Here in North America we can now get back to business. Canada Day is done. Independence Day is history for another year.

What is significant is that July marks the halfway point to success or failure (yeah, I know everyone has a different fiscal year, but let’s get real). You gonna make it or break it?!

My guess, given what we’ve been seeing from surveys, from the Blackbaud reports, blog posts from those we trust, and just pure economics is that finishing this year stronger than last is gonna be a problem.

In the next few posts I’m offering a series of recommendations that might help save your fiscal year. Recommendations you can hopefully act upon.

Recommendation #1.  Get Your Message Together.

Stop what you’re doing right now and go to Chuck English’s blog immediately.

You’ll recall that Chuck was the pain-in-the-ass who raised all sorts or questions about whether ‘Thank Yous’ were significant and that there really wasn’t any proof one way or the other.

We denied him a raise then. We’re giving him one now.

Please read his piece carefully and click on the links he’s included. Including the base survey conducted by Nancy Schwarz one of our all time ’she deserves a raise every day’ favorites.

• According to Dan…84% of all organizations characterize their marketing messages as difficult to remember.

• 76% of organizations feel that their messages connect with target audiences only somewhat or not at all.

What is most frightening is that 28% of the respondents to Nancy’s surveys said it was a low priority or that they were too busy with other tasks.

Holy moly! Do we have slugs in this business or do we have slugs?

Even more frightening, as if ‘frightening can get worse’, is that a third of the respondents to Nancy’s survey say they lack expertise in developing appropriate messages. We’ll get back to that in future posts this week.

OK. We can help them. But that damned Interrupter, Chuck English goes on to toss gasoline on the fire by claiming these poor souls who can’t distinguish a message from a massage are really, truly, just lazy slugs.

He cites a post by Dan Pallota that’s more than worth a call out, if for nothing else, the outright admission of sloth on the part of nonprofits.

“I see people who wear the debilitating lack of resources in their organization like a badge of honor, despite the fact that the deficiency undermines their ability to impact the community problem they are working on. I see people moving from one nonprofit to another, from one cause to another, seemingly more addicted to the ‘struggle’ than passionate about solving any social ill.”

Frankly, there’s just no excuse for this type of mindset. Folks who think like this are losers pure and simple. They would serve society far more effectively by pumping gas or flipping burgers. Please, please, get out of our space.

Roger

P.S.  Tomorrow I’ll pick up on the great bottomline actions you can take to save the remainder of your year.