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I just finished teaching the CALM not BUSY approach via a three-hour workshop over Zoom and created a new one-pager that I thought you might find helpful too.

Here’s the PDF version.

Here’s how to use the target. The 23 CALMing actions to take are the bulleted items, organized by CALM. You start outside the big circle at either “learning” or “sometimes” — whichever makes the most sense given which action you select. Your goal is to move toward the inner circle.

During the workshop, we asked participants to pick five actions from the list of 23 to focus on first. Then we asked them to place those on the target based on where they are now (“learning, practicing, mastering” or “sometimes, often, always”).

You can do the same exercise on your own by printing out the chart.

To learn more about CALM not BUSY, check out the book on Amazon (ad link).

The post The 23 CALMing Actions to Go from BUSY to CALM appeared first on Nonprofit Marketing Guide (NPMG).

Hygge is the Danish concept of coziness, comfort, warmth, and charm that gets Danes through the long, cold, dark winters. It’s about enjoying and indulging in the small things, even when the environment around you is much less hospitable or pleasurable. That’s why hygge is a perfect self-care and #CALMnotBUSY concept for nonprofit communicators!

Let’s address the pronunciation right away. It’s not Hig-ee or High-Jee. It’s more like Hue-Geh. Listen here. 

I am especially interested in upping the hygge factor at my office right now because I hate winter — and we all know winter is coming. I’m at my most depressed in the winter months. I also have Raynaud’s so I’m very often physically uncomfortable and highly annoyed when I am cold. Plus, my great-great-grandparents were Danish immigrants, so I’m also claiming hygge as family heritage.

I have a home office, so my choices are a bit more diverse than those of you who work in open floor plans or shared office space may be able to manage. But many of these suggestions can work anywhere.

Here are a dozen ways to up the hygge in your office . . .

1.  Live Plants.

I’ve added several new colorful plants around my desk. African violets don’t take much space and will bloom even with a lot of neglect. These blooms just opened today.

I also have a nice big croton plant right behind my computer monitor so it’s in my peripheral vision while I am typing.

2.  Blankets.

I’ve brought a blanket from our living room into my office. I also have a soft fleece shawl on my chair.

3. Mug Warmer.

I plugged the mug warmer back in not just to keep the tea hot, but so I can hold a warm mug in my hands.

4.  Soft Socks and Slippers.

Who needs real shoes when you are sitting behind a computer most of the day? All I want for Christmas is more thick, warm, fuzzy socks. Clever designs are a bonus.

5. Essential Oils.

Most scented products give me headaches, so I have been slow to get on the essential oils bandwagon. But after trying a few from DoTERRA this summer, I’m sold.  I’m still figuring out what I like during the day, but am leaning toward the citrus and spice oils. I love lavender, but I use that when I sleep, so it’s not good for work.

Best to run both scents and sounds that will make their way into co-workers’ spaces by them first. Or use very sparingly — just a drop or two on the little pad inside this locket is perfect. I can smell it without needing to diffuse it through the whole room. (The necklace was a Black Friday gift to self!)

6.  Bird Feeders Outside the Window.

I’ve filled up several bird feeders outside my window after neglecting them all summer — the birds had other options. Watching them is a nice visual break from the computer screen.

7.  Shells in Wooden Bowls.

I love the forest and the beach. I have a couple of small hand-carved wooden bowls on my desk filled with odd shaped and colored shells I’ve collected over the years. They remind me of relaxing vacations and warmer times.

8.  Candles in the Fireplace.

I have a fireplace in my office that has never had a fire in it since we moved into this house. My office is in what used to be considered the formal living room in our 60’s rancher. Instead of a fire, I have battery-operated LED pillar candles in there, and when I want to sit quietly and read “by the fire,” I turn them on flicker mode.

9. Kitties.

Three cats have access to my office and I encourage them to spend time with me during the day.  Cassie is especially fond of looking out the window and watching the birds from the top of my office chair. And you can’t get more hygge than resting your head back on a big fat kitty. Some of you may recall hearing another cat, Luna, meow loudly during webinars . . . she is our diva and much less hygge than Cassie!

Office Hygge: Lots of light, plants, and kitties.

10. Better Lighting.

Even though I sit by a window, it’s west-facing under tall oaks, so it doesn’t provide that much light. The overhead light is not much help, so I’ve added several tall floor lamps to help fill the room with more light. I also have a desktop light therapy box for when it’s super dark and gloomy outside. When you read about creating a hygge atmosphere, it often includes low light. For me personally, soft yet bright light in the winter is much more comforting.

