What I offer...
If you're a nonprofit

Here’s what I can do for you:

• Strategic planning and/or facilitating. Let’s be clear all the stakeholders agree on vision, roles, tasks, and outcomes. (And let’s do it with some humor and insight, too!)
• A full-fledged Communications Audit that determines where your organization or project is today and how to get where you want to be. We’ll chart a timesaving and cost efficient workplan for the future.
• My popular one-day workshop (soon to be a book): "Making Friends with the People Who Matter: A Cheap, Yet Incredibly Effective Approach to Public Relations". You can invite like-minded groups together to share the modest cost.
• Making sense of your regular publications. We’re talking about your newsletter and annual report. Do you start out with a clear idea to whom you’re talking and what they want to hear? We’ll use all the tricks of the trade to transform the drudgery of meeting publication deadlines from intimidating to fun.
• Building a successful website and getting people to go there. Don’t you wish sometimes that websites were like books, with a beginning, middle, and end? But they aren’t, so let’s capture the special energy of great websites and other electronic tools. We’ll use the famous “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug as our road map.
• Advertising, direct mail, and other devices to make new friends (especially donors). It’s not brain science or rocket surgery, but there are proven rules and research to what works and what doesn’t when it comes to broad-based marketing. The secret? Test, test, test.
• And, of course, how to work with the media. There are the basics: having a good media list, writing a great press release, following up, and always telling the truth. There’s also creativity, imagination, relationship-building, and op-eds. We can do Media 101, or tackle an actual project.

In my varied career, I’ve also developed some related skills I love to share.

• Moderator. One of my favorite activities: teasing useful information from a speaker or panel to an audience.
• Personal and organizational historian. I’ve interviewed literally hundreds of philanthropists and their families about their lives and their charity. It’s a wonderful benefit to offer your favorite givers.
• Writing coach. Frankly, it’s not about following the Associated Press style sheet. It’s about knowing your audience and what you want to say. The rest is common sense.