future of content is context: How to win in a world where consumers are creators (McGraw-Hill, 2011) tells readers “the noise is rapidly approaching a place where it drowns out the signal” and that we need some kind of a filter. Curation – what Rosenbaum calls a human form of content aggregation – imposes the clarity we need.  Or does it?

Since “the future is all about gathering and sorting content with new tools, and consumer engagement,” Rosenbaum believes the new-style curator, each building a “fortress of content,” is destined to become a leader in the new digital world.”  I’m not so sure. What do we get out of simply gathering, and then passing-on, information? If you believe that what you communicate exposes your intellectual blueprint, what message do you send if your “intellectual blueprint” comes from someone else? (Or worse, is borrowed from a large number of disparate sources).  No wonder so many organizations don’t know who they are.

Rosenbaum’s “fortress” will be no more secure than a sandcastle if it is built on borrowed content. People aren’t looking for more messengers, they’re looking for experts able to decipher and provide insight – what does all this damnable content mean!!?!  In other words, to cope with content overload, we need dissemination. In the long run what will win the day is proprietary content that that becomes the catalyst for generating a perception of leadership.

If you want to be a well-differentiated organization, make sure you have something to say that is valuable and all yours.

Just about the time the Internet bubble burst in 1999-2000, Marc Braunstein and Edward Levine wrote Deep Branding on the Internet, an excellent book loaded with lessons for organizations focusing today on social networking.  They complained about “the shallowness of Internet branding,” a process that “was hurried, one-dimensional, without rigor,” where the prospects for producing deep brands were unlikely.   Ultimately, they concluded, there was “nothing quite so despairing as watching a dot.com struggling to find new meaning when they had little meaning to begin with.” Ouch! And all this because these upstart tech businesses refused to concentrate on fundamental issues for brand deepening ideas. Instead, they “confused displaying their symbols for a brand with the arduous process of developing a brand of value” using all appropriate channels.

Has anything changed? Is social media – and what the PR industry hopes to do with it – really “new,” or is it just a new way of doing the same-old thing?  It’ll be the old-wine, new-bottle scenario if that content isn’t proprietary, substantive, and insightful.

The problem with curation-as-gathering is that as the practice becomes increasingly popular and part of the mainstream, those who simply pass-along gathered information will struggle to standout; you can’t differentiate with sameness. Curators will discover, sooner or later, that the community they are working hard to build will dissipate over time if they don’t ultimately focus on dissemination and providing leadership about their subject.  They’ll fade away if they don’t ask “What are we giving people to talk about?”

Unfortunately, few organizations worry sufficiently about that question. Which leads me to the best part of Rosenbaum’s book: what I enjoyed most really has nothing to do with his own argument, but the insights he conveyed (curated) from content strategy evangelist Kristina Halvorson. Content, says Halvorsen, ends up being cosmetic and superficial because organizations don’t invest it with any sense of glamour. The prevailing belief, she acknowledges, is that content is easy and technology is hard, so the latter wins all the glory. Content, she says, simply becomes  “an afterthought,” “somebody else’s problem—‘the client can do it,’ ‘the users will generate it.’”

Consequently, most organizations are pathologically passive about the care and feeding of content. And with no one asking essential questions about the dirty business of content development, says Halvorsen, “do you think it’s a coincidence…that Web content is, for the most part, crap?”  Which is too bad, of course, because instead of being simply “the stuff you use to fill up your wonderfully designed web site” it is supposed to be “the voice, the message, the meaning that your customers come to engage in”

Rosenbaum, on the other hand, believes the destiny of content – replaced as “king” by curation – is to be commoditized.  In one sense, he’s right: content will be commoditized if it is simply repackaged and passed-around. Its value, however, will be raised if the content is disseminated to provide insights and new meaning.  People are looking for unique ideas and leadership, and organizations that take the time to interpret and explain are demonstrating their capacity to lead and inject their brands with quality perceptions.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Braunstein and Levine were right a decade ago when they cautioned organizations from handing-off the responsibility for branding to an agency. Don’t abdicate control: a do-it-yourself communications ethos that firmly positions your organization in the marketplace of ideas will ensure audiences know who you are, what you do, and that your mission is being successfully accomplished.