11. Space Heater.

Sitting by the window can get really cold in the middle of winter. The space heater takes the chill off.

12. Nice Office Supplies.

Office supply geeks, this last one is for you! Sometimes just handwriting notes with a colored pen in a nice notebook is all you need to feel better about the world.

How are you adding hygge to your workspace or work day to improve your #npcommlife? 

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I would love to hear about what’s too complicated at your organization right now related to communications. What’s too slow? What involves too many people? What are people avoiding because it’s just too challenging and complicated?

Share your scenarios and situations with me and I’ll try to tackle them during the webinar and in future blog posts. You can share in the comments or email me at kivi@nonprofitmarketingguide.com.

The post What’s “Complicated” at Your Organization? appeared first on Nonprofit Marketing Guide (NPMG).

Of course, who makes the decision is one of those key elements!

In nonprofits (and most organizations), you can simplify the decision-making organizational chart to three levels:

Executive Decisionmakers

These people are most often board members, executive directors and C-suite managers. (C-suite means the people with “Chief” in their titles, like Chief Operations Officer, Chief Financial Officer, etc. or people who fill those roles, but might have Vice President or even Director or Manager titles, as long as they sit at the top of the organizational chart.)

Their communications decisionmaking should be strategic in nature, with long-term thinking.  They should only get involved in tactics under special circumstances or when there is no operating structure in place for a particular situation.

Management Decisionmakers

These people are often middle managers or in smaller organizations, the directors or team leaders who report to the executives. They direct the operational implementation of the strategic decisions, looking weeks and months at a time.

Operational Decisionmakers

These people are the staff making all of the little decisions required to implement the communications tactics day-to-day, following the guidance of the management decisionmakers.

How this actually matches up with a nonprofit’s organizational chart depends on the size of the organization and its management culture.

For example, in very small nonprofits without paid comms staff, the executive director would do all three levels.

If that executive director gets a communications intern, she might delegate operational decisions to that person, but would likely retain the executive and management decisionmaking. If she hires a full-time communications director, she may split the management decisionmaking or delegate it entirely.

Ideally, your organization delegates decisions down as low as possible, but in most nonprofits, you’ll see some overlap.

Let’s look at social media management as an illustration. Say you have one person in each of these positions:

• An Executive Director should make executive decisions.
• A Communications Director should make management decisions.
• A Communications Associate should make operational decisions.

The executive director should be involved in strategic decisions about how to use social media. What target audience will we be reaching through each social media channel with what type of messaging and brand personality?

The communications director should be involved in setting the editorial calendar for those channels including the timing and frequency of specific messages and calls to action to ensure the right people get the right messages at the right time.

The communications associate should be writing the copy and designing the graphics for the posts, often with the communications director picking up the slack as needed.

If your executive director is editing tweets written by the communications associate, you have a problem.  I’ll talk more about that during the webinar!

The post Who Should Be Making that Comms Decision? appeared first on Nonprofit Marketing Guide (NPMG).

We are wrapping up the 13th session of the Communications Director Mentoring Program this month and preparing to work with the 14th class (yes, we still have space available!).

One of the key lessons that participants took away from this session was understanding that nonprofit communications work entails many more possibilities and opportunities than any single person can take advantage of. You cannot do it all. You can’t even do a majority of the good ideas that you’ll have or that others will suggest to you.

Instead, you have to find that small fraction of things that you can do and then do them well.

Then you have to make peace with that and feel good about it.

As your team grows, that fraction can grow.

But you can’t and shouldn’t do more than your fraction by burning yourself out or living with the anxiety and guilt of trying.

How do you make peace with it? It helps to

Guard your to-do list

Learn how to say No

Set boundaries

Focus on the little wins.

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Communications directors have to make A LOT of decisions. We also get information and input from lots of places, and that can make decision making even harder.

I think it’s helpful to keep in mind some fundamentals that apply regardless of the kind of decision you are making — this goes for personal decisions too!

All good decisions are based on logic AND emotion.

It’s the head and the heart. It’s data and instinct. We are complicated beings, and good decisions depend on us using all we have — not just head or heart.  In an office environment, sometimes the logic dominates and sometimes the emotion dominates. You want to find the happy balance that includes both.

Knowing a few basic criteria can eliminate a lot of your choices.

Too many options can paralyze you. You and your team will have more thoughtful discussions if you are only talking about two or three choices at once. What if you feel like you have 15 options? Talk about the criteria for a good decision first, independent of any particular option. Then apply those criteria to your list of choices and you’ll more quickly whittle it down to just a few for a more substantive conversation.

