Grassroots Organizing, Peacemaking, and Faith Perspectives

Is fear holding you back from success?

On Allison Fine’s podcast Social Good, Tom Watson made an interesting point about what sets apart the nonprofits that succeed in online giving contests. He said, “The nonprofits that fear the least succeed the most.”

This is true for more than just online giving challenges. It’s true for fundraising, for media, for lobbying, and for much more.

The nonprofits that fear the least succeed the most.

Think about it. Where is fear holding you back?

Last night I attended the annual Concert for Peace to benefit Michigan Peaceworks.

I left angry.

The mood of the concert, especially of the emcee, was one of despair.

Now, I can  understand why progressives would be dissatisfied with the Obama presidency now: we’re still in Iraq, we’re escalating in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay is still running, and healthcare reform and global warming policy are more modest than many would have hoped for.

Still, I found the soul-sucking despair of the concert to be ill-informed and inappropriate.  Here’s why:

1. Liberal Obama-bashing forgets just how bad things were under Bush, or how bad they would be under McCain. Yes, I want a more robust health care bill, but McCain’s plan was to tax employer healthcare benefits. Yes, I want the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq, but McCain was the one singing “bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran,” and under Bush that almost happened. And climate change legislation wouldn’t even be on the map.
2. If progressives write off Obama too early, we will limit his ability to promote progressive policies. What I hear from many on the left right now is that they’ve given up on anything good from Obama. Well, if that’s the case, and if we’re not out there organizing for good things to come from the presidency, then you can pretty much expect he won’t have the political capital to do anything good. The tea-party crowd will have the day.
3. Putting all our hopes on Obama is a type of “messianic politics.” It assumes that an all-wise, all-powerful leader will ascend to the throne presidency, save the world from the forces of big oil and arms contractors, and usher in a time of progressive bliss. It doesn’t work that way. Even the best political leaders need strong social movements to hold them accountable. As FDR famously said when lobbied for progressive union policies, “Okay, you’ve convinced me. Now go out there and make me do it.” Leadership is important, we’ll get more good and less bad out of Obama than we would have McCain, but we still need to organize.
4. Expecting large-scale wins on the whole progressive agenda in just a year ignores that presidents can only deliver a small amount to their base. In his first six years, President Bush was very powerful, yet  he didn’t ban abortion. He didn’t ban lawsuits against large corporations. He didn’t privatize social security. There were many items on the conservative agenda that he could not deliver, and that was even with his massive support post-9/11. I think the hopes were too high to think that in less than 1 year Obama would restore the economy, bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, end global warming pollution, create a single-payer healthcare system, and abolish subsidies for agribusiness. If those were your hopes, I’m sorry, but they deserve to be dashed.
5. Disappointment in Obama’s regarding Afghanistan and healthcare reform forget that what he’s delivered is pretty much what he promised. Obama never promised a public option, much less single-payer healthcare. He did promise to escalate in Afghanistan. Also, as Juan Cole points out, when he was sworn in, the military brass didn’t necessarily buy into getting out of Iraq, and it seems he’s won that battle.

So, where do we go from here?

1. We need to recognize our job is to change the context in which the politicians make their decisions. We need to organize so that it is easy for Obama to make decision we support and hard for him to make ones we opp0se (this would be the same approach if anyone were in the White House). We can’t do this if we only hang out in our liberal ghettos talking to people who only agree with us and whining on blogs (like I’m doing now). We need to get out there and talk to people who don’t already agree with us and we need to help the people who do agree with us to take action.
2. We need to get the most good out of the Obama presidency as we can. That means criticizing decisions we don’t like. It also means giving support to decisions we do like. Like Rabbi Lerner of Tikkun says, our job is to “support Obama to be Obama.”
3. We need to learn how to govern and inspire. The Bush years were great training on how to criticize, complain, and tear down. We’ve almost gotten to be too good at that. Now we need to learn how to lead and build up when we have potential allies in power, and I don’t think the rapid-response criticism we perfected under the previous administration is the best way to do that.

Thanks for sticking with me through this little rant. After eight years of working constantly to defeat stupid ideas like building new nuclear weapons or bombing Iran, I’m grateful for the chance now to work to support good ideas like healthcare reform and global warming legislation.

Do I wish there were more change? Yes.

And I know better than to wait for Obama to deliver that change like a Christmas present. I have to work for it. WE have to work for it.

Let’s organize.

[NOTE: Please don't take my frustration with this event as a dis on Peaceworks. They do great work that I really support. That's why I go to their fundraisers, give money, and eagerly work with them on projects.]