Although it is a technology trend that appears here to stay, managers are reticent about providing employees with open-access fearing they will waste company time “chatting” with friends. By doubting the need to allow employees to engage potential consumers via social networking, she argues managers cut themselves off from opportunities to extend awareness about their organization.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/up-next-in-technology/time-to-adapt-to-social-media-or-face-the-consequences/article2198999/

Her focus is the impact of social networking might have on marketing, but that’s fine — and she’s right. There is, however, another angle Weeks doesn’t mention: would employers be persuaded about the benefits of social networking if they could see how social networking conversations between employees could be used to build a stronger, more cohesive — better – organizational team?

That is a question Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak came close to answering in 2001 – well before the advent of Facebook and Twitter – with their book In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work (HBS Press).  I first referred to it in 2003 in my article “Building brands by telling stories”: wp.me/pqoXT-1f.webloc. Obviously this decade-old book doesn’t anticipate the social networking phenomenon (in fact, it states that “technology available today [by the standard of 2001] is generally not an effective social medium”).  Yet, now that we have Twitter and Facebook it is easy to read between the lines of their commentary and see how relevant it is to today’s technology standard.

In Good Company was written at a time when people thought the traditional concept of the employee would be replaced by “free agents” (remember Dan Pink’s bestselling Free Agent Nation?).  Cohen and Prusak took issue with that notion, claiming organizations were just “beginning to discover the centrality of social interaction.”  As they saw it, working in isolation is lonely and dispiriting and that strong organizations depend on gradually developed ties of trust and understanding with colleagues.  In short, they saw the “good company” as a series of trust-based connections/networks of people engaging in cooperative action.

They acknowledge the prevailing managerial belief that people who talk at work aren’t working.  Instead, they believe “we need to enlarge our definition of work…Building connections, trust, and a culture of collaboration is valuable work, and it does not happen without available space and time.”

Allowing people to talk – whether around the actual watercooler or the virtual one — builds community that bridges generational divides within organizations.  Why is that important? Over time, companies lose sign of original mission and values, and begin to wonder, “who are we? and what do we do?” Conversations produce stories that, say Cohen and Prusak, preserve and transmit “the basic belief and nuances of culture.” They are an important tool for communicating “know-how, the hard-to-capture assimilated understanding of how work gets done” and are essential in helping new and old employees to understand the history, norms, values, and aims of their organization.

By tying together individual identity and organizational identity, these conversations and stories do more than vision and mission statements to create the sense of membership and engagement any organization requires to succeed in a changing, highly competitive global economy.

As a advocate for content development and publishing, the aspect of the book that particularly caught my attention was their question about where to find the knowledge of a firm – something that tends to be local, and contextual, and difficult to codify. Because people are deeply social by nature they are more likely to approach friends or colleagues for information than to use a knowledge management database or other formal repository. It is these personal networks that enhance the flow and function of information, and reveal the expertise of the organization. Cohen and Prusak acknowledge “we can’t know everything, so belonging to networks that can coordinate and enhance our limited knowledge is essential.”

For more, have a look at this article from the Contrabrand archive:

Gail Lord, one of world’s leading museum consultants – who just happens to live and work here in Hogtown – alleges “the city misunderstands what museums are,” and doesn’t grasp that they are about identity, about linking the past to the present, about providing social cohesion.  Destroy these repositories of our collective history, she says, “and you destroy the DNA of who we are and how we got here.”

She’s absolutely right, and we will be a much poorer society without organizations charged with telling our local story.  But that’s the problem – they haven’t been effective at telling the story. Why would city council choose to close down a set of institutions that were considered crucial to advancing the municipality’s brand? If the city doesn’t know how to leverage its past to benefit the municipal brand that’s because museum managers haven’t shown them how.

Toronto’s heritage sector has tried promoting its public value through platitudes, not practice.  It can’t get beyond the nebulous cliché that “history is important” – something museum people repeat like a mantra but do little to back up.  They have no imagination about how to disengage from their preoccupation with the turnstile and impact more people by broadly telling their stories.

Consequently, museums seem old-school in our Toronto Life society where culture has become celebrity and event-driven. Then, the inevitable happens: someone says “we have to save money…somewhere.”  Museums’ self-inflicted neglect positions them as low hanging fruit for city budget cutters: visitorship is down, so it is easy for council to believe no one cares.  It’s hard to blame councillors for thinking this way: make yourself vulnerable and you are…well, vulnerable.

