An Introduction to Crisis Management for Nonprofits

Full Transcript:

Steven: Good afternoon if you're on the East Coast and good morning if you're on the West

Coast. Thanks for being here for today's Bloomerang webinar, "An

Introduction to Crisis Management for Nonprofits."

My name is Steven Shattuck and I'm the VP of Marketing here at

Bloomerang and I'll be monitoring today's discussion. Today's

guest is Brian Goldthorpe. He's the president of Privileged

Communication. Hey there, Brian. Thanks for being here.

Brian: Thanks for having me.

Steven: This is great. For those of you who don't know Brian, he has

over 10 years of professional experience in strategic

communication, public relations, organizational communication,

and crisis management. At his firm, he helps clients secure

their reputations by consulting and training businesses, elected

officials, political candidates, and, of course, charitable

organizations in crisis management and messaging.

He previously served as the statewide public policy director for

the Pennsylvania chapters of the National MS Society. He was

also Communications Associate for the Philadelphia Workforce

Investment Board and a legislative aide for former Ohio state

senator Jeff Jacobson. He holds a Master's degree from the

Annenberg School for Communication at the University of

Pennsylvania.

We've got a real PR pro here. He's going to talk today about

crisis management specifically for nonprofits hopefully to keep

you all out of trouble. This is going to be a really great

presentation. It's just a real treat to have you here, Brian.

Thanks again for sharing all your knowledge.

Brian: Absolutely. Thanks for giving me this opportunity. I'm excited

to be able to chat with everyone and share a little bit of

introductory information to crisis communication and crisis

management.

Steven: This will be great. Just a little bit of housecleaning and then

I'll hand things off to Brian.

What's going to happen is he's going to roll through his

presentation and then afterwards, we'll jump right into a Q&A

session. We like that to be interactive. As you're listening to

Brian's presentation here for the next half hour or so, please

do send some questions our way through the chat box. If you hear

something that maybe you'd like explained or elaborated upon,

feel free to do that. We'll see those questions and I'll be

fielding those to Brian a little later on this afternoon during

the Q&A session.

Just so everyone is aware, I will be sending out the slides and

a recording of the presentation a little later this afternoon.

Look for that to hit your email inbox in case you need to bounce

early or just want to review the great information that we're

going to hear a little later on.

I'm not going to take up any more time flapping my gums. I'm

going to hand it off to Brian to get us started. Brian, take it

away.

Brian: Great. Thank you. I just wanted to thank Bloomerang again for

this opportunity.

I've worked with elected officials and candidates for office and

I've worked with major corporations like AT&T and I always come

back to nonprofits and charitable organizations. When I was

growing up, my mother was the Executive Director of our local

YMCA. I've always kind of had that charitable streak in me. It's

something that I'm very passionate about. I serve on a couple of

boards myself.

One of the things that has always been kind of a professional

challenge to myself is to try and figure out how to take some of

the skills and experiences that I've had outside of the

charitable arena and apply them to the nonprofit world. That's

kind of how my interest in crisis communication and crisis

management for nonprofits came about.

I noticed that an increasing number of nonprofit organizations

and some of the most beloved nonprofits over the last four or

five years have had some problems with crisis management and

with managing their reputation. This has created a little bit of

a trickledown effect where local, community-based organizations,

no matter how large or small, are becoming susceptible to the

same types of challenges to their reputation.

As I discovered in speaking with people, most of them were

woefully unprepared for how to handle these situations. I think

we tend to view crises as problems that happen to celebrities

and politicians and major corporations and folks that are really

up front and center in terms of their public visibility.

Organizations that maybe don't have the visibility of a Susan G.

Komen or a Red Cross don't necessarily think about crisis

management often until it's too late.

I've been inspired to work with nonprofits to try and minimize

this particular risk. That's kind of the angle from which I've

approached this over the last couple of years. I've tried to

take the expertise that I've developed through crisis management

in politics and corporate America and apply those rules and

customize those rules to be really applicable for nonprofit

organizations.

The goal for today's discussion is really to provide a basic

introduction to what is crisis management in contemporary public

affairs. What is it that we're referring to? I want to create a

shared understanding amongst all attendees of the kinds of

situations to look out for and basically to provide some

infrastructure that will allow you to think about your

organization, think about the unique risks that are presented to

you based upon the programs and services and the scope of your

mission and how you execute that mission so that you can start

to think about how you do some crisis planning internally.

I've been engaged by organizations that have already had a

crisis happen and I've come in to help them try to figure out

how to respond to it. I've also worked with organizations in

advance of a crisis to help them put together a plan so that

they have something tangible and concrete to activate if and

when a crisis situation does occur.

