Two of my favorite teachers are Seth Godin and Chris Brogan. Seth is an expert in marketing and Chris is an expert in Communications – two of my favorite business functions that at a nonprofit we all get to do in some form or another.

I have their books stacked up with Uncharitable by Dan Pallotta that I am reading now and fantasize like a nerd about how a conversation with those three would go.

I think it would help win an important battle in nonprofit operations PR.  We need nonprofit trust agents to educate themselves in new media and technology to spread the story that a nonprofit’s overhead is not a measure of its effectiveness or credibility.  Nancy Lublin has already gotten us started.  We need to talk about how innovations in mobile and internet technology create opportunities to transform nonprofit operations.  Operations needs more seats at program planning tables.

Trust Agents are people who humanize the web, understand the systems, and how to make their own game, connect, and build fluid relationships.  Does this sound like your CFO?

New Marketing allows us to know our audience, make things that they want, and tell them about it in places and ways they anticipate and want and to get out of their way.  Online marketing is about messages that spread between people, not one-way announcements or ads directed at people to interrupt them and gain their attention to hear a message they weren’t interested in hearing anyway.  New marketing does not ask, “How can we use this new marketing stuff?” but “How can we be an organization that people want to connect with in this new, transparent way?”  Does your HR director know about new marketing?

Maybe we can address this during the upcoming interview with Seth and NTEN.

see more Epic Fails

This is the first blog post I am writing as I anticipate my upcoming interview with Seth Godin and the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN).

Many of you might not know what a Meatball Sundae is.  A Meatball Sundae is an organization that tries to add all of this new media fun stuff like Facebook and Myspace and Twitter and Google (the sundae part) on top of the same, tried and true, products they’ve been making for years (the meatball part).

The key is to not become a Meatball Sundae.

It’s not that the meatballs are bad and the sundae part is good.  It’s that they do not naturally work together.  One part or the whole thing must change in order for your organization to be successful now.

Did you know that?

Here’s a tip:  to move your organization online do so strategically – beyond interns on Twitter.

This is a senior management decision, although others in the organization can build the case.

As the picture above suggests, organizations fail when their marketing is not in sync with their organization.