Know what “enough” looks like.

Are you trying to get too much done in one decision? The search for perfection can lead you into endless loops, where you are backtracking and revisiting. Stop! Settling for good enough isn’t really “settling” for something less. It’s allowing you to move on from the decision to implementation, and that’s where you get results. Sometimes you have to be OK with OK.

On June 28, 2018, I’m teaching a brand-new webinar for communications staff called Streamlining Communications Decision Making: From Strategic Planning to the Daily Grind.  We’ll talk all about the kinds of decisions that rest with communications staff and how to go about making them.

Here are some other posts you might find useful:

How to Make Decisions at Your Nonprofit

Simple Rules: How to Make Better and Faster Decisions

Year-End Fundraising Decisions to Make Now

The post Three Fundamentals for Better Decisions appeared first on Nonprofit Marketing Guide (NPMG).

Nonprofit communications directors have LOTS of decisions to make. Some are small, like word choice in a tweet, and some are big and complicated, like prioritizing communications strategies to best support the growth of your nonprofit. And, of course, there’s a lot in between.

In my new book, CALM not BUSY (Amazon), I included several chapters that address decision making and how to overhaul it at your nonprofit if it’s not as smooth and strategic as you might hope.

For example, it’s really important to have an open conversation about how communications decisions are made. If you don’t, you’ll end up with decisions that are based on who spoke last or loudest, or what feels like the path of least resistance.

You have several options. Of course, this isn’t one size fits all. The process you use for writing a tweet will be different from writing strategic plan goals.

Executive Decision. Sometimes because of non-negotiable concerns (e.g., safety or politics) or unavoidable circumstances or timing, the leaders will make an executive decision, with or without consulting the group.

Executive Delegation. Sometimes the leader will delegate the decision to the person they feel is best equipped to make it. That person will decide, with or without consulting other group members. Ideally, much of your job falls here — the Executive Director has delegated those decisions to you. 

Consensus. Consensus means that everyone accepts and supports the decision, even if it was not their first choice. Discuss the options, with everyone having a say. As you narrow your options, ask everyone to state their number on this scale:

1. Yes! I love this option!
2. Yes. This option is acceptable to me.
3. OK. I can live with this option.
4. I really don’t like this option, but I will not block it.
5. I do not agree with this option at all and will block this choice.  

If everyone is a 1, 2, or 3, you have a decision. If you have 4s and 5s, continue discussing and negotiating to address concerns. You can move forward as long as there are no 5s.  Many people-pleasing communications directors want everyone to be at a 4 or 5 — or everyone at a 5 — and that is just not realistic. You have to move forward, and that’s really hard to do if you don’t include the 3s and even some 4s sometimes.  

Majority Rules. Discuss the options, with everyone having a say. Take a vote – one person, one vote. The option with most votes wins. I am generally not a fan of majority rules voting for communications work. It’s too brute force for me. 

Last Option Standing. Discuss the options, with everyone having a say.  Take a vote on the option you like LEAST. Remove that one, and vote again on the option you like least, until only one remains. That’s the winner.  This is sometimes the best approach when there are no good options and you are interested in finding the “least worst” approach.

Dot Voting. Discuss the options, with everyone having a say. Be sure that the choices are very different so you don’t end up splitting votes between similar options. Everyone is given three or five dots (or votes) to distribute however they like. The option with most votes wins. This method allows those who feel strongly to weight their votes while still giving everyone an equal say. We often see this kind of decisionmaking during strategic planning conversations. 

Which decisions are made in which way at your nonprofit? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments. 

The post Decisions, Decisions, Decisions. How Do You Make #NPCOMM Decisions at Your Nonprofit? appeared first on Nonprofit Marketing Guide (NPMG).

Ready to find your top CALM strength? Take the new quiz!

[interact id=”5a96034eeda369001414cf81″ type=”quiz”]

Don’t see the quiz? Take it here.

Why should you know your top CALM strength? I’m a “build on your success” kind of person. So if you know where you are strong, I suggest you take advantage of that strength first as you work on being more CALM. We’ll give you suggestions for next steps after you take the quiz.

Of course, you can always work on your weaknesses too. You can find your full CALM Score by completing the worksheet in the book. 

P.S. For you inquiring minds, we used Interact to build this quiz. They gave us a free trial and we’ve found it to be pretty easy and fun to use.  They also have a good blog with lots of list building tips.

Interact offers 25% off for nonprofits. Call their support team to get the discount. You can see how other nonprofits have used the service by going to their customer page and clicking on nonprofits in the menu.

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