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Pledges for Your Pledges

July 24, 2006

by:

Joe Patti

I received a thank you letter for a donation I made that is something of a testament to just how important customer service is in the non-profit sector. I made a donation to a public radio station about 5,000 miles away from where I live. I like the music and while I don’t listen all the time, I do so enough that I feel obliged to help support the cost of the high speed internet stream I am using.

(By the way, I am willing to wager that my relationship with the station represents a strong possible future of radio listenership.)

Anyhow, I received a nice thank you letter and noticed that there were about 2 paragraphs thanking me, 4 telling me what my benefits would be and seven paragraphs making pledges to me.

The first pledge is prompt service by phone or email rendered personally to me by the person whose business card was inserted in my letter. The first thing I wondered was if the station was well enough organized to make transitions appear seamless as staff turned over. There are going to be some people who never call their rep and others who will establish a relationship with the staff member. A well-kept database will make donors love the station forever if donors feel important to whomever they speak.

The second and third pledges promise my contribution will be processed as quickly and accurately as possible and my thank you gifts will be sent out promptly.

The fourth pledge is that “All appeals for contributions will be honest and straightforward.” (I guess I have quoted and summarized to an extent that I need to cite WXPN as my source.)

The fifth pledge is to “raise funds in the most efficient way we can, assuring that as much of your contribution goes to supporting the music you love.”

These last two pledges are a real acknowledgment of the negative perceptions about fundraising that have emerged in recently years in reaction to outright scandals and stories of how funds have been used for purposes barely connected to the ones solicited.

The final pledge is to continue to bring me the music and programming I rely on them for. While general and vague, this pledge might be important to some people in light of the controversy at WDET this past year. They changed their format and angry donors threatened to sue saying they were solicited under false pretenses since the station knew they were going to change.

As I read over the letter, I wonder if my own acknowledgment letters need to do less thanking and citing of specific instances donations have helped and promise more fidelity and honesty. I don’t know that these latter issues are as important to donors in my community as they are in others. I do think that the the letter portends a possible change in what people will value in the organizations they give to. If nothing else, I will be keeping my eyes open for other signals.

Audience Relations

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What Lies Beneath

July 19, 2006

by:

Joe Patti

Via an entry at Neill Archer Roan’s blog on PR, I came across a great entry on a blog called Bad Language regarding writing press releases well. In past entries I have written on the subject urging people not to use the trite phrases everyone uses in press releases and brochure copy. (spectacular, tour de force, illustrating what it means to be human, etc.)

Matthew Stibbe, who writes Bad Language, makes many of the same points and his simple list of how to make releases better is worth reading.

I almost left his blog without following a link to an even more interesting topic, however. Stibbe points out that unless you take the proper steps, every press release you send out electronically contains a record of all the changes you made to that document.

What might really be interesting to media outlets might not be what you wrote, but what you took out. So if you happen to not like a performer and to air your frustrations, you write “his pedantic lyrics and bombastic stage presence only serve as a facade for his inadequacies in other areas,” before writing something more appropriate, your true feelings will be available for any who are interested to see.

Certainly that might be a little embarassing at most. What happens though if you are copying and pasting information from a newspaper article and accidently drop a sentence about the new president of your organization being cleared of fiscal malfeasance at his previous job after a two year investigation? A record of that information being deleted has a good chance of being included and will be of much greater interest to the local paper than how happy you are that he has accepted the position.

“Yeah,” you say, “but who uses those settings and is anyone going to really turn them on to see what secrets my museum might be hiding?” Well actually, probably not. But then they don’t have to intentionally turn them on. Editors and reporters are the most likely group to have those settings active on their word processors by default. They send stories with changes and comments included in the document back and forth to each other all day long. They are probably turning all those things off while reading your press release so they don’t have to bear witness to your agonizing search for the right wording.

But if they just happen to see something interesting before they deactivate that view….

So how do you avoid broadcasting your dirty laundry? Fortunately, Mr. Stibbe has found a solution provided by those who get paid to poke through our dirty laundry…the NSA.

As amusing as it is to think of yourself adopting NSA anti-espionage techniques, it is a pretty through guide and worth employing to avoid a faux pas or two.

Marketing/PR

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Take A Friend..The Book!

July 18, 2006

by:

Joe Patti

Drew McManus, the brains behind the Take A Friend To the Orchestra project, has compiled the contributions, (including yours truly’s) for the 2006 version into a book.

To purchase it, click on the button below:

I will be adding the button to the sidebar of my blog soon.

On a related note, as long time readers may know I have been occasionally checking in on the Honolulu Symphony since attending a concert as part of my participation in Take A Friend to the Orchestra Month. I am happy to say they have noted the new executive director hire as well as the new board membership on their web page. I have been somewhat critical of them on this blog before so it is only fair that I recognize positive steps as well.

General Musings

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The Most Unimaginative Form of Flattery

July 17, 2006

by:

Joe Patti

I often read about how restrictive copyright law is stifling creativity, but recently I have begun wondering if people are stifling themselves. We have all heard or read the arguments against Top 40 music artists who sample the work of predecessors and about how Broadway and Hollywood are reviving, remaking or adapting works.

In a way you can understand how these people are slaves to whatever will have wide appeal so they can make money. Lately though, I have been seeing a similar trend in shows that don’t have that concern because the primary audience is family and friends and will show up and pay any price no matter what the quality. There is almost free license to trump predecessors with ones originality. Instead, they are borrowing heavily from them.

The trend is starting to worry me because it is beginning to look something akin to everyone expressing their individuality by getting a tattoo. (In many cases, employing the same motif they were impressed by inked on someone else.)

In the past year, we have had three beauty pagaents by three different organizations. Two of them serve as qualifiers for the same national pagaent so you would think there might be some competition between them to be viewed as the more prestigious or attracting women who go on to earn the most titles.

Instead the organizer of the second one (who has been in the business 14 years) asked the organizer of the first one for help which included all the choreography. The third organizer (also a long time in the field) asked us to keep the entire set and props from the second pagaent. Except for different draping fabrics, it will look pretty much the same as pagaent number two.

It is the same situation with a hip-hop dance group coming in soon. We had a taiko drum group use our orchestra lift to make a grand entrance emerging from the pit during a closed recital six weeks ago. This dance group is doing the exact same thing. The fact they are using the same taiko group is something of a mixed blessing in my eyes. They might be copying someone else’s idea, but at least the originator is getting credit for the performance.

In the month after this dance group performs, two of their rivals will be renting my theatre. In the past they have often asked or expected the same things their rivals had. (Including moving light effects which the rival groups rent since we have none in stock.) This is rather ironic since one of the groups splintered off from one of the others. There are some hard feelings, but not so much that they can’t be derivative.

I have been considering booking some touring hip-hop dance groups in because I know there is definite interest in the genre and I would get a good turn out. In one part of my mind, I am pretty sure I will also be influencing the next wave of choreographic choices being made by bringing fresh ideas in despite the available material on cable, internet, etc.

I just wonder what the base cause of this trend might be. Are people so afraid of failure, even in the face of a guaranteed sell out audience that they feel it necessary to mine another’s ideas? If anyone has some insight I would certainly love an explanation.

General Musings

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