A strong heritage brand, if they had one, would have been a form of protection, yet the Toronto historical community failed to build one.  Instead, they focused on a flawed business strategy: that people have to visit. The museum community – here, as elsewhere – is addicted to attendance; feels validated by high visitor numbers.  But attendance doesn’t mean enlightenment, nor does it signify public-mindedness. Even if attendance was strong, high visitor numbers don’t necessarily indicate “something good is happening” (Falk and Sheppard). By focusing on the turnstile, on programming rather than projecting their stories, museums have isolated themselves and helped create the conditions that have resulted in this worst-case scenario.  Live by the turnstile and, apparently, you die by it. And now Toronto’s local history sector is dying.

If they were in fact valued public institutions worthy of support (and I believe they are), they should have been taking steps to put themselves at the centre of a vital public conversation; should have been trying to challenge audience thinking beyond their walls: sustain intellectual interests, establish communities that want to stay connected with them. The museum’s real success should be based on its ability to ensure its community was well-informed and talking about its work, and that their interest was being sustained.

But they haven’t done any of this, and Torontonians have lost their connection to their story.  With that lost connection, of course, goes the publics’ (and politicians’) perception of the value of local history.

Toronto museums have badly read the identity of this city and the public mood; haven’t fought for their cause the right way.  And now they’re about to pay a big price for being passive.  Too bad, but that’s what happens in a culture of expectation when your attitude is “people will understand and will support us.”  They don’t, and won’t, unless you actively engage the hearts and minds of your constituents.

For further reading about place branding from the Contrabrand archive…

Know Where You Live (2004): http://wp.me/pqoXT-1H

When an “Inside Job is Okay” (2004): http://wp.me/pqoXT-I

Substance versus Style in Selling Brand USA (2002): http://wp.me/pqoXT-m

Brand-name government (2001): http://wp.me/pqoXT-1J

Doug Ford isn’t an isolated example of a sheltered politician.  Wealth and position aside, he’s a better example of the common person; an everyman.  The TPL better pay attention: when a politician like Doug Ford – who is an agenda-setter, and a purse-string influencer – says he doesn’t “have a clue” who Margaret Atwood is and, by extension, doesn’t see the value of libraries, I’d say libraries have done something very wrong. Instead of blaming government, we should be pointing the finger at the library itself for failing to persuade people of its value.

The problem is that libraries – like museums – habitually wear a cloak of sophistication, but this veneer obscures the fact they aren’t very good at expressing their public value. Library and museum managers expect support on the basis of some nebulous claim that their work “is important,” yet can’t go beyond this cliché to make a compelling case. The marketing gimmicks to which they default build the wrong kind of identity, and don’t produce meaningful connections and long-term success.

And that’s where the Doug Fords of this world see a hole (a black hole), through which they try to drive their Mack truck. Fortunately, in this case, Margaret Atwood has stepped up to block the path. But the fact remains, libraries are just one more cultural institution that have to do a better job of communicating their public value.

If they are indeed valued public institutions worthy of support (and, for the record, I believe they are) they should be taking steps to put themselves at the centre of a vital public conversation; should be trying to challenge audience thinking beyond their walls, sustain intellectual interests, establish communities that want to stay connected and want to support their work. They must transcend their physical spaces and communicate their unique value in ways they aren’t at present. A strong brand is a form of protection: build one.

Unfortunately, left to their own devices, they’ll continue relying on the same-old tired, ineffective tactics. You can’t differentiate with sameness, yet their tactics never seem to change. Social networking may be providing a new gloss, but I have no confidence that it will end up being anything different unless unique content is put to better use in an effort to create a broad mission-supporting brand.

Don’t grouse about being seen as irrelevant, or under-valued, do something. The sector’s organizations need new approaches that help them better differentiate, communicate, and effectively build communities that will support their work. Even though the TPL has a great set of measurable numbers that speak to its impact on Toronto society, it’s hard to connect with an organization that doesn’t effectively and substantively tell its story.  If the TPL wants to be indispensable, it should concentrate on communicating why.  At present it may think it does, but the message isn’t getting through to the “everyman.”

