TOFU, MOFU, BOFU and International Development

Last February, communicators and marketers from over 40 Canadian NGOs met in Ottawa.

The subject was international development—and how we can engage more Canadians about it.

At the meeting, we heard from pollsters who told us that the majority of Canadians have no idea what international development is—what it means, why it matters, or who does it.

Kevin Chapelle, Manager of Public Opinion Research for Global Affairs Canada, noted that many Canadians know nothing about development.

“We have a huge challenge ahead of us in terms of getting the word out there,” he said.

Margo Matias-Valencia of the One Campaign noted that issues such as development and foreign aid do not rank highly with Canadians, and that most think Canada is giving too much foreign aid—although they don’t know how much that is.

Julia Anderson of CanWach noted they did two surveys about Canadians and development, in 2015 and 2017.

Their research showed no movement in understanding about international development over the two years.

“The ranking remains the same,” she said. “We haven’t moved the bar.”

She added that 64% of Canadians cannot name one NGO.

What was needed, she said, was a “national framework” for all NGOs to use to engage Canadians.

Matias-Valencia added that this framework needs to employ simple messages, noting that words like “development” and “foreign aid” don’t resonate with Canadians.

“We over-explain what we do and how we do it, we put too much into each message,” she stated. “We’re not engaging the people we need to reach. We shouldn’t be afraid to use simpler messages, not package too many things into stories.”

Later, during a break-out session about communicating with Canadians, it was agreed that NGOs need to work together to increase their effectiveness. But people also agreed it would be hard.

And why is that? With each NGO focused on meeting its budget and attracting new donors, it would be hard to convince EDs and CEOs—not to mention fundraising colleagues—that they should collaborate as a way to lift all boats.

And that’s where TOFU, MOFU and BOFU came in.

It was Katherine Harris, who directs communications at Plan Canada, who brought it up.

TOFU, she reminded us, stands for “top  of funnel.” MOFU is “middle of funnel.” And BOFU is “bottom of funnel.”

The term comes from the world of marketing, and describes the process people go through before making a decision to buy. (Similar to the Communications Ladder.)

TOFU is where people simply become aware of a product. MOFU is where they begin to do research to find out more. And BOFU is where they decide to buy—or, in this case, to make a donation.

Since a majority of Canadians know little about development, Katherine asked: Could we work together to simply get more people into the top of the funnel?

In other words, at the top of the funnel we don’t worry about brand awareness or getting donations.

We simply want to get people to stop, even just for a moment, to think about people in the developing world, Canada's responsibility to help those who are in need—things they might not have thought much about before.

Those who want more information can follow a link (MOFU), and maybe discover an NGO they want to support and be a part of (BOFU).

It was suggested we could emulate campaigns that promote milk or eggs. They are not designed to promote a particular business, but the sector as a whole.

Can NGOs do it? Can they put aside concerns about brand awareness and getting today in order to increase the size of the donor pool over the longer term? 

Or, can they do more TOFU and worry less about BOFU?

Those are the big questions.

Home Depot, Terrorist Attacks, Logos and Food Aid

It’s a great photo—a Rohingya woman holding a Canadian Foodgrains Bank bag of food.

What’s not to like? Our logo is prominently displayed.

It’s great marketing and public relations.

There’s nothing not to like about it, unless something goes wrong.

And as surely as Murphy of Murphy’s Law lives, something often goes wrong.

One of the most common occurrences for food aid organizations is when food goes astray and ends up in a market for sale.

When that happens, there are many reasonable explanations.

The food might have been stolen—something not unusual in places where people are desperate, the rule of law is lax, there is conflict, or there are too many guns.

Just about every place we send food aid, in other words.

Or a recipient family sold the food—again, not unusual in places where people have many needs, including for food.

Maybe they needed money for medicine to save a child’s life. Who wouldn’t sell food to do that?

It could also have been traded for a cooking pot to a local seller in the market, or for any other much-needed item.

Or the bag might simply have been used and thrown away, only to be used by a seller as a handy item for their shop.

All reasonable answers, but meaningless if a story comes out about our food aid being found to sale in the market. 

When that happens, agencies like the Foodgrains Bank are in a losing race to try to contain the damage.

Before you know it, it's gone viral on social media, causing damage and headaches for communicators and public relations practitioners.

And damaging it can be; when your reputation is staked on making sure donations get to those who need it most, the "loss" of food can set you back in the public's mind.

