As the technical problems plaguing the new USAJobs website continue into a third week, Sen. John Kerry ( D-Mass.), called on Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel to intervene and to consider putting the website operation out for competitive bid.
The federal job search Web portal, which is the third version of the site, was launched on Oct. 11 after the Office of Personnel Management spent 18 months developing it in-house. Since the debut, the agency has been addressing thousands of user complaints about operation of the site.
In a letter on Oct. 26, Kerry asked VanRoekel to “intervene, investigate and resolve the problems with USAJOBS as soon as possible.”
This quote, from a Federal Computer Week article by Alice Lipowicz, illustrates the problems that have plagued the job search site that is supposed to help individuals find work, especially with federal agencies, in today’s rough economic climate. The problem is that once the government took over operations from the previous contracted (and very experienced) operator, Monster.com, things went haywire.
With the page becoming a practically unusable money sink, the government is facing criticism from users and the media. What’s worse for them is that the main option for fixing the whole mess is taking the site completely offline or asking agencies to post job opportunities on their own sites, both of which are far from ideal.
Bottom line, if you aren’t an expert, stick with someone who is. The government’s aim was to save money by taking the site’s operation in house, but without the experience and skill of Monster.com behind it, the entire situation became an embarrassing mess.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Whether you know it or not, people are talking about your company. Thanks to the Web, customers, potential customers, stakeholders, and even reporters are communicating their thoughts and opinions about you. This is great while things are going well, but make a misstep and you’ll find the conversation quickly takes a darker tone.
Having a solid reputation in good times means more business and happy stakeholders. The state of your reputation when you encounter a crisis, however, could mean the difference between a minor blip and shutting your doors for good.
On Tuesday, December 13, Jonathan Bernstein will present a free webinar, “Reputation Combat: Protecting Your Company’s Online Reputation.” In it, Jonathan will lend his 25+ years of experience online to answering questions about how to monitor and respond to online threats, as well as other aspects of Internet-based reputation management. There will be valuable insights for experts and novices alike, so tune in and stay out of trouble.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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This is a companion piece to my article “Anticipation – Year End Fundraising – Let’s Look in the Crystal Ball and Beyond”published at my blog, MarionConway.com. That article takes a look at the fundraising results so far in 2011 as reported in three surveys. The results give us a look into the crystal ball to see what we might expect from fundraising for the remainder of 2011. The survey completed by the Nonprofit Research Collaborative is quite extensive and has lots of insight from nonprofits about what is working in their fundraising efforts. This article shares some of the highlights from that report about what nonprofits see is working for them. And, as always, it comes with my commentary. So where to look if you are in a Jerry Maguire mood for someone to “Show Me the Money.” Let’s see what 813 charities who participated in this survey had to say.
Individuals
In open-ended responses, people overwhelmingly listed fundraising from individuals as the best opportunity for growth in contributions. Frequent methods for increasing contributions mentioned were
20% major gifts
18% events
14% online/social media
Major gifts was said to be the most time efficient way to do fundraising. Hmmm…. That’s interesting…more small nonprofits should try this avenue.
Respondents noted that a big benefit of email is that when people can make a donation immediately some will do it right away. Nothing beats that. We all know what happens with snail mail…in the pile for future attention.
The big surprise for me was the enthusiastic response about events. Nearly half the nonprofits reported that they had increased income due to events. Many nonprofits seem to be experimenting with lower cost events than the traditional gala and attracting a wider base of attendees.
As income from government and foundations has decreased, there clearly is a stepped up effort to reach out to individuals – and it seems to pay off for nonprofits who invest in it.
Here is something to consider – 39% of charities with $250,000 to $1 million in expenditures were increasing the level of effort of volunteers organizing fundraising events. Activating volunteers – now that can be a very cost effective approach. But they usually need staff support so don’t plan on this being a freebie.