Can post-its increase your fundraising letter response?

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive gave me an idea for improving fund appeal response rates.

Here’s the setup: researchers sent 3 versions of a survey to potential respondents. The surveys either had:

1. a hand-written post-it asking the person to complete the survey;
2. a hand-written message on the cover sheet; or
3. the survey and cover sheet with no hand-written note.

The surveys with the sticky notes had the highest response rates by far.

The unpersonalized letters had the lowest response rate, just 34%. A hand-written note increased the response up to 43%. And the letters with the sticky-note had the highest response at 69%.

Many nonprofits invite board members and volunteers to write personal messages on year-end appeals. The research indicates that this kind of personalization can increase response rates.

But it also indicates you can take the response up to the next level by adding a post-it note. Somehow that added touch makes it feel more real and more human.

I plan to give it a try this year. If you try it, let me know how it works for you.

People want to connect with people, and that' true online as well. That means you have to act like a person online. Here's how.

Sometimes online communication strips away the human touch in interactions, especially when we’re online to promote our cause.

In Trust Agents, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith give seven great tips they title “How to be human.”

1. Remember to ask about other people–first.
2. Understand the culture.
3. Promote others 12 times as much as you promote yourself or your company.
4. Use your picture (and a good one) as your avatar on your profiles all these social sites (never your logo).
5. If you mess up, remember the three A’s: acknowledge, apologize, act.
6. Share a bit of your personal life in your professional.
7. Remember that this new online world is about relationships, not campaigns.

I’m not convinced about never using your logo, I think it depends on the context. I have both a personal twitter account and ICPJ, where I work, has a twitter account. My personal twitter has my personal photo, ICPJ uses its logo.

That issue aside, Chris and Julien put together a good list, though it’s sad we need instructions on “how to be human” to begin with.

Wordy messages won't convince your audience. Clear speaking and writing will.

I’ve ranted on this blog before about the perils of bad writing. Now I have research to back it up.

Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive gives an example of jargon overload:

We’re leveraging our assets and establishing strategiec alliances to create a robust knowlege center-one with a customer-ruled business structure using market-leading technologies to maximize our human systems.

According to the book, that means “we’re consultants.”

What happens when you use language like this? Yes summarizes research by Daniel Oppenheimer which shows that “the message is deemed less convincing and the author is perceived as less intelligent.”

The lesson is clear: you will be more convincing if you communicate clearly. Use simple sentences and words your audience can understand.

Okay, this is a bit of a deviaiton from my regular blog format, but it seemed the best way to only have to write up the full background of what’s happening and not have to keep re-typing it.

Main point: I’m in the hospital, and probably will be until around December 7. I had a brain hemmhorage in which, the doctors believe, a vein leaked. The good news is that things like this in the veins rarely happen again, and I’ve seen no sign of damage due to this. My extended hospital stay is so the doctors can continue to monitor me to be sure it is indeed a vein issue and not an aneurysm.

How this happened: Yesterday, November 29, While out for a run, I experienced an excruciating headache. The pain spread to my neck, and I initially thought the headache was cused by a muscule strain in my neck.

I walked home and tried to rest it off. When I started vomiting, Nancy took me to the Urgent Care facility near our house.

The urgent care facility evaluated me and called for an ambulance to St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital. They did a CT scan on me and saw the blood in my brain. St. Joe’s does not have a neurology department, to they transferred me to the University of Michigan Medical Center.

At the UM medical center they gave me another CT scan. They aslo gave me an angiogram, in which they thread a catheter into my body at the femoral artery (by my groin) and up thourgh my body and nect. From there they can inject dies that show up on X-rays to see if the bleeding was from a vein–which would be good (but not as good as this never happening) or an artery (which would be very bad, and in which case they would have to have surgery to repari the artery).

The result of the angiogram showed no sign of an aneurysm (thank God), so they believe the probelm to be one of vein bleeding.

Vein bleeding heals itself, and is very unlikely to re-rupture. The damage, if any, will be minimal, and I have not noticed any decrease in function from this ordeal.

The doctors are keeping me in the hospital for about a week so they can continue to monitor me–they want to be sure that it isn’t an aneurysm. They have another angiogram planned for about 7 days from now, and I”m hooked up to all the proges and monitory.

The pain from the bleeding is still very intense. That is, it is whne the pain relievers wear off.

Nancy, of course, had been pretty scared during all this. She’s done well and has been grateful for the support of her friends and family.
WHAT THIS MEANS:
1. I ill be out of the office for at least a week. Any meetings I had scheduled will need to go on without me or be re-scheduled.