If we've done our job—if we've been proactive about talking about how challenging it is to do food aid—long-time and regular donors will know this, and not be worried.

But during emergencies, like the terrible situation facing the Rohingya, many donors are first-time givers.

They don't know what it's like to try to deliver food in places where almost everything has broken down, conflict is raging, or people barter food to meet other important needs.

All they know is that food from the Foodgrains Bank was found for sale; suddenly, we look like poor managers, wasting the donations of Canadians.

Thoughts about the opportunities and challenges of food aid came to mind following yesterday’s terrible attack in New York City.

The attacker used a rented Home Depot truck to mow down innocent bicyclists and walkers.

Photos from the aftermath of the attack clearly show the truck with Home Depot’s logo.

Home Depot did nothing wrong, as far as we know, in renting the truck to a legitimate user.

But still, there they are, associated with the attack, their name being used in most every news article about it. 

This is not the kind of publicity they were looking for, that;s for sure.

It will be interesting to see how they respond—how will they deal with this image issue?

An industry that has been proactive in dealing with these kind of public relations challenges is in the world of railways.

Companies that transport oil and other dangerous chemicals in tank cars never make the news unless a train derails. Then they are all over the news.

The oil and chemical companies have dealt with this by painting their tank cars a non-descript black without any company logos or names.

All they have is the required reporting marks, along with other information about the car and its contents.

When an accident happens, we see the cars laying askew off the tracks, but there are no company names.

Of course, the companies will be noted in news coverage, but not in images that can quickly span the Internet.

By keeping their names and logos off the cars, they proactively limit the public relations challenges.

Contrast this with the 1930s-50s, when companies emblazoned their names and logos on the side of tank cars. It was part of their marketing strategy.

But not today, not when everyone has a camera and people are so sensitive to environmental and other damage.

When it comes to marketing through products and services, whether that's on trucks, tanker cars or food aid, it can cut both ways—good and bad.

Those of us who work in communications need to be aware of both.

Canadian International Relief & Development Sector: Ripe for Disruption?

In wake of merger of big cancer charities, what would happen if Canadian NGOs dreamed up a new way to serve the poor?

Earlier this year the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation announced they were merging.

The reason for the merger? Rising fundraising costs and falling donations.

In an interview in the Globe and Mail, Cancer Society chairman Robert Lawrie said  the merger, which is designed to cut costs and promote efficiencies, might be a model for other charities struggling with growing costs and falling donations.

One person who would like to see that happen in Canada’s international relief and development sector is Nicolas Moyer, formerly director of the Humanitarian Coalition.

During his time at the Coalition, which brings together seven Canadian NGOs to collaborate on fundraising efforts during disasters in the developing world, Moyer was a persistent—and often lone—voice promoting increased cooperation in the sector.

Looking at the sector today, with its many competing organizations, he wonders what would happen if the leaders of Canada’s major relief and development NGOs acted like the two cancer charities, setting aside their organizational interests to dream up a new model to serve the poorest and most vulnerable people around the globe.

If they did that, “they would never come up with the system we have today,” Moyer says.

“NGO leaders wouldn’t, in good conscience, choose to set up competing organizations, vying for brand recognition and competing for market share of donor dollars.”

Instead, he says, "they’d find a way to work together, minimize wasteful duplication and maximize our collective impact for the good of the people we want to help.”

One thing that would help spur merger talk would be if the federal government, which provides millions of dollars in grant funding, “stopped feeding sector competition and instead tried to incentivize collaboration.”

The government could, “at little to no cost,” he says, only make grants available to NGOs that work together, providing “dedicated funding streams for joint approaches, or even refuse to consider single-agency programs.”

But even if the government doesn’t force groups to collaborate more, he thinks other forces will compel them to do so.

“The sector is incredibly ripe for disruption,” he states—like what happened through Uber to taxis, AirBnB to hotels, and the Internet to the news media.

Among the disruptions he sees for NGOs include how “developing world governments are getting better at what we do."

And although not every poor country is treating its citizens the way they should, “as more of them attend to the needs of their citizens, what will be the role for foreign NGOs?” he asks.

Then there’s the arrival of groups like Give Directly, which cut out the NGO “broker” and enable Canadians to give directly to poor people in the developing world.