Read Vincent Lam’s article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/modern-citizens-know-a-librarys-worth/article2147704/

On the day New York State finally allowed gay marriage, on the eve of the American military finally dismantling its infamous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, this little museum on the banks of the Rideau Canal decided it was necessary – important – to make something that shouldn’t matter sound scurrilous.

If someone else wants to tell that story, then let them — but not the Bytown Museum, it’s not their story.  Sadly, it is trying to make a name for itself by being salacious and might as well hang up a sign:  “We have to resort to these tactics because we’re a poorly-managed organization and in trouble.”

The Bytown Museum, housed in Ottawa’s oldest building, is a small but potentially-important museum on the banks of the Rideau Canal at the famed Ottawa Locks.  It’s collection has a unique focus: pre-Confederation, 19^th century Ottawa, a time when the town – then city – was more notable for being a rough-and-tumble timber town than a political capital.  No one else tells this story, but the Bytown Museum has never been able to figure out how to mine its potential.  Now, rather than telling its own story effectively – one that might actually make it seem like an engaging and useful organization – the museum is hoping a gimmick attracts attention.  Larger museums do the same: importing blockbuster exhibitions that have no connection to their core purpose.  And this exhibit on John McCrae — a doctor from Guelph, west of Toronto — has nothing to do with the Bytown Museum’s mandate or permanent collection; just a crass attempt at attention-seeking.

If the Bytown Museum has long been overlooked and deemed unimportant its not because of a lousy location, or any failing of its subject matter: it’s because its managers have failed to effectively tell its unique story.  Telling a gossipy story that (a) is irrelevant and (b) doesn’t concern the museum is no way to attract meaningful attention. The museum needs to stick to its knitting: bring some imagination to broadly promoting a sense of importance about its core focus.  That’s how to build and maintain a community that will see value and support its work.

Should we believe Fort York is worth fighting for on the basis of this one, eighth-of-a-page, ad? I would have hoped that, with the bicentennial of the War of 1812 almost here, they might be a bit more imaginative and substantive. If they don’t care enough to tell me their story, to engage my interests in history between visits, why should I care enough to support their cause? And until they do, I can’t say that they are worth fighting for.

Sadly, this culture of expectation is the museum way: its a world that places great faith in the ‘build-it-and-they-will-come’ approach; believes high visitor numbers indicate “something good is happening” (Falk and Sheppard); whose imagination has been handcuffed by the belief people have to visit in order for them to learn. It’s a world that expects support on the basis of some nebulous claim that “history is important,” yet can’t go beyond this cliché to make a compelling case for its public value. The marketing gimmicks to which they default build the wrong kind of identity, and don’t produce meaningful connections and long-term success.

To establish their relevance, museums need something other than chutzpah.

If they expect me to fight for them, Fort York better start telling me – and the rest of us – why I should care. Because here’s how Torontonians think: if Fort York doesn’t care enough to promote itself effectively, and if visitorship is down, why should the city spend $20 million on a new bridge to Fort York? I’d rather have my street paved. Sounds callous, but that sentiment reflects the Toronto identity: we’re a Toronto Life kind of city, shallow, cosmetic, celebrity-driven. Event-driven. Where what happened five minutes ago no longer matters; a city whose vision comes from developers. Toronto’s identity doesn’t include the past because our museums and heritage organizations don’t communicate effectively. And because they don’t communicate effectively, they aren’t being adequately supported.

Museums have to stop expecting and work differently to earn greater support. If they’re looking for support from politicians, museums have to prove they’re useful: Fort York has to demonstrate that history supports the Toronto brand and extends the city’s marketing effort. At some level it appears city officials consider municipal museums to be tools to market the city. In October 2009, Councilor Glenn de Baeremaeker said the Toronto Zoo was important to Toronto because it was “one more way to put the city on the map.” Who knows if he feels the same way about Fort York? But, given the state of funding for history in this city – and council’s reticence to build the bridge – I think it’s a fair guess the city doesn’t know how it benefits from its historical assets.

And that’s because no one at Fort York – nor at Colborne Lodge, Spadina House, Mackenzie House, Toronto Zoo, or even Heritage Toronto – is telling them adequately. If the city of Toronto doesn’t know what museums do for them it’s because the heritage community hasn’t made a compelling case for its relevance. So let’s lay blame where blame should lie: with the people managing these sites.