I'll tell you it's much easier to work with organizations in the

latter capacity to plan effectively ahead of time than it is to

work with those who get caught with their proverbial pants down.

I'm big on preparation and planning. You'll notice that through

the course of the presentation. That's a recurring theme.

I want to get started with just kind of a basic overview of what

crisis management is and honestly how we define a crisis as it

applies to nonprofit organizations.

There was a time when the only crises of note were political sex

scandals, when celebrities had problems with their reputations.

In this day and age, a crisis is something that needs to be

thought about in a much broader way. I define a crisis as any

situation that threatens a nonprofit's reputation. It may

disrupt that organization's ability to carry out its mission.

Using that definition, you have to cast a wide net to think

about the types of situations that can become crises.

For nonprofit organizations, a crisis can originate through a

variety of causes, from fiscal emergencies and legal woes to

leadership problems and staffing struggles. That's to say that

you never really know where a crisis is going to come from. The

best thing that you can do is have a plan and be prepared to act

if something happens and also know where your risks lie and how

to minimize the likelihood that a crisis is going to occur.

Now, though the origins vary from crisis to crisis, the

importance of effectively managing these situations remains

constant. It really is playing an increasingly large role in

whether organizations are successful over time.

Never before have we lived in a media environment where public

opinion can so quickly change. From social media to digital

media outlets and the way that they interact in the mainstream

press, one false move, one bad stakeholder engagement, one

negative piece of press, one bit of information about financial

mismanagement, that's all it takes, quite frankly. We're living

in kind of a new era when it comes to crisis management. No

nonprofit organization is immune.

The practice of crisis management, when you see television shows

like "Scandal" on ABC, people get a very kind of skewed idea of

what crisis management involves. Basically, it's a lot less sexy

than that. Crisis management is basically the standards that we

use to measure which scenarios constitute a crisis, and amongst

those, which require a response.

This is basically your litmus test for your organization. This

is something, again, that has to be customized for every

individual nonprofit. You need to figure out what types of risks

are those that need to be on your radar screen, how are you

going to assess those risks when they come up and, ultimately,

what types of crisis situations or potential crises are going to

warrant a proactive response.

Crisis management also includes the methods that are used to

respond to real and perceived crises. This is an important

point. A crisis does not actually have to be legitimate in order

for it to require a response in this day and age. Because anyone

can have an opinion and anyone can levy criticism or can make

claims about an organization at will through social media and

through other outlets, often you have to respond to the

perception of a crisis, the perception of financial

mismanagement, the perception of problems with the staff, and

the perception of an organization's inability to effectively

execute its mission, as much as you do to a real crisis.

Those two are certainly related and it's important in terms of

the content of the crisis response what you say about that

crisis, that you understand that this is something that's real

or if it's just the perception of a problem.

Crisis management also includes, and this is where we're going

to kind of drill down through the rest of the presentation, the

communication. How do you communicate about this crisis

internally?

One of the things that often gets overlooked for nonprofits is

how do you communicate to your staff, to your board members and

to your partners, those stakeholder groups? How do you talk to

them about a crisis situation in a way that is going to keep

them engaged, it's going to keep building morale, and it's going

to make them confident that there is a plan in place and that

you're going to be able to weather whatever storm is coming your

way?

Certainly communication to external audiences, that's any

members of the public who have an interest in the issue areas

that intersect with your organization's mission, and also

includes the news media and organizational partners that you may

work with.

I'd like to tell you the dirty, little secret about crisis

management. There's no magic bullet. A crisis mindset requires

the ability to think of the worst case scenario while

simultaneously suggesting numerous solutions. Trial and error is

an accepted practice. Quite frankly, it's the one practice that

is most frequently used and probably most accepted. Most crisis

management experts will not tell you that trial and error is a

necessity.

Often the first line of defense doesn't work. It's really

necessary to maintain several strategies in your contingency

plans and to always be on alert. I can't stress this enough.

This applies to all communications in public affairs work. What

works for one organization is not necessarily transferable to

another organization.

You need to have a crisis plan that has a comprehensive set of

strategies that has more than one approach. If your first line

of defense doesn't work, you need to have something else that

you can activate. If you're not able to proactively get out in

front of an issue, you need to have alternate ways of shifting

the narrative and really allowing to organization to determine

the terms of what the dialogue is about this crisis situation.

It's important to be creative. You need to be reflexive and

flexible. You need to have a real, solid understanding of the

unique risks that are presented to your organization and a

laundry list of strategies to help deal with any problems that

might arise.

