How Do I Make The Case?

I’m at the NTC (Nonprofit Technology Conference) in San Francisco this week, soaking in all the knowledge, wisdom, and information I can.

I just finished a session from Dean Hollander (Fenton Communications) about strategically re-designing your web site. In the Q&A session, one person after another stood up and said, “At my organization, we need to change our web site but I’m not sure how to convince management to invest time in it…” or “How do I convince my boss not to put an essay on the home page?”

I raised this exact question in a session yesterday about branding and my qualms about asking my directors to re-open the branding process that they just completed (see my last post). It sounds like a lot of us in the nonprofit communications field are butting up against this issue – managing our management.

We know the value of communications and the web site and e-newsletters, et. al. but we’re struggling to find the words, tactics, language, tools that will make our bosses see the light. It seems so apparent what we should do to us, but we know that there will be push-back from above.

I’m not sure there are any general answers to these questions – only experience will help… and learning from others’ experiences.

To this end, I’ll write about my experience over the next weeks and months about convincing my organization to re-brand and re-design. If I crash and burn, at least you’ll all know what not to do!