It’s up to the museum community to tell us why we should care about its work. They have to provide the right catalyst to attract new audiences. Fort York will not be more successful with a new bridge. It may enable easier access, but does doesn’t address why people should go. At the Toronto Zoo, city councilor Giorgio Mammoliti is “convinced the pandas are a ‘catalyst’” to raise awareness, motivate more people to visit, encourage more donations. Pandas aren’t the right catalyst, they’re merely a spectacle that will produce, at best, superficial attention and make the zoo look like a local entertainment venue. Certainly, not the tactic that suits the zoo’s high aspiration of becoming “one of the strongest conservation advocacy groups in the world.”

Then there is Casa Loma – one of Toronto’s relics that gets passed-off as a kind of museum (people pay a hefty fee to go and see what, exactly?). Gary Miedema, the chief historian at Heritage Toronto, declares it to be special, but what is its value beyond being a memorial to self-aggrandizement? (Hey…maybe it is a worthy symbol of the city after all, closer to the Toronto identity than I give it credit). There is an important story to tell about how Sir Henry made his money and its impact on the province, but no one, it seems, has the will to tell it beyond a few panels in the almost-furnitureless “castle.”

Museum managers have failed to clearly establish and communicate the unique value of public history because they don’t try engaging audience thinking beyond in situ visits and exhibitions. Museums want us to believe in their importance, but by not communicating to keep people connected to their work between visits, we lose touch with their – our – story. Isn’t it ironic, then that in 1840, Lord Durham – in town to mop up the mess of two little rebellions – unfairly declared French Canadians a people without a history. 170 years later, the Quebecois have a handle on who they are while we Upper Canadians – with our Toronto Life sensibilities – have lost the connection to our story.

With that lost connection, of course, goes our perception of museums’ value. Which leads to the real problem: lacking the will to reach out and communicate to a broad audience, and suffering from declining attendance, has made these museums look increasingly like black holes. And what do people do with something that isn’t perceived to have any value? Tear it down and throw it out. Why not sell-off Casa Loma and convert it into condos?

Here’s what I think: you can’t be heard if you aren’t saying anything. If museums are to prove they are relevant and vital they have to can develop a deliberate and sustained content-first brand marketing strategy that can engage more people. Effective branding starts with content: Tell your story, build a community, meet your goals.

Toronto has long wanted to believe it is world class: it’s time for the city to recognize the value of history in telling its story and marketing the city, and time for our museums to realize they have a stake in advancing that aspiration. The zoo, Fort York, Casa Loma…all have inspiring objects that demonstrate – collectively – Toronto’s unique story. Can the loose fish in Toronto’s heritage community and museum sector work together and give the rest of us something to talk about? They better start trying, because it seems clear the mayor and his brother are more interested in attracting an NFL team to Toronto than supporting arts and culture.

Fort York does indeed need a bridge as a catalyst, but not a physical one: its story provides the bridge to new audiences. And if they tell me a story that makes me believe in them, then I’ll fight for Fort York. The awareness and sustainability it craves will emerge only if they are intrusive about transmitting what they know. Until they come to terms with this, Fort York and its colleagues will continue losing ground to the city’s multiple (and increasing) distractions; they will never be perceived to be anything more than a sideshow.

Preston Manning’s June 7 article in the Globe and Mail (“The Election of our Discontent”) reports on the changing conception Canadians have about the role of the federal government. Apparently we now want to see government as a facilitator of change and not, in the post-war liberal fashion, as a prime mover or provider of grand solutions to big problems.

Many in the social sectors will undoubtedly see this as evidence of the Harper government’s “hidden agenda.” It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a majority Conservative government would try to change the social sector’s long-standing culture of expectation: our nonprofits are predisposed to expecting handouts from government instead of trying to be self-sufficient and sustainable. With a fast-diminishing appetite for funding black holes, it looks like government may become more like venture philanthropists, willing to give a hand-up, but not a hand out. Organizations better get used to standing on their own two feet.

Government may not want to be responsible as the “vision achiever” – and that’s okay – but it will have to provide direction because social sector organizations don’t have the imagination to improve. The current system of nonprofit marketing is broken, and without an injection of new ideas, the sector can’t change for the better.

