The Story of the Occupational Therapist

Although this happened nearly 10 years ago, I still laugh when I think about it. My oldest son, Griffin, was in high school and thinking about a part-time job to make some extra money. He didn’t really know what he wanted to do or where to find a job that was more than just a summer gig. God bless his literal brain, but in all seriousness, he said, “I think I need an Occupational Therapist.”  While you laugh along with me, technically, he wasn’t wrong. And I completely understood what he meant, which is the definition of communication—successfully conveying ideas from a sender to a receiver. He literally was seeking wise counsel from someone who knew a lot about occupations--an Occupational Therapist! LOL!

That interaction taught me a couple of things. First, I love that Griffin realized that he didn’t have all the answers. He realized early on that he needed to seek expert guidance to help him fulfill his mission of getting a part-time job. I say that knowledge is power all the time, but Adam Grant adds, “But knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.” It also made it vividly clear that just because most people know what an Occupational Therapist is and that is has nothing to do with job-seeking, not everyone knows that--clearly. The nonprofit world is super guilty in this area! We use words, terms, and acronyms that only we understand…All. The. Time! Internally, that’s not bad. It probably helps shorten emails, meetings, and meetings that should have been emails. But it doesn’t help us covey our messages as the sender when the receiver doesn’t know our lingo.

Today’s blog will be filled with Left Brain Marketing Methods and Right Brain Marketing Moxie.

Left Brain Marketing Methods are logical, so it’s no surprise that you seek ideas from others that have more knowledge, or different life or work experience, than you do. You do this all the time—you’re reading this blog after all. But I adopted a method decades ago that helps me take the new insight I gain and put it into actionable practice. It’s simple, quickly applicable, and I’d love to teach it to you...along with a way to execute it immediately.

Right Brain Marketing Moxie helps you take that alphabet soup that you use to communicate internally and activates your creativity so that the essence of communication—successfully conveying messages—doesn’t get lost in translation.

You work hard, you just make it look easy—and that’s a gift. Let’s figure out how you can communicate to your donors in a way that they’ll easily understand and send you a gift as well.

Let’s do this! It's go time!

Left Brain Marketing Methods: I sent out a Listserve question to my Indiana peers a couple of weeks ago asking about the benefits they offer for their employees. With The Great Resignation being a very real thing, I am hoping to both keep my ah-mazing team for many years to come and to be able to hire quality talent when we grow. Benefits will play a huge role in this, I’m sure. While I can’t say that I have an answer to my original benefits question just yet, I did share an idea that we do at our Foundation that has been well-received.

It should not surprise anyone reading this that I’m a big proponent of Professional Development. I’m a lifelong learner and I’ve found that quality to be true with many nonprofit professionals that I have met. But this kind of training can get quite expensive and when your budget is tight, you often forego training for yourself in order to provide something for your donors, your clients, or the community you serve. That’s an occupational hazard wherein we may need an Occupational Therapist!

So, several years ago I told my team that two times per year they could buy any book on our dime and take a professional development day to read that book. That’s it! It’s not complicated. It’s affordable! And it's a big hit! Of course, the book does need to have some professional quality to it that could enhance their performance as an employee. And to add a bit of depth to this development, they are asked to do a quick report to the full team at the first meeting after their day of development, so we can all learn something. The report is called a 3-2-1.

This is how it works, make note of:

3. Three bold or profound ideas that you learned.
4. Two ideas that you want to tell other colleagues about—this could be any colleagues that might benefit from the knowledge, including people from outside your office.
5. One step of immediate action you’d like to take based on your newfound knowledge.

We find this kind of reporting works for books, but also works for webinars, workshops, and conferences. Oftentimes, these events are those fire-hose drinking festivities that offer so much information that you get overwhelmed. When that happens, you tend not to do anything. So, the 3-2-1 gets you moving with action and intention immediately. You can always go back to the reams of notes you took or the saturation of highlights you made at another time. But usually that other time isn’t immediately after you missed a day or two of work and are coming back to Mt. Email. That’s usually the worst time to figure out how to implement a new plan or execute new information. So, the 3-2-1 gets you active immediately…you can always come back to the other important data later.

If you like the idea of a Professional Development Book Day and the 3-2-1 report, but don’t know where to start, here's an idea! We began tracking the books we read, or want to read, many years ago on GoodReads.com. If you’d like to see the books we’ve read, want to read, or are reading—you can find them posted on our GoodReads page. Enjoy!

