Why in the world would you read anything I write or believe anything I tell you?

Well I call myself the nonprofit marketing therapist. I think of myself as Stuart Smalley, the old SNL character. I am not a licensed therapist, of course, but I am a member of several 12-step programs!

Actually I have been a branding consultant, coach, teacher and writer for years at my home at 501creative. From this experience, and my experience with cognitive behavioral therapy and behavior change psychology, I have come to understand that teaching people how to communicate better is just treating the symptom. It is the Biggest Loser syndrome. I can put you on a restricted diet and work you out five hours a day, but it doesn't help you understand how you got to 400 pounds in the first place. We are treating behaviors, and thoughts and feelings influence behaviors. So in order to communicate more effectively, we need to change our feelings, which changes our thinking and then changes our behaviors. If we see our organizations as smart, stable, interesting, confident and strong, then we can begin to communicate more effectively. Same as our BL people. If they felt better about themselves, they will probably take better care of themselves. Let's look at the feelings and thinking FIRST, and then the behavior.

So this blog, and the subsequent book, will look at how to change our thinking to be more courageous and bold, and care a lot less about what people think. Believe it or not, some people will love you for that even more.

Imagine if our organizations were people. What would we be like? Would we be confident, capable, interesting, committed? Or would we be tentative, insecure, boring? If we had a friend who needed as much approval and had so many wonderful things to say as our nonprofit, we would hate that person. We are like one braggy holiday letter. Everything is so wonderful. We are so awesome. Please support our awesomeness. 

Real relationships are formed when we are honest and authentic. That means good, bad and everything in between. Donors want to know us, because they are people and they want the truth. We are afraid of showing our truths because we perceive the risks to be too high.

The real risk is being boring and bland is having people underestimate you or look you over completely. This is a competitive world. How can we compete with the cute video of the momma cat who let the orphaned puppy nurse her kittens, or the latest Donald Trump meme or another one of those Delish recipe videos? We need to be that interesting. We can't be that interesting trying to say good stuff all the time. We have to have a point of view, we have to be a part of the conversation. We have to stand for something.