Nonprofits are taking a hard look at where is the best place to invest their limited or increased time in fundraising. Where are nonprofits choosing to increase their investment in fundraising?
Percentage of charities that said they were increasing their investment in a fundraising method:
46% Corporations
36% Foundations
31% Major Gifts
30% Email
30% Social Media
25% Direct Mail
24% Planned Giving
23% Special Events
12% Congregations
Interestingly, where nonprofits are increasing their investment and where they think there is the best opportunity to raise more funds this year don’t necessarily agree.
Percentage of charities mentioning a fundraising method as the best opportunity for raising more funds in 2011: (Responding charities could list any methods in this open-ended question)
20% Individual giving/annual giving
20% Major gifts
18% Special events
15% Foundation grants
14% Online donations/social media
12% Corporate giving
10% Face‐to‐face (personal asks)
8% Planned gifts
7% Direct mail campaigns
4% Board members
1% Government grants
This last piece of data is very telling and provides an honest assessment of the fundraising climate right now. Don’t waste your valuable and limited resources going after government funding.
Everyone thinks that Board members should step up more. It is commonly done generously in large organizations but it is a different story in small organizations. If your Board has retired people, stretched small business owners and people who are currently unemployed it is not reasonable to expect them to do too much “stepping up” in their giving. Direct mail is still the lifeblood of individual giving for many organizations but it is not the future. This isn’t a good investment for increasing resources either.
So what is? Individual giving provides the largest opportunity for growth. But be creative in seeking it. Lower cost events without a large lead time commitment, increasing awareness through social media, volunteer face to face fundraising and encouraging monthly giving seem to be attractive choices.
Although overall foundation giving is down, nonprofits are researching and finding smaller, more locally focused foundations and developing new footholds there. Worth a try.
I wish all nonprofits a successful fundraising season. Be thoughtful, be smart and don’t give up.
We’ve all struggled with the question: how do I get my message across? While there are many strategies, as is the case in life, simplicity is often best. In this guest article, PR pro Jerry Brown explains how to…
Simplify and Repeat
“Remember the . . .”
“Damn the torpedoes, full . . .”
“Ask not . . .”
“I have a . . . ”
Chances are pretty good you can complete all of the phrases listed above — even if you don’t remember who said all of them or precisely why.
Good messaging is easy to understand. It resonates with your audience. And it’s easy to remember. Your message is like the punch line of a joke. If you have to explain it, it doesn’t work.
Hearing a joke once is usually enough. It loses its punch after that. Your message is just the opposite. The more you repeat it — and the more the rest of us hear it — the more powerful it becomes.
The moral of the story? Make your message simple. Speak to the needs, fears or desires of your audience. And repeat it as often as you can. Once you’re so tired of saying it that you can’t stand listening to yourself the rest of us are beginning to hear what you’re saying.
Two books I strongly recommend if you want to add power to your message are Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s what People Hear by Dr. Frank Luntz and Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
At some point every organization will encounter a crisis. What sets the greats apart is the way they handle the situation, and what path they take after recovery. In a recent Businessweek article, leadership expert Marshall Goldsmith hit the nail on the head with this suggestion:
Ask each person to reflect on the question “What can I learn from this crisis?” Anyone can provide leadership when times are easy. Great leaders—and great teams—step up when times are tough. Have each team member, rather than get lost in whining, focus on how he or she can grow from this experience.
I would take this one step further and not only focus internally on how the individuals and company as a whole can grow, but also share these thoughts with stakeholders. There’s little that helps to move on after a crisis more than telling people what you’re doing to fix the issues. Stop, brainstorm, and move towards becoming a better business.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Have you ever gone online to order something and then wondered if you could buy it from a social enterprise? We often have, which is why the npEnterprise Forum created the Social Enterprise Shopping Guide.
“Margin Call” is a new film that aims to recreate the rapid fire nature of today’s crisis management. While it misses the mark in terms of reality, especially in the ethics department, it does open up avenues for discussion of real world crisis management.
