Saturday, December 15, 2018

When it Comes to Alternative Christmas Giving, it Might Just Get Your Goat
















It's Christmastime! That means it's also time for many NGOs to "sell" alternative gifts to help people in the developing world--gifts like goats.

And who wouldn't want to buy a goal to help someone in the developing world escape poverty?

Animal rights activists, that's who.

That's why I discovered recently when a post from Plan Canada about buying goats for Christmas came up in my Facebook feed.

According to Plan Canada, a goat "just might be the most unique gift you’ll give this year." 

Goat’s milk provides important protein for growing children, it adds, and the sale of offspring helps the family pay for essentials. 

"Hoofs down, we’re m-a-a-a-d about this gift!” they exclaim.

They are the only ones who are mad: So are animal rights activists—mad at Plan Canada.

“No animals to be used for human consumption PLEASE!!! This is not compassionate!” posted one person.

“I disagree with making animals suffer and would never gift an animal for this purpose,” posted a another.

The anti-goat posts attracted responses.

“Omgoodness, the comments are making my brain bleed," replied another person. 

"You're not buying a goat for someone in downtown Toronto. You're paying for a goat to be given to a family in a developing country on behalf of your friend in downtown Toronto.”

Soon the thread was no longer about ways to help people escape poverty. 

Instead, it devolved into arguments pro and con about eating meat versus not eating meat, with a bit of religious dogma and a racist troll thrown in.

Smartly, Plan Canada stayed out to the debate; this isn't their issue. They were content to let others come to their defense.

But a check back later that evening revealed the original post was gone, taken down by administrators.

The experience is a reminder to NGO communicators of the need to stay on top of social media feeds at all times of the day.

A post may seem innocuous to NGO staff and supporters—who can be against helping people get goats?but can end up attracting all sorts of negative responses in a public forum like Facebook.

It’s also a reminder that not everyone sees the world the way NGOs do. 

To put it another way, sometimes the best of intentions can—bad pun coming—get your goat.

P.S. Another Plan Canada thread about goats appeared in my Facebook feed, and it happened again. See below.


Saturday, December 8, 2018

Why International Development Studies Students Should Study Communications & Marketing

Menno Simons College IDS grads
















I’ve been asked to create a communications and marketing course for communications majors by a local university.

The goal of the course is to help prepare them for careers in the non-profit sector—to acquire some of the skills they'll need to be successful communicators and marketers.

This would include things like writing appeal and thank-you letters; creating communications and marketing plans; promoting and organizing events; media relations; internal communications; and crisis communications, among other things.


As part of course development, the department chair wanted to know: What other majors could benefit from this course?

It wasn’t hard for me to quickly identify a group: Those enrolled in International Development Studies (IDS).

In my experience, it is rare to meet anyone studying IDS who wants to do anything but actual development on the ground in the developing world. 

Communications and marketing is the last thing on their mind.

But it should be higher up in the list of priorities, in my opinion, for the following reasons.

First, it is rare that someone studying IDS will actually be hired to do development work overseas.

This isn’t because they might not be stellar students. 

Rather, it’s because most NGOs today increasingly require people with specialized education and training in things like agriculture, engineering, agro-ecology, hydrology, nutrition, etc.

In other words, an IDS degree is more like a general BA—after getting it, students need to specialize in something else to be marketable to an NGO.

At the same time, most NGOs today are increasingly hiring local people to do the work.

Everyone knows this is important; it's what good development is all about. But it means fewer opportunities for Canadians.

So if IDS students are going to catch on with an NGO, it is likely in the home office doing things like communications, marketing, fundraising, finance, HR and management—the important behind-the-scenes work that makes the work overseas possible.

And if that’s the case, what better way to prepare than studying things that will make them employable? 

Things like communications and marketing.

Second, if IDS grads do catch on with an NGO overseas, they will need to help the organization tell its stories in order to raise support from the public.

Even just one course in communications and marketing will help IDS students better understand the challenges of communications, marketing and fundraising today so they can help their colleagues achieve their important goals—such as raising enough money to ensure workers in the fields can keep their jobs.

A working knowledge of that area will help them be better co-workers, and ensure greater success for the overall goals of the NGO.

Third, IDS grads could end up working for a small NGO where staff have multiple roles—including communications, marketing and fundraising.

Knowing how to write an appeal letter or press release, solicit media attention, or do effective social media will be an asset—and make them more desirable at job interview time.

Plus, if they should rise to become the executive director of a small NGO, they will find that as much as 50% of their time is spent in communications, fundraising and donor relations—the sector average, these days.