I've alluded to this in the introduction. Why is crisis

management important, especially for nonprofits? In our social-

media-savvy, 24-hour-news world, it's increasingly important for

nonprofit organizations to plan, prepare and preempt when

possible, crisis situations.

Now, charities are generally appreciated and they certainly have

far more goodwill than politicians and businesses. They're not

necessarily perceived as being innocent like they used to be.

Well-publicized fiscal leadership and morale crises have

stricken some of the largest and most prolific nonprofit

organizations in the world. As a result, all nonprofits have

become more susceptible to public criticism and attacks on their

reputation.

An additional wrinkle to that is, and I spoke with Steven today

and I alluded to this, as media has become more pervasive over

the last decade or so, people have also gotten more vigilant

about how their charitable donations are being spent. When the

economy tanked, there was less money to go around. The money

that was there to go around was being looked at with more

scrutiny by donors.

You have more visibility. You have less overall funding

available and you certainly have, I think, stricter compliance

and standards in the way that organizations are being looked at.

You have more visibility for the media kind of converging with

this trend of increased accountability for nonprofit

organizations to make sure that funding is being used in the

most appropriate way.

It's vital for charitable organizations to establish a crisis

team. Create a manual that can be activated when a crisis

situation occurs. Complete some initial staff training, very

similar to this kind of a presentation that I'm doing today, so

that everyone across the organization, even if they have no role

in managing the crisis itself, has a shared understanding of

what's at stake when a crisis situation happens and what to be

on the lookout for.

When the staff training is complete, it's really necessary to

prepare yourselves for an aggressive and fast-moving news cycle.

One of the biggest challenges for an organization that doesn't

often proactively seek visibility through the press is it's very

challenging to all of a sudden have negative publicity. One of

the things that I try to do when I work with organizations is to

bridge that gap a little bit and say, "Look, you may not

proactively seek out media coverage, but if a crisis situation

happens, it's going to find you anyway."

We have to have a little bit of a paradigm shift with some

organizations to think about how best to respond to the kind of

media coverage that is going to come out and ultimately get out

in front of it so that the narrative from the organization is

the one that is dominant and that people are hearing the most.

A few more points about the importance of crisis management.

Your credibility and reputation as nonprofit professionals and

also as organizations are heavily influenced by the perception

of your responses during crisis situations. Your stakeholders

will expect you to emerge as a leader and minimize the impact of

a crisis at hand. At the same time, detractors or competitors of

yours are going to look for someone to blame. It can be an

extreme environment and it can literally happen overnight. It's

really incumbent upon nonprofits to establish a sense of

normality and foster collective learning from the crisis

experience.

During crisis, one of the biggest challenges is to deal with any

strategic challenges that you face, some political risks and

opportunities, and make sure that the business of the

organization is able to continue. Any nonprofit professional

will tell you that their biggest concern is programs and

services or research or whatever the means by which they use to

execute the mission of their organization. Public perception

does not necessarily fall real high on that list of priorities.

As issues with reputation and with crisis management are being

handled, those things need to be compartmentalized a little bit

so that the business of the organization, providing services,

directing programs, conducting research, those functions can

continue to happen. That's one of the biggest challenges for

organizations.

If handled effectively, a crisis provides nonprofit

organizations with an opportunity to exhibit leadership,

illustrate value, safeguard your stakeholders and ultimately

educate the public. I often say a crisis is an opportunity to

turn a frown upside down.

I try to, out of every situation where all of a sudden a

nonprofit organization may have an additional public platform to

talk about who they are and what they do, turn that crisis

situation, turn the magnifying glass that has been placed on the

organization into an opportunity to let more people know about

who you are and what you do as a fundraising call to action, as

a call to action to help people understand the severity of

issues and problems that you might be dealing with. There are

ways to optimize a crisis situation so that not only are you

able to neutralize the threat, but you're able to turn this into

a proactive and productive exercise.

I talked about preparation and planning, but I want to kind of

reiterate that now in a little bit more detail. Effective crisis

management absolutely begins early. It's necessary to know what

your unique risks are as an organization. That often intersects

with your mission, with the population you might serve with the

nature of your stakeholders, with where your funding comes from,

whether it's public funding, it's grant funding, it's donors, or

a combination of those.

You need to know how to assess your risks. Not all risks are

created equal. Some of those risks, unfortunately for

nonprofits, that are always the most problematic are those

related to financial mismanagement and often behavior of staff

and infighting between staff. Those are the kinds of stories

that the media loves to jump on because they're salacious. They

have interesting implications for the overall health of the

organization and the public has an interest in those things as

well. You need to know what kinds of risks are the most severe

and which really warrant a proactive response.