“Thanks to the Internet – social media, web sites, email – an organization can now suffer as much damage in one hour as used to occur in a week,” says Bernstein, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management (McGraw-Hill, 2011) which releases next month. “One of my five tenets of crisis communication is the need to be prompt. In the absence of communication, rumor and innuendo fill the gap.”
Jonathan’s new book aims to educate managers, both current and aspiring, on the best ways to handle the many aspects of crisis management, including policy,training, prevention, response, communication, and more.
It only takes one look at today’s news to see what you need a solid crisis management plan, so get going, or you could be tomorrow’s headlines.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Dark sites have been around almost as long as the public Web, but their importance has never been more clear than in today’s “instant response” climate. In post on his blog, Blogging Me, Blogging You, social media pro Ed Lee explained why you need to develop dark sites of your own:
Online, it is vital to maintain a positive and accurate perception of an organization, especially in the face of a crisis, with timely and accurate information that your constituents care about.
Therefore, it is common for organizations, especially those facing multiple potential issues, to have several dark sites, one for each identified vulnerability or corporate risk. Typically, a dark site contains pre-approved messaging and documents such as news releases, pictures, official statements and other background information, as the specific details will only be added right before their release.
One of our mantras is, “in the absence of communication, rumor and innuendo fill the gap.” Having dark sites waiting in the wings means that you can be first out with the information that reporters and stakeholders are desperately seeking, which in effect gives you control of your own story. Honestly, you would be surprised at how much heat even a holding statement that acknowledges there’s been a problem and promises information soon can take off of a building crisis.
Of course, having dark sites for every known possibility won’t help if you don’t keep them updated. You have to respect confidentiality and legal concerns, but share as much information as possible about what occurred and what you’re doing to fix it. This should be coordinated with your social media team if they aren’t directly handling it, as you will be getting questions there, and Twitter, Facebook, and the like can be extremely helpful in funneling information to your stakeholders.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Steve Jobs once said: “I am as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.” So also it should be for the social enterprise sector. There are plenty of great things that are not SEs. To gain credibility and traction in the marketplace, the SE field cannot be all things to all people. That’s the path to becoming nothing at all.
We’ve seen cases of rogue or accidental social media posts sending organizations into crisis, but did you know that even fully vetted updates are capable of causing a load of trouble?
In a recent post on the Mindjumpers blog, social media strategist Marlene Friis took a look at how camera manufacturer Nikon got into, and out of, a crisis on Facebook.
1 update – 3,000 comments
On September 28th, Nikon posted the following update on their Facebook page which at the moment has 846,879 fans: “A photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses, and a good lens is essential to taking good pictures! Do any of our facebook fans use any of the NIKKOR lenses? Which is your favorite and what types of situations do you use it for?”
18 hours after the post was published, a bit more than 3,000 comments were made. Most of the comments from the fans expressed negative feelings towards Nikon, since they felt the brand was implying that a photographer is only as good as his equipment. A few comments defended Nikon, though, and some might say that the offended users were overreacting.
Despite the possibility that the offended may have been overreacting, this wasn’t one or two trolls looking to get a rise, this was 3,000 potential customers. Nikon did the right thing and tackled the situation head on by posting the following statement on its wall:
“We know some of you took offense to the last post, and we apologize, as it was not our aim to insult any of our friends. Our statement was meant to be interpreted that the right equipment can help you capture amazing images. We appreciate the passion you have for photography and your gear, and know that a great picture is possible anytime and anywhere.”
An apology and clarification wrapped in one, this single post defused the quickly building crisis. Within hours there were hundreds of largely appreciative comments from fans, and by the next day, business on the Nikon Facebook page was back to normal.
What can we take away from this? I would say that the entire situation is proof that Crisis Management 101 carries through to any medium, including Facebook – if you screw up, apologize, and you’ll get results.
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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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