Right Brain Marketing Moxie: The lingo you use can cause a failure to communicate—and you might not even realize it. For example, in the community foundation world we tend to use the word ‘endowment’ all the time. It’s the keystone of the work that we do. But just because we know the term and use is daily, or even hourly, doesn’t mean that everyone gets it. Apparently it has something to do with building or growing. If you didn't know what an endowment was you might this it was done by an architect or a gardener ala Griffin's definition of an Occupational Therapist. It’s not really a term that we use in everyday language. And this doesn’t even count all the acronyms we might use like CRT, RMD, PRI, or dozens more. It might be worth it to take another look at the chart I included in my blog from last week, Finding Your Peeps, to determine what terms you might need to clarify for your various donor segments. You’ll soon realize that your past Board Members won’t need the level of simplicity that your New Donors will. However, in order to successfully communicate—successfully convey a message from a sender to a receiver—you’ll need to use a common language that you donor understands so well that they will be led to act.

We did that one year with a TOW video. Yes, a video! After all, video killed the radio star, right? So, if it was good enough for MTV, it's good enough for me! You may have heard about TOW: Transfer Of Wealth. It's another one of those pesky shorthand acronyms that we use. We talk about it in terms of the baby boomers transferring their wealth from one generation to another. Although I am a huge fan of the Oxford comma, the commas in the number that depicts the Transfer of Wealth that will be passed from one generation to another in our small, rural Indiana county is impressive. Seriously, it includes two beautifully placed commas. Two! And they are gorgeous! They truly give the Oxford Comma a run for its money. But most people have no idea what the TOW is or why it’s important to a community or a nonprofit. That’s why you must tell them that story and not just assume they know what it means. You really need to tell them in a way that will make them see how their actions involving the Transfer Of Wealth can lead to a much brighter future for them, you, and those you serve.

So, we commissioned a remarkably simple, short (under 3 minutes) video that we could share to specific donor segments, via social media, and on our website.  The uber-talented Aaron Johnson customized several videos, like the one you're about to see, for CoFo's in the state of Indiana, if you're interested! 

Unbelievably, videos aren’t as expensive as you think. Plus, in our post-Covid world, (Yes, I know it may not be fully over, but I’m claiming it by putting it out into the universe!), videos are more accepted now than ever before--and they don’t have to look like a Steven Spielberg motion picture. Short and simple is acceptable and appreciated, especially when communicating complex concepts like the Transfer Of Wealth. You can check out our video here.

Maybe you’re thinking, I’d love to do a video, but can’t afford it. Some are costly, of course. But you should check into it first. A few years ago, I got to travel to Des Moines, Iowa to teach some amazing community foundation leaders there. Since that time, I've followed along to see some the awesome things they are doing. And one of those amazing things is videos! The Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines has had immense success with videos. In fact, they’ve had such great feedback that they’re offering to customize the videos they’ve made for a mere $500. You can check them out here:

• What is a Community Foundation?
• Ways to Give
• Your Retirement Giving Game Plan
•  What is a Charitable Giving Fund
•  IRA Charitable Rollover
• Legacy Funds
• Board Training Series--Four individual videos covering the board responsibilities of:
• Learning
• Commitment
• Fiduciary
• Governance

Each video can be personalized at the beginning and end with your community foundation’s logo and website url. The customized videos will be delivered via WeTransfer in a .MOV file so you can use the video in the ways that best meet your needs. If video is a communication tool that you think you’d like to try, the Des Moines customized videos might be a terrific way to dip your toe in the water. If you are interested in learning more or pursuing the opportunity to personalize any of their pieces, contact Sara Bonney, Chief Marketing Officer, at [email protected] or (515) 447-4201.

Maybe, just maybe, a video will speak to your donors in a way that drives them to take action and give or give more! Perhaps creating and deploying a video will exercise a different part of your creative brain that will spark other ideas that your donors need to hear. Hopefully both!

We get in a marketing rut sometimes. Week-after-week and year-after-year you’ve been trying to take your mission and vision and convey it to your donors to help make your little corner of the world a better place. Although extremely rewarding, it can start to feel redundant in a second-verse-same-as-the-first kind of way. It’s yet another reason that I’m worried about The Great Resignation in the nonprofit world. This genre of work needs to attract and retain some of the best and brightest and some of the most generous and heart-filled people in your community. So, your cup must remain filled to continue doing the good work you do so well. Sometimes changing up the normal grind and seeing different results gives us a newfound energy and love of what we do and why we do it, no Occupational Therapist required.

All My best,
 
Dawn
[email protected]
dawn brown creative, llc.