Left to their own devices, they’ll continue relying on the same-old tired tactics. Social sector organizations (not to mention most for-profits) continue defining branding in very narrow terms, as “a short-term mechanism to grab some media attention before quickly moving on to something else,” wrote Henry Tam in Demos’ The Collaborative State (2007). No wonder we talk about “donor fatigue”: How many walks, runs, or bike rides do people want to go on, how many dinners can they attend, how many ribbons can they wear on one coat? How many mass mailings can people get – and throw away – or phone calls that people hang-up on before fundraisers get the message?

You can’t differentiate with sameness, yet their tactics never seem to change.

Organizations overlook the fact that fundraising isn’t just about separating people from their cash. It should be an identity project, but this gets forgotten because their “snatch and run” style of fundraising looks so appealing and easy. “People should understand us,” is the common excuse. Well, they don’t. These events aren’t building strong brands or sustainable organizations – in fact they virtually assure fundraising organizations are seen as continuously cap-in-hand. Some identity.

What’s causing this “sameness virus” is a lack of vision, and that’s the nut government has to help crack. The sector’s organizations need new approaches that help them better differentiate, communicate, and effectively build communities that will support their works.

If the government turns off the tap (or, at least lessens the flow), perhaps the sector will simply be getting what it deserves for its lack of initiative: instead of blaming government, we should be pointing the finger at the sector itself for failing to persuade people of its value.

Nonprofits better resolve to understand the alchemy of content. It’s hard to connect with organizations that don’t effectively tell their story. Instead of relying on marketing gimmicks that actually diminish perceptions of their value – then grousing about being seen as irrelevant, or under-valued – these organizations must concentrate on making what they know indispensable. Content has to be put to better use in an effort to create a broad mission-supporting brand. In fact, putting content at the centre of their brand building effort should be at the top of its agenda: packaging well-differentiated stories that convey an organization’s unique expertise, and using this content to nurture the interests of a wide audience.

Until they become intrusive about communicating what they know to a broad audience – start telling people everywhere about their public value – they will remain irrelevant and under-funded, little more than a “nice-to-have” feature of society.

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t really matter whether you blame donor fatigue, a poor economy, nonprofit management, or government cutbacks – the point is, now is the time for the social sector to change its approach to branding and fundraising. But government will have to show them how so, ultimately, organizations can do it for themselves; start teaching these new ideas if social sector management thinking – and the culture of expectation – is to be turned on its head.

This peculiar habit makes organizations more of an enigma than the process itself. Until organizations learn how to command and maintain attention they can’t build defensible, meaningful, and enduring public brands.

There is, of course, a great societal need for learning organizations – universities and museums, for example – to succeed at this task. Traditional media has largely given-in to assumptions that audiences don’t want their thinking challenged – with the attendant result, claims Susan Jacoby in The Age of American Unreason, that speech has been debased “in virtually everything broadcast and podcast.” Society needs a new generation of public intellectuals willing to provide meaningful, high-quality, important ideas.

Universities and museums provide the substantive thinking to raise the bar, so this could be their crucial opportunity to restate their importance, and elevate the basic trust and goodwill that already exists. When people need to be part of a serious conversation, the museum or university should be actively positioning itself as the place to interact with leading ideas. After all, “it is the academic’s job in a free society to serve the public culture by asking questions the public doesn’t want to ask,” writes Louis Menand in The Marketplace of Ideas, “investigating subjects it cannot or will not investigate, and accommodating voices it fails or refuses to accommodate.”

The bigger question is, perhaps, are these institutions willing to lead and moderate public discussion?  Museums and universities both seem to take their trusted status (some might even say “sacred”) for granted, so many don’t believe in the need to reach out.  Besides, there are often tensions within the institutions inhibiting outreach: university faculty – similarly, museum curators – don’t universally feel they need or want a larger public (neither seem to grasp who butters their bread); marketing, they say, is “not my job.”

Yet there is, perhaps, an even greater institutional need for universities and museums to succeed at effective branding: survival. Both are fundraising organizations that must be able to reach beyond their walls to convince donors the organization has a vision indicating how it will become sustainable. Partly as a result of faculty-curatorial resistance, “too few organizations,” says Michael Kaiser in The Art of the Turnaround, “spend the time or effort in marketing the entire institutional image required to get people excited about supporting” the organization.  Consequently, branding – and, by extension, fundraising – get shunted to the side; the prevailing assumption, Kaiser maintains, is that “charming and professional fundraisers” rather than a dynamic marketing program will provide sufficient returns for the institution.