Preparation and planning involves creating protocol and

critically assigning roles and responsibilities. One of the most

important parts of the planning process is to make sure that

staff and board members know who is going to be responsible for

what role. In some cases, this involves bringing in external

support as well.

Putting together that action plan is not just what you're going

to say and the content of how you're going to respond and who

you're going to respond to, but it's a staffing chart of who's

going to be responsible for what.

How are you going to makes sure that the leadership of the

organization has the ability to sign off on strategy and tactics

quickly? Who is going to be responsible for communicating with

them? How is your internal communication infrastructure going to

interact with any consultants you have? If there are legal

implications, how are you going to engage your attorneys? If

there are financial implications, how do you engage your

accountants?

A good crisis plan provides a roadmap for all of these different

scenarios and literally gives you a step-by-step formula to

follow in the event that a crisis hits.

I also recommend practice, and this is something that needs to

be customized for the organization. Doing an occasional fire

drill to help leadership prep for how to activate the crisis

response plan is not a bad idea. It's not something that needs

to be done over and over again, but once the crisis plan is

written, having a couple of well-timed fire drills that are

coordinated by internal or external communication specialists is

a good way to really make sure that you're on top of things and

comfortable with the strategies moving forward.

Taking these proactive steps early and often increases the

likelihood that you will make sound decisions, take responsive

action, and conduct effective crisis management. The only thing

worse than not proactively responding in the face of a crisis is

to respond inappropriately or inaccurately. Those kinds of

mistakes are made when a plan isn't in place to figure out what

to do. You feel the pressure to respond, so you respond without

thinking about the implications of what it is that you're

saying.

You see this frequently, and then an organization has to come

out and apologize for the response. It complicates the narrative

and it makes it seem like the organization is disjointed and

disorganized. A big part of crisis planning is to avoid those

things from happening.

I'm talking a lot about communicating during a crisis. The

primary goal of crisis communication is to protect an

organization's reputation when it's facing a threat. Most often,

the goal is to minimize the damage and, as I said before, enable

the organization to continue to function at full capacity

throughout a crisis. As I said, many crises also present

opportunities to communicate new ideas and objectives. Crisis

communication can play a significant role by transforming the

unexpected into the anticipated and responding accordingly.

In addition to preparing, anticipation is a big theme that I

talk about when I work with nonprofit organizations. This gets

beyond just the step-by-step plan. This gets into how we create

an opportunity from the crisis situation. How do we turn this

around and really optimize it? It's necessary to anticipate four

key things. You need to anticipate the purpose, goals, goals of

your communication, as well as the messages that are going to be

needed during the crisis.

Some of those will be embedded into your plan and you need to

make sure they're consistent with the overall narrative and

mission-driven language of the organization. You can't go off-

script. Just because you're in a crisis situation doesn't mean

that you kind of betray the identity of the organization. You

need to weave that language into the content of your crisis

response messages.

You also need to anticipate what kind of philosophy you are

going to use. What's your approach that you will likely use

during this crisis? I'll talk about that in the next slide.

You need to anticipate what things are going to be of most

interest to the news media based upon the nature of different

crises and potential stories both at the beginning and as things

evolve.

Unfortunately, most crisis situations don't start and stop in a

single news cycle. Often, the first information that is reported

is only a part of the story. Usually, there are other layers to

be uncovered. Once other media outlets become aware of it,

they're going to dig for things. Often, a crisis situation is

going to unfold over a period of days or a period of weeks. A

nonprofit, the hope that they can do is to get out in front of

it and become the source for media when they're reporting on

this particular story.

It's important to anticipate specific questions that the media,

policymakers, the general public, and other stakeholders are

going to have and, to the best of your ability, script some

answers to those so that the organization is communicating

consistently and concisely.

I mentioned philosophical approaches to communication in the

previous slide. I just want to run through these really quickly.

The philosophical approach often times depends on what types of

programs and services or what type of mission the organization

has and also the nature of the crisis. There are really four

major different approaches.

You can lead with concern. You can convey empathy and caring.

This is most applicable if you have an individual who somehow

has been harmed by the actions of the organization, whether it's

a donor who feels their money has been mismanaged or it's a

recipient of a program or service who feels that they have been

slighted by the organization.

Another philosophy is to acknowledge uncertainty and share

dilemmas and possible outcomes. There are some situations where

it's just a challenging situation. Instead of pretending that

you have all the answers when you may very well not, it's

important to recognize that there's a little bit of uncertainty,

that this is a process, and indicate what steps you're taking as

an organization to get out in front of this issue and being

committed to being transparent and sharing your progress with

your stakeholders, the general public, and the media as things

progress.