“At some point, an enterprising person or group in the developing world is going to figure that out they no longer need western NGOs to mediate between donors and the poor,” he says. “When that happens, what will our role be?”

And even if the current model isn’t disrupted, there’s the challenge of raising funds to keep all these agencies going.

“Despite all the money that goes into competing NGO fundraising and marketing campaigns, as a whole the sector is not raising more money for relief and development,” he says. 

And even though agencies are spending more to fundraise, “overall giving for relief and development in Canada hasn’t grown,” he adds. “All we are doing is winning or losing market share from each other.”

For Moyer, the big question is: “Can we work together to be more efficient?” He isn’t optimistic.

“While a few NGOs are looking at the big challenges ahead, most in the sector are ignoring the serious structural issues underlying their future,” he says.

NGOs, he states, should be asking themselves: “Where do we want to be 20-30 years from now? If the current way we are operating isn’t sustainable, what would we replace it with? If we worked together more, what could we collectively achieve?”

Disruption is a fact of life today. Is merger an answer? Not everyone will agree with Moyer's view that it is. But at least he is asking important questions.

A version of this post was originally published in the May 10, 2017 Hill Times.

Doing good is hard work. So is paying for it.

Siloam Mission, a Winnipeg charity that serves homeless people, has come in for criticism recently by a Winnipeg Free Press columnist who says it is spending too much to raise funds. He followed with another column charging they send out too many appeal letters. Tired of seeing this important non-profit take it on the chin, I decided to respond with an op-ed in the Free Press about the realities facing charities today when it comes to fundraising.

Siloam Mission—and other charities—have come in for some criticism lately over fundraising practices.

In particular, questions have been raised about the number of direct mail letters being sent by various groups, and about the amount of money spent to raise funds.

While no organization wants to spend money it does not need to spend, what’s true for business is also true for charities—you have to spend money to make money.

That has been true for decades. What’s different today is that charities need to spend more than they used to in order to keep providing their services.

When I started in the non-profit sector in the 1980s, things were different, and simpler.

Back then, it was much easier to reach potential donors. If you could get news about your appeal into newspapers, radio and TV, you pretty much covered almost everyone you wanted to reach.

Things are very different today. Newspaper circulation is declining, as are the number of people tuning into radio or TV news.

Today, we live in a noisy and fractured world of communications. Not only are people bombarded with messages from many different sources, they also have many more options for getting information—primarily through social media.

Breaking through this clutter is difficult, and expensive. It requires focus and repetition. And even then you may only be reaching a fraction of the audience, compared to ten or 20 years ago.

Then there’s the matter of donor loyalty. In the not-to-distant past, charities could count on donors selecting a charity for life, then making regular donations.

Today, for many people donor loyalty is mostly a thing of the past—especially for younger people. Often, the only way to get a donation is to send one, two or more direct mail letters, in the hopes of getting a cheque in return.

Speaking of cheques, if you are under the age of 30, you probably don’t write many of those. Most transactions today are now by credit or debit cards, and much of that is online. 

One of the fastest-growing expenses for charities is the service charges from credit card companies and businesses that provide encryption services.

And what about all those direct mail letters? Studies show that direct mail continues to be one of the best ways to raise funds. It is certainly better than e-mail or social media, which has not yet shown itself to be a good way to appeal to donors.  

Finally, about those charity rankings; is that the best way to rate a charity? Many in the non-profit sector are uncomfortable with them. This includes people like Bruce MacDonald, President and CEO of Imagine Canada, an umbrella group for Canadian charities.

The rankings, he told me, measure the wrong thing. They are “skewed to having a heavy emphasis on the cost side of business,” he said, adding they “perpetuate the belief that ensuring adequate resources to deliver quality programs is a bad thing.”

What MacDonald objects to is how the highest rankings are given to groups that spend the least on things like staff salaries, administration, communications and fundraising. The ones that need to spend more to deliver their programs end up with lower scores.

What MacDonald would rather see measured is impact—what effect the charity has on the lives of people it is trying to help. If it costs more to help someone beat an addiction, escape homelessness or overcome poverty, that should be seen as money well spent.

“If you want real impact, you need to have real investment,” he stated.

This was a point forcefully made by Dan Pallotta in his much-viewed 2013 Ted Talk titled “The way we talk about charities is dead wrong.” In it, he called out “the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities.”

Too many nonprofits, he said, “are rewarded for how little they spend, not for what they get done.” Instead of equating frugality with morality, he suggests donors “start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments, even if that comes with big expenses.”

