Don’t Be the Hippie Car of Nonprofits

Some time ago, while driving in my home base of Washington, D.C., I stopped at a red light next to a Honda Civic of a certain age. An old age. The hatchback and bumper were covered top to bottom with bumper stickers. You know the kind of car I’m talking about. There’s one in every traffic jam — especially if you live in a college town. It’s a compact car chockablock with a bewildering array of declarations of belief. Maybe you even drive one (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

It’s fine to drive such a vehicle, really, but it’s not OK to operate like that in the office. You see, that car got me thinking. I can’t get the image of the thing out of my mind. I think the reason is, that car is a rusting symbol on wheels of so many of the mistakes we make in our sector.

Too many nonprofits are the equivalent of what I call the hippie car. Here’s what I mean.

1. We’ve become bumper-sticker marketers.
As nonprofits, we tend to declare what we believe and think that’s persuasive. It’s marketing by mission statement, and it’s annoying to others.

Slapping a bumper sticker on a car is a one-sided way of declaring your views: You speak out, and everyone else is left to listen (and smell your exhaust). That’s your prerogative as a vehicle owner, but it should not be your style as a marketer.

If you are a very loud preacher for your cause who rarely breaks to listen to your audience — or take in its perspective — you could end up with an audience of one. Yourself. We should be passionate, but be in a conversation with potential supporters. Good marketing is not a stickerfest; nor is it a monologue. It’s a give-and-take.

Don’t have a bumper-sticker marketing strategy — go for more of a car-pool experience. We all should be on this ride together.

2. We seem hippie-dippy or irrelevant.
There’s something about the whole package of that car that lacks credibility for most of the drivers idling alongside it. If we’re passionate about our causes, we might wear them on our sleeves, or on our bumpers, with great pride. Such zeal can be good and bad. Good in that passion can be wonderfully persuasive. Bad in that too much passion (especially the angry, slightly raving kind) can start to sound cuckoo.

If we push our agendas into people’s faces with this level of subtlety, we’re going to get dismissed as “out there.” I get a certain feeling when I see cars like this: “Wow, that looks like a nice, well-intentioned person, but I hope I don’t run into them at a cocktail party because they’d never stop talking.”

I guarantee that the Ford SUV with the “Support Our Troops” ribbon and the unmarked Accords and Camrys around the hippie car were not converted to a single cause plastered on the car because the message delivery and messenger have that icky, polemic feel. Don’t have a tone that says “finger wag.”

3. We’ve got too many stickers.
The driver of the car I saw apparently is one busy dude, because he supports about 10 causes; five indie bands; and a score of other unidentifiable organizations, secret societies or issues I’m not hip enough to recognize. He also somehow finds time to break for squirrels and leprechauns. Wow. I wish I had those time-management skills.

But seriously, this is a great example of way too many messages. Remember, people usually only can handle about one message at a time. And you’ll be lucky if you can consistently get your supporters to attribute one idea or concept to your organization.

The more messages you heap onto your message delivery vehicles (pun intended), the more you seem like a raving, wide-ranging, unfocused mess. People will react to your communications the way they would if you’d stuck bumper stickers all over your body — they’ll run the other way. Or cross to the other side of the street.

In other words, no one is going to stick around (ha) long enough to figure out what on earth you stand for if you declare yourself like this.

Katya Andresen is vice president of marketing at Network for Good, a nonprofit organization that helps other nonprofits raise money online.