It's also important to foreshadow potential or likely

developments. This gets into how the story evolves. If you feel

that the beginning of the crisis is going to snowball or you

feel that there's going to be other information that comes out,

it's better to cop to it early. If you talk about those

situations up front, it takes the wind out of the sails of

people who might be wanting to chastise you or criticize you for

it. That's another philosophical approach that can be engaged

depending on the nature of the crisis.

The fourth approach is to aggress and guide expectations. We

expect, as the general public and also your individual

stakeholders, a lot from our nonprofit organizations. We expect

them to run on very little overhead. We expect that you all

deliver a very high level of programs and services. We expect

that you're going to be able to make everyone happy all the

time. That's, unfortunately, not reality. Sometimes your

approach needs to simply be to level expectations and to make

sure that people understand that there are complexities to the

work that you do. There are complexities to running a nonprofit

organization. Let them in on your process a little bit. Be

transparent, be open, and be honest.

I've mentioned stakeholder audiences throughout this

presentation. Specifically, if you wanted to compartmentalize

them or itemize them, we're looking at issue experts. These are

people who are frequently contacted by the media because they're

considered experts in their field. Their field will typically

intersect with your mission or the way that you execute your

mission.

If you take a health-and-human-services-based nonprofit

organization, you may get someone from the NIH that's an issue

expert. You may get someone from a rival nonprofit organization

who's recognized as an issue expert. That's an important

stakeholder audience because if your organization ends up in the

crosshairs, it's those experts who are going to be contacted to

comment about you and about the situation.

Your employees, arguably the most important stakeholder

audience. Nonprofit organizations are nothing if they don't have

morale and a sense of pride within the people that are working

there. Communicating clearly and effectively with your employees

about how a crisis situation is being managed is important.

Board members and other leaders are an important stakeholder

audience. Your partners and collaborators, these are

organizations that you may work very closely with, that you have

some kind of a symbiotic or reciprocal relationship with.

They're going to be very important to keep in the loop as well.

Then you have the general public, people that happen to have an

interest in the work that you do, in the services that you

provide, in the people who you help, or in the way that you go

about your business. Sometimes it's referred to as an issue

public or an interested public. Then you have the news media.

That, nowadays, spans everything: traditional and digital media,

people who have blogs, to The New York Times. It really covers

everything. Also external public affairs staff, people that are

feeding information to the news media.

The goals of communication during a crisis are particularly

important. You want to foster trust and credibility through

timely, transparent, and, when possible, proactive

communication. You need to identify and explain any risks or

potential risks. The goal is just to address and ease the

concerns of your stakeholder audiences. It's important to

minimize harm and reduce the scope and magnitude of a crisis.

You do that by achieving high awareness and, if necessary,

taking steps towards change.

One of the biggest problems that I've encountered, and this is

particularly relevant on the political side and I don't know why

politicians are so unwilling to recognize that they've made a

mistake, but the willingness to not only own your mistakes but

to commit to being a proactive participant in making the change

that is necessary so that those mistakes don't repeat

themselves. You generate more credibility and goodwill by being

honest and open and committing to change, if necessary, than you

do with any other message during a crisis situation.

You need to give guidance, provide options, and make suggestions

for helpful action. If you can accomplish those goals from a

communication standpoint during a crisis, I think you'll be

pretty successful in weathering whatever storm comes your way.

In terms of my last slide, and I want to make sure that we have

an opportunity to answer plenty of questions, I just identified

some keys to success. This is a little bit of a summary of some

of the things that I've talked about already.

You need to maintain connectivity with all stakeholder

audiences. Minimize the disruption of daily professional

responsibilities. Create an opportunity from every crisis. Be

proactive and get out in front of the conversation and the

narrative. Be accessible to all audiences, particularly the

media. You want to become, like I said before, the source on a

crisis that is relevant to your organization. Show sincere

empathy for any people, places, or organizations that have been

affected by the situation.

Be as transparent and honest as possible, provided there are no

legal implications in doing so. Part of the crisis planning

protocol is making sure that the right people are involved in

the tactical or strategy conversation. A lot of the situations

that have to do with especially financial accounting and how

nonprofits are running their organization could potentially have

legal implications. You need to makes sure that legal counsel is

present and also that accountants and CFOs have a role in that

conversation as well and that everyone is on board with the

message that is going to be sent.

It's also important to keep really detailed and secure records

of all external communication. Make sure that you secure your

private correspondence and confidential or internal information.

I've seen this far too often where things have been accidentally

sent to the wrong distribution list and subsequently have been

leaked to the media.