The non-profit sector today is experiencing dramatic challenges. Needs in Canada and around the world are rising.  At the same time, the pool of the most faithful and generous givers—older people—is literally dying. 

Coupled with a decline in attendance at worship services (religious people are another major source of funds for charities), non-profits are struggling to raise the funds they need for their important services.

Doing good is hard work. So is paying for it. And it’s getting tougher every day.

From the April 21, 2017 Winnipeg Free Press.

Manitoba Opera Uses Performance Featuring Suicide to Connect with Community

Arts groups can’t just keep operating “in the traditional way.” 

It used to be that if you were going to put on a show, you just put on a show.

No need to worry about community concerns, critiques or trigger warnings.

No more, as Manitoba Opera has discovered.

This spring, the Opera is performing Werther, an opera that romanticizes suicide.

In a province like Manitoba, where someone kills themselves every other day on average, and where some northern Indigneous communities have experienced suicide epidemics, putting on a show that inspired copycat suicides can be a real challenge.

So, what’s an opera company to do?

In the case of Manitoba Opera, you use it as an educational opportunity.

Werther, the opera they are performing, is the 18^th century story of a young poet who falls in love with a beautiful woman who is engaged to another man.

Unable to have a relationship with her, and to give her up, he finds peace by taking his own life.

The story, first published as a novel by Goethe in 1774, was turned into an opera by Jules Massenet in 1887. The publication of the story reportedly led to the so-called “Werther effect”—copy-cat suicides.

With this in mind, Manitoba Opera decided to team up with Mood Disorders of Manitoba to promote discussion about the issue of suicide at a panel discussion in April.

“We want to use opera as an art form to have a conversation about issues of concern in the community,” says director of marketing Darlene Ronald.

In addition to the panel discussion, students attending dress rehearsals will hear a presentation from Mood Disorders about healthy perspectives on love and relationships, and there will be two pages in program about suicide prepared by the organization.

For Ronald, providing educational events like the panel discussion is a way for Manitoba Opera to engage the community.

“We want to be part of the lives of people in the community, and find ways to connect more strongly with people,” she says.

Of course, she also hopes that some who attend the panel discussion—who may never been to the opera before—might also come to hear a performance.

But even if they don’t, “we hope they will still be touched by it, and what we are trying to do,” she says.

Offering events like this is also a recognition that arts groups can’t just keep operating “in the traditional way,” Ronald says.

“The arts are changing, and also how people view them,” she adds, noting that arts groups need to find new ways to connect with audiences.

This isn’t the first time Manitoba Opera has reached out in this way. Last year, for the production Of Mice and Men, which features an intellectually disabled character, the Opera teamed up with groups that work with people with intellectual disabilities.

In 2014, when the Opera performed Fidelio—the story of a woman seeking to free her husband, a political prisoner, from jail—they used the production to celebrate the opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and also to highlight the plight of political prisoners around the world.

Refugees from other countries living in Manitoba were invited to be involved as extras in the performance.

The two productions were “a great experience for us, and for our patrons, a great way to talk about these issues and the things we have in common,” Ronald says.

Their efforts have been noticed by others, such as Opera America, the association for almost 150 opera companies in North America, and by OperaAnchorage, which used Manitoba Opera’s model to honour veterans.

“It was great to see something we did recognized in this way, and rippling through to others,” says Ronald.

While glad to offer these extras, she says that it isn’t easy—Manitoba Opera’s staff is small, and resources are tight.

“But it’s important to do,” she shares. “We hope we can add to the conversation in the community. That’s our aim.”

I think Manitoba Opera is on to something. At a time when money is tight, audience numbers are declining, and many are questioning the value of the arts, arts organizations need to find new ways to connect to their communities.

This includes linking what they do to the issues and concerns of the communities they live in—and that they ask for support, both in terms of attendance and taxpayer dollars.

Will it work? Will gestures like this turn around the fortunes of groups like opera companies? It’s hard to know.

One thing is for sure, though. At a time when it is hard to get any attention, putting on programs like Manitoba Opera did on suicide can generate additional publicity, including outside of the arts section (as happened for Manitoba Opera in the Winnipeg Free Press city section).

And if it makes someone feel more warmly towards Manitoba Opera—even if they never attend a performance—that’s not such a bad thing, either.