It has been nearly a year since Pixar's artist Emma Coats tweeted her famous 22 tips for effective storytelling. Coats provides a very compelling guide on how to craft a story line that is both engaging and enduring.

What is particularly compelling is that we can take her recommendations and peal them out, and explore how they have a much broader application than storytelling alone. The one that stands out for me is this one:

#11 - Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you'll never share it with anyone.

Getting started, for all of us, can be one of the limiting factors in bringing forth an idea. Good ideas need to be brought to the light of day. Bad ideas, as well, need their proper hearing so that they might be honed and polished into something worthwhile.

Putting our thoughts down on paper, in words, or a diagram, or into an electronic format, forces us to work the idea through; to see its full greatness, its ugliness, its possibilities. If we mull it over in our mind, it isn't real; it's not a true idea, until we show it to someone and say, "Here, I came up with this, what do you think?"

We could readily admit that nonprofits have never been accused of having too many ideas. If anything, the nonprofit sector is often viewed as lower-tiered in comparison to a for-profit business. I wonder what ideas we could formulate to combat that perception...

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I was inspired by an article that appeared in the Huffington Post a few weeks ago. Nell Edgington provided some excellent views in 5 Reasons Your Nonprofit Isn't Raising Enough Money. Thinking more about the five categories she presented, I saw what I thought was a common theme running through all of them: Fear.

 

In most of our life pursuits, unacknowledged fear is what holds us back from achieving all that is possible. And for nonprofit organizations, we are prone to the same malady, employing the same excuses about not having the time, expertise or other resources available. Consider the five points that Edgington introduces...

1 - Too Many Programs Drain Money From Your Organization. Edgington notes that many nonprofits do not evaluate their programs for effectiveness and impact on the bottom line. Instead they can be driven by fear of what the media or others will say if they make hard choices and decide to cut or drop programs.

2 -You're Leaving Money Up to One Person. Fundraising can often be viewed as the responsibility of the CEO, Executive Director or Development Officer. Many board members are afraid to stick their necks out, or their hands out, on a consistent basis because it's safer to not put themselves out there and be held accountable.

3 - You're Not Effectively Telling Your Story.  It can be risky telling a unique compelling story, a story that may not resonate with everyone. We can be tempted to dumb down our stories, so as not to offend someone; we're so afraid of leaving anyone out. After a while it leads to the next symptom...

4 - You're Doing What Everyone Else Does. We all want to fit in, to feel safe, compare ourselves to other organization. And so we copy what other agencies are doing, and that way if anything goes wrong, no one is to blame.

5 - You're Not Investing In Your Money Raising Function. One of the greatest fears can be spending money on infrastructure for fundraising. Accountants suggest that a certain percentage of money be spent on programs, not on overhead; but if organizations do not invest in the funding function, they may not survive to provide those programs. Following perceived best practices can hamper an organization.

Fear may be the reason we hold our organizations back, but glimmers of courage and leadership can always emerge, offering possibilities and hope for better ways to live our missions...

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A recent article from Knowledge@Wharton, Why Innovation Is Tough to Define – And Even Tougher To Cultivate, examined the concept of innovation in business. While the authors touched on one example from the nonprofit sector, the 10,000 women initiative sponsored by the Goldman Sachs Foundation, the focus was on accomplishments in the realm of technology, engineering and entrepreneurship.

 

Looking beyond the argument of what nonprofit innovation examples could have been examined, there was one important point that could easily have been overlooked. Jay Schnitzer, a former director of the Defense Sciences Office, noted that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, employs a model that fully embraces innovation and action.

DARPA is where the best and brightest are brought together to address significant and challenging problems; resources are then provided, and the government gets out of the way so they can go about accomplishing their work. (For more on the innovative accomplishments of DARPA, check out Regina Dugan's TED talk.)

Schnitzer goes on to ask why other parts of our government can't work in a similar way. DARPA's approach, he asserts, is "built on fulfillments, milestones and metrics...It's not built on entitlements or equality."

Perhaps that's a model that nonprofits might want to pursue as well...

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More and more we hear about the benefits of digital media for nonprofit organizations. Not only can digital media transform online giving, it can also help build community engagement and social action. Though nonprofits have come to employ some of the more popular social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter, they have not been as present on other platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram, which can be a very effective means in connecting with followers.

In a recent article, How Digital Media is Changing the World of Philanthropy, Nigel Lewis of AbilityNet notes that donating by text messaging has grown 10-fold over the past year. He further points out that about 30% of all charitable donations are made through digital channels.

Unfortunately, many of these trends are lost to nonprofits because of their hesitancy to immerse themselves in technology. Organizations can miss the connection between social engagement and online giving, and by limiting themselves in one area, inhibit their success in another. While technology alone is not the solution to all the challenges nonprofits face, embracing and investing in these tools will certainly improve their standing in the online world.

Nonprofits need to remember that every day they are competing for attention; not just with other nonprofits, but with for-profit businesses as well. There is only so much mental space, a limited attention span for all of us to listen to and respond to messaging. If nonprofits fail to be present, they run the risk of not being heard at all...

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The Big Mac has at least one redeeming value: it has led to the creation of a comparative tool which measures the level of giving in different parts of the world.

The =mc Big Mac® Philanthropy Index emulates the methodology from The Economist Magazine's Big Mac Index, which compares wages and prices to determine what it would cost someone to acquire the ubiquitous food product. So we now have an effective means to measure the level of philanthropy of all the countries around the globe.

This may be a surprise to many, but the United States did not fare so well in the 2013 report. The U.S. wound up in 9th place behind the likes of Hong Kong, which was ranked # 1, with an index of 9.02, and Thailand, #5 with an index of 6.50. The U.S. philanthropy index was 6.16.

A summary article appeared in the Jewish Philanthropy website and includes a valuable infographic which contains a breakdown of the 37 countries included in the index. The full report can be found at The Management Centre a UK based nonprofit consultancy firm.

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