It happened with an organization I was very involved with, a

national nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. There was a big

struggle between their executive director and a couple of

members of their board. One of the members of their board

decided to send this information to the media. They say

inadvertently. I'm not sure how that happens exactly. It

ultimately ended up that the organization completely fell apart.

Once the media got wind of it, everyone started kind of circling

the wagons and they had no crisis plan. They had no way to deal

with a situation like this. The folks that were already kind of

pitted against one another ended up having a more public dispute

and ultimately the organization did not recover.

It's important as another key to success to communicate early

and often during a crisis and to become the source for the

media. Communicate crisis response messages through several

channels, including traditional and social media. You don't have

to wait for the "press" for third-party validation. You can send

messages about your crisis response through Facebook and

Twitter, your own organization's blog, your website, and your

email. You don't have to wait for the media to cover a situation

if you really want to get out in front of it.

Ultimately, a multi-faceted crisis communication plan is the

best. It is something that will serve your organization well. It

will help create a shared understanding across your organization

and across all staff and all board members of the types of

situations that your organization is particularly vulnerable to.

It will minimize the likelihood that those situations will

become truly problematic. I like to say the best crisis plan is

one that you don't have to implement. If you do it correctly,

you can't completely control it, but you can minimize the

likelihood that a crisis situation will come up.

With that said, I want to take some time for questions. We can

keep going.

Steven: Great. That was awesome, Brian. Thanks for all that info. Wow.

That was really fantastic. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as

I did just listening along. Awesome information. I think you got

some people thinking because we've got a lot of questions here

in the chat room. If you haven't asked a question yet, maybe

there's something on your mind, please feel free to chat those

in there.

We'll just roll through these until we run out of time. We'll

hopefully try to get to as many questions as possible. Brian,

I'll just kind of go through these as they came in.

Leah here was wondering, "When there's a bad incident that we

cannot deny but could not have prevented, is it better to talk

to the press or should they avoid comment? Is there ever a

situation where silence is the best policy or should you

absolutely always respond to the press?" What would you say to

Leah there?

Brian: Unfortunately in this day and age, silence or no comment isn't

really effective. Actually, people view it as an admission of

guilt. I'll give you an example. This is not a nonprofit example

but a governmental example. Some of you may have followed some

of the bad behavior the United States Secret Service engaged in

when some of their agents had been traveling overseas. There was

an issue in Cartagena, Colombia, that was really problematic.

They were called to the carpet and went to a congressional

hearing. The director of the Secret Service at the time, his

only comment to the press in advance of this congressional

inquiry was, "No comment."

When he got before Congress, he said basically, "I'm not

admitting to anything. I'm here because I'm being forced to be

here by law. I'm not admitting to anything and I really have no

comment. I'm not committing to making any change, to change the

behavior." This was in the face of insurmountable evidence.

Ultimately, that type of non-response was viewed as an admission

of guilt.

I think that a response of some variety is necessary. If it's a

situation that was truly unavoidable, explain it. If it's a

situation where there was actually some wrongdoing, take

responsibility for it, commit to change if necessary. It's the

only real way to move on in an efficient fashion. If you let it

linger, the chance that it will become bigger than the initial

problem goes up dramatically.

Steven: That makes a lot of sense. I'm going to kind of bounce around.

There's a question that kind of dovetails into that. What about

timing? Talia here was wondering, "Is there a limited window of

opportunity to respond or is it a better late than never

situation?" Is there a rule of thumb that you should respond

immediately? Should you take some time to maybe craft the

response and make sure you've got all your ducks in a row and be

a little more comfortable rather than rushing? What's your sense

on timing of response?

Brian: Responses should be efficient, but they shouldn't be haphazard.

You shouldn't feel pressure to respond unless you're confident

that you have a strategic response prepared. Like I said before,

the only thing worse than not making a comment is to speak

incorrectly, inaccurately, or inappropriately. Those are the

things that can make the crisis really blow up. You need to take

the time that's necessary to craft the appropriate response. It

needs to be a priority, but you shouldn't feel pressure to

respond if you're not ready. It is always appropriate to say,

"We will be making a comment shortly." You can always buy

yourself a little bit more time.

Steven: That's good. Right away you can say that and then craft the

actual response with a little bit more time. That makes sense.

Brian: Exactly.

Steven: Cool. We've got another interesting question here. How do you

communicate when confidentiality is an issue? They can't convey

details but they still have to manage their crisis. Obviously

this is going to be an issue for nonprofits. Financial

implications, maybe if they're in healthcare, they can't divulge

those kinds of details. How do you balance out that situation

where you can't really tell the whole story but you still have

to manage the crisis?

