Al Dente

I heard someone recently talk about ‘residential coffee’ as the coffee you have to make and drink at home. So, does that mean Starbucks is ‘commercial coffee’? It’s weird to me how coffee and salad literally require the least amount of preparation you can possibly have to get an end-product, yet the residential and commercial versions taste so different. My residential salads are never as good, are yours?

This must be why dinners at home with just me and the hubs have become more complicated than when the kids lived at home. Some nights we are just more tired than hungry and don’t eat at all. Some nights, like tonight, we just had peanut butter sandwiches—albeit with my man’s homemade peanut butter and they were delish! Some nights we go out and let someone take care of us--highly recommend! But to prevent going out to eat or winging it every night, we cook a Hello Fresh meal a couple times a week. And we’ve actually really learned some cooking skills that might make our residential dinners a bit more palatable.

So, last night we had Rigatoni with Beef and Zucchini Ragu. We fancy. I guess everything tastes better when it has a bougie name. Perhaps that’s why cottages on the lakefront are always named like children. Anyway, the instructions for the rigatoni said to boil for 9 minutes for the perfect al dente pasta. In Italian, al dente means ‘to the tooth’. That means that the rigatoni should be a happy medium between soft, overcooked pasta and hard, uncooked noodles.

Then, it hit me. The work we do at nonprofits should be al dente! If it were too easy anyone could do it. And if it’s too hard, we won’t even do it for long. It needs to be al dente.

Of course, both left brain marketing methods and right brain marketing moxie speak into this pasta parallel.

Left Brain Marketing Methods: In the book, The Four Disciplines of Execution, Covey and his co-authors describe exactly why we don’t get our important work done.  They say it’s our day job.  That’s right, your day job—as in day-to-day operations. In the book they call it the whirlwind and outline the problem like this:

“The whirlwind is urgent, and it acts on you and everyone working for you every minute of every day. The goals you’ve set for moving forward are important, but when urgency and importance clash, urgency will win every time.”

Hocus pocus, the whirlwind steals your focus! So, today we’ll spend some time on a left brain strategy to help you with this.

Right Brain Marketing Moxie: I just attended the National Conference for Growing Community Foundations in Kansas. The theme this year was Amplifying Impact. And that’s where choices are made. When you want to increase the impact you make, you have to make decisions about where to spend your time. It’s where you spend your time that you’ll notice your impact. There are lots of right brain ways to spend your time, let’s talk about some of those and make good choices.

This week was National Pasta Day and since you all ‘Spaghet me’, let’s do this!

Left Brain Marketing Methods: If you’re a frequent follower of this blog you know that I read a lot. Well, actually, I wish I had time to read more—alas, I love to read and learn. Besides the books I highlight for you, I also read blogs. One I read today is called The Hustle. There was an article mentioned in there about former speechwriter for Bill Gates, Chris Capossela. He was describing how his time with Gates helped him learn a lot about time management—what he defines as his secret to success.

And what I read next ah-mazed me! Low and behold, Gates secret time management sauce is one that we use all the time:  Planning Your Calendar A Year in Advance! Capossela said he watched Gates plan his calendar, not by day, week, or month, but by the fiscal year. He literally asks himself, “How do I want to spend the next year?”, plans his work, and works his plan.

I call this The Blueprint. A marketing blueprint is like a financial budget, it won’t be exact, but you do know enough to plan out what you’d like to happen each month to outline a full year in advance. For example:

• Who will help you market, steward, and communicate with your donors?
• What are you donor segments?
• Do the people in those segments have an Affinity and Capacity for what you do?
• How many segments can you manage?
• When will you communicate with those people?
• What will your goals be?
• How will you know you’ve been successful?

If you don’t have a strategic left brain method to your marketing madness yet, you need one! No matter when your fiscal year begins, January is always a great time to start a new system. That means the time is now to create that system. Although our version has morphed through the years based on lessons learned, it now looks something like this:

I never thought I’d have something in common with Bill Gates, yet here we are…both planning out a year in advance. Use your left brain to make your plan now so you’re ready to roll on January 1. If you need help, reach out to me or someone you know who executes this left brain marketing method well. Just like your financial budget, you can and should make left brain data-driven marketing decisions. It quells the chaos, is what I’d call al dente development, and is, <<mhua>> chef’s kiss when it comes to your month-to-month execution.  Try it!

Right Brain Marketing Moxie: 

Unironically, Stephen Covey also knew a lot about time management. Many of you might have seen this time management quadrant that helps you outline the tasks that are Urgent and Important.

When it comes to time management, communicating with your donors, and pasta, it doesn’t have to be hard! But choices have to be made. That’s why I loved last week’s conference theme: Amplifying Impact. Of course, I looked up the word ‘amplify’ before the conference even began. I have M-W.com on my phone and use it every single day.

Definition of amplify

transitive verb

1: to expand, by the use of detail or illustration or by closer analysis.

If you want to expand your impact, you need to closely analyze how you’re spending your time. This is how some of you might currently be spending your time currently:

• Mt. Email
• The Urgency du jour
• Mass Mailing donors like “or current resident”
• Pulling things together last minute
• Trying to figure out how to build in some self-care to prevent exhaustion or worse, The Great Resignation.
• All. The. Things.

If you are doing any or all of these things, don’t feel bad—we’ve all been there! It’s very normal for anyone in the nonprofit fundraising or marketing world. But this work doesn’t have to be so hard, it can be al dente!

You can work in the Important, but Not Urgent portion of Covey’s quadrant—the one that contains “being organized”. Of course, one way is by having a left brain Blueprint like I already mentioned. But another way is determining how you want to spend your time. You can:

• Plan events to educate your donors
• Work with your Board to introduce you to new donors
• Have coffee with your Top 50 prospective donors
• Help donors plan their charitable legacies
• Write mass mail appeals
• Write dozens of custom donor appeals
• Get to know your local non-profits so your knowledge can add value to your donors
• Serve as a bridge between your donors and your professional advisors
• Plan professional development courses for your professional advisors

All of the above are worthy goals, but you cannot do all of them. Oprah once said, "You can have it all. You just can't have it all at one time." Same holds true here. You cannot do it all and maintain a healthy self-care routine or a model work/life balance.  And you can’t do all of them well knowing that the Whirlwind awaits to rob you of your focus. That means to amplify your impact, you have to decide what you can afford to do and what you must pass on--‘afford’ means the expenditure of both time and money.

Knowing that time is your most precious asset, you must choose which tasks are best for you to do. Make wise decisions about where you will expend your right brain moxie. Your creativity is valuable, so use it well. Then, you can decide to outsource the tasks that aren’t the best use or your time or forego the tasks altogether. For example, our foundation doesn’t do chicken—meaning we don’t have big events that would serve chicken. We simply don’t have the manpower for the return on investment that we’ve measured from those kinds of things. Additionally, there are some tasks that we hire a consultant for, like designing our Annual Report. Then there are things that we are REALLY good at--that's where we spend out one-of-a-kind time!

What’s the best use of your creative energy? Figure out how to best use your time and then make good decisions about how to get the rest of the tasks done…or not. Regardless, when you start concentrating your time on specific responsibilities and really digging deep to do them well, you will start to see greater impact. 

Just like ‘residential coffee’ and ‘commercial coffee’, some things you should do at your office using your best people and skills and other things can be done by an outside consultant.  Both are ok. What’s not ok is making the hard decision to do everything on your list in a mediocre way instead of doing what you do best in a remarkable way.  This work should never be too hard or too easy—if so, you’re not doing it right. Shoot for al dente.

 All My Best,

Dawn
dawn@dawnbrown.com
dawn brown creative, llc.