'Idea Storming' for Nonprofits

[Editor's note: This is the full interview with Bryan Mattimore, author of "Idea Stormers." The abridged version was printed in our February print issue.]

In a fundraising climate where oversaturation, more competition for funds and new technologies make attracting and retaining donors that much more difficult, innovation is vital for nonprofit organizations looking to survive and thrive not only today, but in the future.

In his book "Idea Stormers: How to Lead and Inspire Creative Breakthroughs," author Bryan Mattimore lays out techniques and frameworks on how to encourage an atmosphere of innovation. Mattimore, co-founder of innovation agency The Growth Engine Co., has worked with companies and nonprofits big and small for nearly 30 years, including the City of New York, homeless shelters, child-welfare organizations, museums, libraries and YMCA chapters.

Mattimore spoke with Fundraising Success about his book and how fundraisers can utilize its teachings.

FundRaising Success: What was your motivation behind writing the book?
Bryan Mattimore: Over the last 20 years, since my first book was published, there's been a tremendous advance about how to design and facilitate ideation sessions and also how to successfully do innovation programs with companies. I wanted to share that learning in part because the smaller and medium-sized companies often can't afford the work we're doing, but these techniques are valuable for them as well. It was a way to really multiply the impact of the research and work and empirical validation of all these techniques we use to share in a broader and bigger way.

FS: Why should fundraisers read "Idea Stormers"?
BM: First of all, we know that fundraising has gotten tougher because of the economic climate. I think everybody will agree to that. And that's a situation where, frankly, you need new ideas. If you're going to compete and win in this environment, it's just like every other corporation — you've got to innovate or die. It's really about coming up with new, creative ways to do your work, so the book is filed with techniques and processes and approaches that can help teams generate all kinds of new ideas and ultimately improve their bottom line. That's the intent.

FS: How can the smaller organizations — the one- or two-person development departments — take away some of the learnings when maybe they don't have as much time or resources to devote to these types of discussions?
BM: A couple things ... One is the book talks about all-day ideation sessions or even half-day ideation sessions. First of all, these techniques are very, very simple to learn and use. This is not rocket science. It's easy to do this stuff, so people should not be intimidated. And I wrote the book in a very how-to way so it will be easy to use the techniques.

The other thing is, they don't have to do it all day. They can order pizza at lunch and brainstorm some new ideas in 30 or 40 minutes. This stuff can be used for a small company. Even with three or four or five people, you can sit around the table, use some of these techniques and generate some new ideas.

The second thought is this whiteboard technique is a really good way to get ideas even with a one- or two- or three-person office. You write some ideas on the whiteboard, you decide to do it over a week or two-week period, you keep writing ideas down, and over the span of that time you'll get a whole bunch of ideas because you'll have had the soak time that you needed to start making connections between random thoughts on the whiteboard, this interactive suggestion box as I call it.

FS: There are so many techniques and steps in the book. What are some key takeaways for fundraisers?
BM: Like other experts, there's certainly a place for tremendous expertise in the world of fundraising, and there are proven approaches and methodology in the world of fundraising. We know, especially in the direct-mail area, that certain things work a lot better than other things. There are known successful approaches. The challenge is that all those things that we know as experts, you want to acknowledge those and use those, but then you also want to go beyond those. So this book is designed to help people question assumptions. They're taking a lot of things for granted about how you do and don't do fundraising, and this is an opportunity to maybe, using some of the techniques like questioning assumptions or 20 questions or problem redefinition or wishing, look at things differently. All those techniques are valuable when you're looking for totally new or breakthrough ideas.

The other thing is even a technique like the worst-idea technique. It sounds crazy — you come up with bad ideas, not good ideas, and then you try to do the opposite or you find something good in the bad idea that you can turn into a good idea. As crazy as that technique sounds, it really works. If you want to get some kind of breakthrough idea, something that's never been done in the industry, a lot of these approaches should help you do that.

FS: How important is it today with so much saturation on the donor side to find those breakthroughs?
BM: We're at a point now of tremendous clutter in this world. The problem is everybody is being called a million times, and the donors have limited resources ultimately, so they have to make decisions about who they will and who they won't donate to. So it's not unlike positioning a product; we have to be very clear about what our positioning is, but also not only clear in the positioning, but also creative ways to reach these people and get the message out.

One of the assumptions in the fundraising world is that most of the donations are given by individuals. The relative amount of donations by companies is very small relative to those of individuals. So you might question that assumption that those two have to be separate. Isn't there some way that you could bring those two together? Why should they be separate?

FS: Do nonprofits need to run more like the innovative companies out there that are succeeding?
BM: I'm no expert in fundraising, but certainly in the world of packaged goods marketing, it's obviously the Apples of the world are achieving extraordinary successes because they have been so creative in the products and services they're offering. My bias is that there is no better time to do the tremendously innovative things that a company like Apple is doing because people are interested in the new.

There's even more pressure now for the new: a) because of the clutter and the mental clutter of communication, and b) because it's just more fun and more exciting to be part of something totally new.

FS: What can fundraisers do to get buy-in from the board and executives to invest in innovation?
BM: As the environment gets even tougher, my experience has been that boards and companies are more willing to try things because it's tougher and tougher, and they say, "A lot of this stuff isn't working; let's try something new." Oddly enough I do think, yes, they do want to continue the tried-and-true methods, but because times are so tough certain companies are more open to innovation now than they used to be. Others batten down the hatches and are not. But there are certain organizations that are more open to innovation frankly just because they have to be. It's a matter of survival.

The other thing is that for those companies who want to go beyond the tried-and-true, it is possible to do mini-experiments to prove it before launching in a big way. If it's a national organization try it at a local group; try it in one city, one town, one region; and see what happens. It's important to do at this time a lot of little experiments and to leverage what the field's doing. It's much like test-marketing a new product. You can try things, and if they fail so what? You try a bunch of different things, and you will often find that some small idea will suddenly turn into a very large idea.

FS: Anything else you'd like to add?
BM: The big thing is that I wrote this book to be usable. It's based in theory, based in empirical evidence. This work that we've done, we've been doing for nearly 30 years. So even if some of these techniques seem crazy, the reason they're in the book is because they work. This book is intended to be extremely practical. It's based on more than 1,000 ideation sessions, and what's worked and what hasn't worked.

It's a very practical book, and it'll work. Even if people are worried about whether they'd be successful with these techniques, try them anyway. Even if some of them don't work, some of them do work, it doesn't matter. You only need one big idea to have this really be worth it.

This is hard work. Getting new ideas is hard work, and people need to devote the time and energy in doing that. That being said, it also should be fun.

Some of the visual techniques in the book like collaging or picture prompts, fundraisers could use those to help dimensionalize the wishes and the mind-sets of target donors. They can do collages of people they think they might be interested in, and if they do a collage of those donors they will discover all types of talking points, marketing outreaches, ways to reach these people, how to think about them differently. That should open up people's minds in how to reach donors in a different way.

We've done a fair amount of work with nonprofits, and the collaging stuff tends to be one of the more powerful exercises because it makes it real in a very creative way who they're trying to reach.