Brian: It's tricky. It needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis

and it needs to be done in collaboration with legal, either

internal legal staff or external legal counsel, however you

handle your legal concerns and considerations. Anyone who has a

role especially as it relates to finances, anyone who has a role

in financial oversight and accountability, they need to have a

seat at the table as well.

Often, a way to handle that is to not have the typical

spokesperson. Whether that's the president or CEO or executive

director of the organization, have them defer to the legal

counsel. It's seen as much more accepted practice if an attorney

says, "This information is confidential. We can't share it," as

opposed to it coming from someone who is not a legal

professional.

Sometimes you have to pivot the spokesperson in order to send

that message and have it be taken seriously. Otherwise, it looks

like the executive director or the leader or whoever the

spokesperson is, is deflecting.

Steven: That makes sense. Brian, you told a story towards the end of

your presentation about maybe some folks who didn't handle a

situation very well. Can you think of a success story, maybe

someone who handled a situation really well, maybe something

that you saw or someone that you worked with?

I always think of the Red Cross a few years ago when one of

their employees accidentally tweeted from the Red Cross' account

rather than their personal account and they got into trouble. I

thought they handled that pretty well. Is there another

situation that stands out in your mind where somebody just

nailed this, all the things you've been talking about?

Brian: I worked with an organization based in Philadelphia which is

called the Mazzoni Center. They had dealt with issues where

their medical director for a while was being kind of harshly

criticized on social media. This person has a peerless

reputation. He's someone who has a lot of respect, who has great

accreditation, and has really been responsible for helping this

particular community health center grow.

He had an engagement with a patient that the patient wasn't

happy with the advice that he gave him. It turned into a

situation where this person took to social media and really

called his reputation into question.

This particular situation is difficult because you're dealing

with medical information. There are definite confidentiality

issues there.

The way that they dealt with it was two-fold. One, there was a

very succinct statement that was released almost immediately

through all of their media channels, which were basically where

the doctor said, "I have a commitment to all of my patients. I

welcome this person to come back in and have a complimentary

visit with me to talk about additional treatment options."

Then they rolled out, in really quick fashion, a series of

success stories from other patients that were all in first

person from that patient's perspective and talked about some of

the challenges that they've overcome from the services that they

received. That was rolled out within two or three days of this

situation starting. They had a bank of these human interest

testimonials and they figured out how to activate them quickly.

Steven: I love it. Social media is obviously a huge issue. You touched

on this in your presentation. This is something that has kind of

made this whole situation worse or opens the door to a lot of

things. There was a comment in the chat that I really loved.

Cheryl said, "Keyboard courage. I have been in the crisis-

sensitive world for 20 years, but keyboard courage has broadened

our challenges." People maybe being a little less afraid to

voice their opinion online through social media.

How do you deal with this? Is this just something that we have

to deal with, that we have to live with, that people are going

to take to social media to say things whether they're founded in

reality or not? Or are there some things that you can do to

mitigate this keyboard courage that people have?

Brian: I often say that there's no accounting for crazy.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of crazy out there. There are

people who, for whatever reason have... Honestly, the more

success a person or an organization has, the bigger the target

on their back becomes. People are comfortable sitting behind

their keyboard as close to being anonymous as possible and

making horrible claims and allegations with no fear of

repercussion or consequence. It's the world that we live in.

What's important with social media is figuring out what warrants

a response. Everyone's opinion isn't legitimate, quite frankly.

If someone has a serious concern where they take to the

organization's Facebook page or their Twitter account and

they're talking about something that honestly has to do with how

programs and services are provided, how the organization

functions, then the best response is to say, "We are welcome to

have a one-on-one dialogue with you." Offer the opportunity for

that person to actually confront you. That's the best response.

If there's something that has actually happened where someone

has been wronged and the organization is at fault and they take

to social media, admitting guilt quickly or taking

responsibility quickly is probably the best way to put that fire

out. Unfortunately, most social media attacks are not

legitimate. They're not cut from that particular cloth. They're

usually people who, if you asked them to meet with you one-on-

one, you're never going to hear from them.

Steven: Kind of kill them with kindness and they're not going to keep

going with it.

Brian: Sure. You kill them with kindness but you stop short of

recognizing the legitimacy of what they're claiming until you

have an opportunity to investigate it further.

Steven: This question of legitimacy is the subject of a question that

Judy asked here. Judy was wondering, "When a nonprofit is proven

to be innocent or not at fault," so the claims have no basis in

reality, "How do you get the press to communicate that and not

just the accusations?" It seems that people are always willing

to share the accusations and the juicy details and all that but

they're not going to go back a week later and say, "Hey, it

turns out this group wasn't at fault and all that." Or does that

happen? Can you make that happen?