2. I will be in limited cell phone and email contact. My cell phone number is 734-663-1870, email is chuck@icpj.net. With a week laid up, I am willing to stay involved when the balance between pain and pain medication allows me to, but I cannot commit to anything.

3. I’m feeling as good as could be expected (back to that balance between pain and pain medication), and I have books, podcasts, and my computer to entertain me. That said, you are welcome to stop by if you like. Right now I’m in the Neurology ICU, they plan to move me to a regular room in a few days. Please don’t feel obligated! For many of you, I will be asking enough of you to re-shuffle the pieces while I’m away.

4. I’m also giving thanks. Between the fire last week and the hemorrhaging this week we’ve experienced two things that were really scary, very inconvenient, but overall quite minor. I give thanks for the person who called in the fire and the fire department–If the fire had gone 10 more minutes more the whole place could have gone up. I’m thankful for everyone in the ICPJ community who wished us well after the fire and who helped step forward to get things done. I’m thankful for the medical professionals who have been caring for me, and the friends who have been there with Nancy as she has sat and worried. I’m also very happy for whoever invented the pain medicine I’m on right now.

In peace,
-Chuck

Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith has a great sidebar titled “If you can delegate, you must” in which they say:

If you can delegate a task to someone else (or to a machine, for that matter) in order to save either time or costs, it is your duty to do so.

Their argument is about productivity and work quality, but for a community organizer there is another element to this. When you delegate to volunteers, you strengthen your organization by increasing buy-in and improving the connections the volunteers have to your group.

This relates to Saul Alinsky’s Iron Rule of Organizing, “Never do for others what they can do for themselves.”

For me, this is a case of something that’s easier to blog about than to do. Whether it’s tweaking our database, developing a flier, or creating a website for a coalition, I have a tendency to do things myself.

So my challenge to myself and my challenge to you is to share the load, delegate what you can, and strengthen you organization by doing so. It’s smart, it will help your work, and it’s good organizing.

One of the best things I learned in my fellowship with the Center for Progressive Leadership was the value of having difficult conversations.

That lesson was reaffirmed in a recent post by Peter Bregman titled How to Talk About What You Most Dread. He writes:

Here’s a general rule: the more you fear a conversation, the more you probably need to have it. Think of fear as an indicator of a problem that needs to be addressed. [emphasis added]

Bregman then goes on to give some top-notch suggestions for how to have those conversations.

Having the courage to have  difficult conversations will transform your leadership. I’ve seen it.

Since the CPL training, there have been countless times in which I’ve remembered that lesson, summoned up my courage, and spoken to somebody to deal with inappropriate behavior, clear up misunderstandings, or to apologize for my own mistakes.

In every case, they apparently ‘easy’ thing to do would be to just ignore the issue. What I’ve found is that the value of speaking up and listening is much greater than the discomfort of avoiding a conflict.

Read Bregman’s article. Think about the conversation you most dread. Try dealing with it directly. It will work wonders.

Want to get better? Learn from, don't avoid, your mistakes.

It seems to me that the often progressives are very affirming.

Maybe instead we should focus more on our mistakes

I’ve known people to avoid language of “what went wrong” to choose instead of “what should we have done differently.”

Often we avoid talking about “mistakes” because we worry that that will create a hurtful, negative vibe.

(Of course, we can also end up with the circular firing squad where we attack potential allies because they don’t have the correct position on class, race, economics, or strategy, but that’s another post).

In Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Cialdini describes a study on two different training program for firefighters. One study focused on how others had made good decisions in the past; the other one focused on other firefighters’ past errors.

Focusing on past errors was much more effective in training the firefighters to make good decisions.

This tells me that we need to create environments where it is OK to honestly asses and learn from mistakes, our own and those of others, not evade them to make sure nobody’s feelings get hurt.

If we don’t do that, well, that would be a mistake.

I’ve been reading Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Cialdini (I’ve blogged before about his previous book, Influence), and he gives a great story that warns us not to assume that what works for us will work for everyone.

He gives the example of efforts to try to get hotel guests to help save the environment by re-using their towels.

How would you promote that kind of program?

Well, if you’re like me, you would be motivated by environmental arguments, so you would be inclined to write a sign along the lines of, “You can help save water by re-using your towel.”

But here’s the rub–there will be a lot of hotel guests who don’t care about that message.

So Cialdini and his co-authors decided to test an alternate message that tells guests that “a majority of guests choose to re-use their towels at least once in their stay.”

There are two lessons here:

1. “Social proof” is a powerful way to influence people;

2. Don’t assume that the messages that work for you will work for everyone.