Some grads may even end up working for agencies where they have to raise their own support—in which case knowing how effective storytelling and writing of appeal letters will be critical.

Fourth, at some point they may need to support efforts to secure government funding.

Getting a government grant is the holy grail for many NGOs—such support is critical for their success.

In addition to writing effective funding proposals, successful NGOs also know that visibility and recognition is an important part of government funding—it is usually written into the grant agreement.

Being able to effectively tell the story of how government funding is making a difference through an NGO is key to getting future grants. No publicity can mean no money.

Fifth, it will help them communicate better with the public.

Public support is key to not only fundraising success for individual NGOs, but also for ensuring the government feels it has enough support to continue increasing aid.

If the public doesn’t know what their tax dollars are accomplishing through aid, why should they want Canada to spend their money that way?

There are lots of important needs in Canada that the money could also be used for, as we all know.

The fact is nobody reads 50-page technical reports about project effectiveness (unless they have to because of their job.)

If we want more Canadians to support the aid enterprise, we need to share stories in the ways they are accustomed to receiving them—short, and about people.

Always about people.

Sixth, communications and marketing is a growth area for non-profits of all kinds.

More and more groups realize they need to be better at telling the story of their work, and of the people they serve. 

For too long they have starved their communications, marketing and fundraising departments, choosing to spend most of their funds on program.

But as fundraising challenges increase, they realize they need to spend more on storytelling if they are to have a future.

Someone who knows how to write a press release and appeal letter, do donor relations, attract media attention and fundraise will not lack for employment opportunities, in other words.

To put it another way, if an IDS student wants to be employable; see their organizations succeed; get government funding; and build public support for aid; they should learn how to communicate and do marketing and fundraising.

Then again, I'm a communicator and marketer; what would you expect me to say?


Sunday, December 2, 2018

Fake News and Facebook, or What can we Learn From the Russians During the Cold War?


In the 1980s, during the Cold War, I read an article the state of news coverage in Russia.

Back then, the media in Russia was state-controlled. 

Bad news about the state was suppressed, and negative news about the West was highlighted.

As a result, you might think that Russians were poorly informed about the world.

Of course, many were. But the researchers also found something surprising.

Because they knew their media was state-controlled, many Russians assumed whatever it published or broadcast was slanted or untrue.

This made many of them diligent about seeking out alternative sources of information, like the BBC or underground newspapers.

In this way, they could either confirm or debunk what they were getting from their media.

It was different in the West. Since we had a free press, we assumed everything we read, heard or saw was the truth.

Much of it was. But some of it wasn’t.

Governments and corporations in the West also lied or bent the truth—like about progress in the war in Vietnam, about the march of Communism around the world, the size and danger posed by the Russian military, or the lack of danger from certain kinds of chemicals or pollutants.

Even cigarettes were safe; all those doctors said so. It was in the newspaper! 

By assuming what we got from the media was always true, we let our guards down.

(We didn’t know, back then, that the CIA used to plant negative stories about governments the U.S. disliked in newspapers in other countries, then get them picked up and republished by American newspapers, from where they would travel to other western nations. Voila! Instant credibility.)

It took the diligent work of activists, or whistle-blowers like Daniel Ellsberg releasing the Pentagon Papers, to help us see the truth about various situations.

That old article about the Russians, the media and the Cold War came back to me recently during the huge debate taking place about Facebook.

In an article on the CBC website, reporter Michael Braga wrote about how people are stealing photos of children off Facebook and passing them off as their own.

In addition to all the other fake news, posts, free offers and such on Facebook, it is “a good reminder of how easy it has become online to pass misinformation off as authentic," he wrote.

And because it is so difficult to police or control, it's also a good reminder of "how the onus has largely shifted, unfairly or not, onto users to sort out what's real and what's not.”

In other words, we can be critical of Mark Zuckerberg all we want, but at the end of the day it’s up to us to be smart about what we like and share.

Of course, this is just simple media literacy: Assume what we read on Facebook, or any other media platform, isn’t true until we can be satisfied that it is.

We need to ask: Does it come from a credible source? Can it be corroborated by a second source? Does it sound too good to be true? (Is WestJet really giving away free airline tickets?)

My own worry is that Facebook has become too big and too successful to ever reform itself.

Maybe governments around the world will impose regulations on it. But until then it’s up to every user to screen out the fake from the true.

Maybe those Russians during the Cold War can be our guide. 

P.S. The rise of "deepfakes"—videos that overlay celebrity faces on to porn stars or make Barack Obama say anything you want him to say—make separating true from false harder all the time. It's a scary world out there.