When you’re starting out, you don’t have anyone’s attention.
That’s true whether you’re starting a nonprofit, starting a food truck, or starting a political career.
But when you’re starting a business or a YouTube channel or an advocacy campaign, you work hard to get people’s attention. Those folks wave their arms around. They say edgy things.
One of their driving principles is ”Without anyone’s attention, this venture will not succeed.”’ So they make a ruckus.
Why don’t more nonprofits make a ruckus like that? Why don’t more nonprofits say and do edgy things?
I think it’s because so many of us are nice. We want to be warm to people. We don’t want to make people uncomfortable. We want to convince people of our competency.
One of our driving principles is ”We want the power of our work to inspire people to give.” And that’s not even a principle – it’s just a desire.
But can’t we remain “nice” while making it a priority to earn more attention for our cause?
And as nonprofits, don’t we have the ultimate motivating reason to generate more attention? We know that that the more attention we earn, the more donors we’ll acquire, and the more of our mission we’ll accomplish.
The standard nonprofit toolkit does not have “generate a ton of attention” in it.
But shouldn’t it?
And as you look at your plan for this year, are you intentionally making at least one concerted effort to get more people to pay attention to what’s going on with your cause?
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