Brian: You can make that happen. The best way to make it happen is to

give the press the actual information. Instead of filtering it

through a spokesperson and just releasing a statement that says,

"Hey, we were vindicated," you actually give... If there's a

written record or some kind of supporting material that the

press can read and they will draw that conclusion themselves,

provide them the information and let them report on the

information as opposed to feeling like they're a mouthpiece for

your organization. Does that make sense?

Steven: Absolutely.

Brian: That's an effective way to deal with it. It's also important

when the reputation of the organization is at stake, the leader

of that organization, when appropriate, when there aren't legal

implications, and other things involved, I recommend that the

executive director or CEO, whoever is at the top of the food

chain, be the spokesperson. Don't have it go through a publicist

or an internal communications person. They can help with the

messaging strategy, but the figurehead of that organization

needs to be comfortable being the person who's quoted and is

commenting. Making that person accessible to the media will

increase the likelihood that you get positive coverage.

Steven: A nonprofit has their own distribution channels that maybe they

didn't have 10 years ago. You've got your blog and all your

social media channels. It seems like you can use that as well

and not have to worry too much about the press.

Brian: Absolutely. The news cycle comes and goes every single day,

almost every hour. If the organization wants to make sure that

it goes on record and is making a very clear statement, do that

through your channels. Send the information to the press, but

you know that you're still going on record through your own

content creation channels. If the press doesn't report

accurately on it, then at least you can still use your channels

effectively.

Steven: That makes sense. Great. That's a lot of the questions. I know

we're kind of running out of time and I don't want to go over

because I'm sure folks have work to get done or lunches to eat.

I do have to mention, Brian, that while you were talking, there

were a lot of people asking for some templates, some response

plans, some documents, maybe some resources. Is there anything

out there that you would recommend? Certainly I would invite

people to work with you on those kinds of things. Have you seen

anything good or have you made something yourself that the folks

can download, maybe a physical asset like a template or a plan

or anything like that, or maybe some tips for making their own?

Brian: I have different resources in my toolkit. I'm not a fan of

templates for crisis management plans because there are certain

areas that you need to cover, but it really needs to be

customized for that organization based upon their unique set. I

can kind of provide an outline of content you need to include.

In terms of what that content looks like, that's going to be

unique depending upon the organization.

If you Google search "crisis management template plans," you're

going to find a whole bunch of responses. What's hard about

utilizing some of those generic, off-the-shelf solutions is not

having the customized part of it. You may have a template that

provides you with 50% of the picture, but the rest of it you

need to fill in yourself.

I want to extend this offer to anyone on the call. It's to make

myself available for a free consultation to organizations that

want to talk a little bit about their specific needs as an

organization. I do have a lot of tools in my toolkit and

resources I'm willing to share. Figuring out what are most

appropriate and which are going to be most useful for your

organization is probably something that warrants a one-on-one

conversation.

I want to extend that offer. If anyone wants to have an hour

conversation with me where we can talk specifically about your

organization's needs and create some resources, then I can email

some follow-up information to you. I'm happy to do that. I've

always been passionate about supporting nonprofit organizations

and I think this is a space that's becoming increasingly

critical for everyone to have a plan and really have a shared

understanding of how to move forward.

Steven: Great. That's a very generous offer. I hope some people take

advantage of that, for sure. Do reach out to Brian. Follow him

online. Follow him on Twitter. This is a serious PR pro. This

has been really great, Brian. Thanks for sharing all your

knowledge here for an hour or so. It's been a lot of fun.

Brian: Great. Thank you.

Steven: This has been recorded. I'll be sending that out a little later

today. I'll send out Brian's slides. You can review them. I'll

send out his contact information if any of you want to take up

that offer. I hope you do, for sure.

Check out our website. We do these webinars once a week. We do

these weekly. We've got a lot of interesting things here planned

for April. We've got some folks coming on to talk about prospect

research, capital campaigns, donor retention. Check out our

website. I think there's a typo on that slide. I put too many Os

in Bloomerang. Sorry about that. Check out our webinar page.

These are free and open to the public. Register for something

that you think looks interesting or could help you out.

With that, we're about out of time. I'll say a final thanks to

Brian and I'll say thanks to all of you for hanging out with us

for about an hour and listening. Thanks to those of you who were

good sports and sent over some questions. That made it fun, for

sure.

With that, we'll cut it there. Thanks for joining us. I'll be in

touch a little later on with some of the resources from the

webinar. Thanks for joining us. Have a great rest of your day.