This is, however, a crucial time for branding at public institutions faced with the contradiction of crushing financial burdens yet tremendous pressure to demonstrate accountability, accessibility, and value. The knee-jerk reaction to money troubles – making cutbacks to marketing – only deprives organizations of the opportunity to know themselves better and to use these insights to boldly reposition themselves.  Failing to experiment and innovate is, says Ken Auletta in Googled, like “committing suicide by neglect” if others are innovating around you.  Instead of believing audiences “should already know us,” or that their existing story is sufficiently interesting, organizations need to be more aggressive about drawing people to new, appropriately-packaged content – especially as the marketplace of ideas proliferates and focusing becomes more of a challenge.

An organization’s survival depends on securing new audiences, holding their attention, and continuing to earn their trust – as opposed to continuing to take it for granted. Organizations successfully building for the future are using substantive communication and media multi-tasking to tie-into the values of an emerging generation.  This is a brand-conscious generation favouring organizations positioned as trusted, credible leaders, and offering access to leading ideas, but this is not a generation content to sit quietly and listen to lectures. Instead, Don Tapscott tells us in Grown-Up Digital, it seeks ongoing connections, community, and interaction; participation, even responsibility.

To enhance reputation, to build and maintain a meaningful brand, learning organizations must refine their approach to outreach: the traditional focus on programming contributes only to the building of ramparts, making it difficult for outsiders to penetrate and understand what’s going on inside.  A strong identity does require programming, but also an equally strong ability to project: according to British author Richard Susskind, who told the Globe and Mail, “Neither marketing nor thought leadership, which increase spontaneous awareness of a firm’s capabilities, can or should be conducted covertly.”

As long as university administrators continue believing publishing’s only value is as a “general service function for higher education,” they will, claims Ithaka’s study University Publishing in a Digital Age, continue to believe “they have more pressing concerns.”  They don’t: the tangible return on a new style of university publishing that promotes the intellectual ambition of the institution has been overlooked. Similarly, as long as museum branding remains mired in blockbuster exhibitions, retail, dining, and architecture they will remain local – even neighbourhood – ventures.

The new leading learning organizations will be those able to widely project their expertise through engaging and informative Web sites featuring blogs, podcasts, ebooks, online magazines, even documentary films – and, yes, traditional books and magazines. A revitalized publishing process that says, in effect, “this is what we do, why we’re good, why we’re different” will be an essential activity recognized for directly advancing crucial institutional needs: brand awareness, evidence of mission achievement, operational choices, faculty recruitment and retention, marketing and fundraising – a true partner in helping achieve a learning organization’s holistic goals, not an add-on.

In other words, a communicating brand enables programming and projecting to work in tandem.  It removes the enigma of branding – which is, I believe, what I set out to write about ten years ago.  Every story needs an ending: thanks for reading.

Robin Pogrebin’s excellent article from last week’s New York Times, “In the Arts, Bigger Buildings May Not be Better,” (11 December 2009) exposes the new building construction trend for what it is: self-aggrandizement. Embracing superficiality and spectacle to compete for visitors and donations has built the wrong kind of identity. Costly new building construction and popular blockbuster exhibitions are the primary products of an entertainment-focused imagination.  Museums need something other than chutzpah. If they are in fact valued public institutions worthy of support, they should be taking steps to put themselves at the centre of a vital public conversation about our world; should be trying to challenge audience thinking beyond their walls, sustain intellectual interests, establish communities that want to stay connected and want to support their work. They must transcend their physical spaces and communicate their unique stories to a broader audience. Sustainable museum brands will be the by-product of proprietary knowledge, not new buildings, not borrowed content. Until they come to terms with this, museums will continue losing ground against society’s multiple (and increasing) distractions.

And how ironic that this article appeared on the day Thomas Hoving, the man who “made the mummies dance” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died.

Click here to link to Pogrebin’s  New York Times article.

I’ve written about this issue before:

The Brand as Bling (November, 2008)

The Indispensable Museum (September, 2009)

Why is Everyone so Big about Big? (January, 2003)