Tuna (Brandon) Praised For Communications Work

Greetings friends. The below blog post was written by a friend and consultant, Mark Vincent.  He has been working closely with me (Tuna) on our campaign at Bethany Birches Camp to rebuild the main building at camp (Pavilion).  It's a high complement of my work.

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Capital campaign communication: 2 awesome examples

We learn so much from our clients. Occasionally we can pass the benefits along.

I have been privileged to work with Bethany Birches Camp as they ready themselves for their first big capital campaign. Their Executive Director, still in the early stages of his career, is an outstanding example of someone who knows he doesn’t know and is therefore able to learn and grow and put a lot of long-timers to shame at the excellence he is already achieving.

Most noticeable is the way he, the board and volunteers have been able to inject the organizational culture of the camp into all their campaign communication. Whenever the constituency interacts with them they are having a camp experience, not just a communication from the camp. Here are two awesome examples:

1. Their video that introduces the campaign and makes the case provides an excellent standard other organizations can aspire to reach:

2. A recent update on an unanticipated project that could have harmed momentum conveys a non-anxious, thankful, yet light-heartedly determined way forward. Anyone who participated can find themselves in the blogs/photos etc. that are linked in the note. It provides a great personal touch mixed with the benefits of social media and web. Here is the text:

Greetings friends.  I’m writing with deep joy in my heart for each of you.  As you probably remember about a year ago we received some tough news from the fire marshal: that the Bethany Birches Cabin would be shut down April 1, 2012 until we complied with numerous requirements.

One of my biggest concerns was how we’d pay for the upgrades to the building.  My second concern related to how to get the work done.  Because of you, the work was finished and paid for!  THANK YOU!

Some goodies for you:

• Here are pictures from the beginning of the project.  
• Here are some pictures from the second stage of the project.  
• Here’s a link to a blog post reviewing the project.  
• Here are all the blog posts on the topic.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your support of this effort and for your ongoing help in Bethany Birches’ mission to help young people develop their relationship with God.  Without you we would still be without the use of the cabin!

Brandon

 

And here is one more idea.  Why not take these examples to your development and/or communications team to view and then ask what is one step we might take to better inject our organization’s culture into our communication–especially in a capital campaign? How might our constituency have an ongoing experience and not just another communications piece?

-mark l vincent

- See more at: http://bethanybirches.org/2013/06/bethany-birches-in-the-news/#sthash.SkuhAD1y.dpuf

Experts only need a couple skills

I'm struck that mastery of the basics is almost all one needs to become an expert. The other thing you need: doing it (racking up hours/experience).  I noticed this in skiing... I've only got a couple skills. But, I can apply them in different ways at different times depending on what the terrain and snow conditions require and what I'm trying to accomplish.  Knowing how to apply them and being able to apply these skills consistently is what makes it possible to be an expert skier.  I think the same is true with Basketball or cooking or supervising people.  In what are you an expert?

Goodro Lumber's excellent customer service

Why I love Goodro Lumber:
Today, I called and got Steve. I asked him if he could pick out a grout that was the same color as the tile I bought from them but slightly lighter in shade/color.  He said, "yup, no problem."  He called me back a little later and said that he thinks he found the right one.  On top of that, he called the manufacturer to clarify a detail to be sure he gave me the right one.

Now, get this.  Cheeks drives by Goodro some days when she teaches class.  I asked Steve if he could have the grout ready for her to pick up.  She stopped in and picked it up.  She said she was in there for about 2.5 minutes.  Talk about convenience!

Thanks guys for your excellent customer service.

Tuna

Community, jail and a Franciscan priest named G-dog.

This morning, I woke up to the radio show On Being. Krista Tippet had guest Father Greg Boyle (G-dog). I loved what he was saying. He is clearly a love-filled man. So I googled him. I found this video.  It is well worth the 20 minutes if you have ever sensed that we as humans are connected yet live as though we aren't.

Simplicity and Getting Things Done

Seth Godin writes a blog. Today he posted this:

Hooked on hacking life

Perhaps you can quote the GTD literature chapter and verse, understand lean and MVP and the modern meeting standard. Maybe you now delete your emails with a swipe. It's possible you've read not just this blog but fifty others, every day, and understand go to market strategies and even have a virtual assistant to dramatically increase your productivity.
That's great. But the question remains, "what have you shipped?"
You're saving a ton of time, freeing yourself up to... do what, precisely?
The productivity industry doesn't do this work to entertain us. They're trying hard to help you get more done better. Emphasis on done.
Striving to get smarter, better and faster helps us create our future. The risk is that merely collecting, trading and discussing the tools turns into the point.
It's possible that your next frontier isn't to get more efficient, it's to get more brave.

I like it. I struggle with this. I love tools! I love tracking and understanding and learning.  Sometimes I forget to simply do the thing ("ship").

Cool story regarding doing the thing (shipping) - we're low on Lynx registrations (next week's snow camp).  Last night I created a two paragraph regular ol email via our camper database software (Campwise). No pictures. No attachments. Not even HTML. I simply asked people to come and tell their friends. I said we'd give them a $25 discount because we aren't full. I sent the email Fri. evening. Within 2 hours, 4 more campers were signed up and I had heard from 10 parents. Today, I'm still hearing from parents about that email and a few more have signed up.

KISS (keep it simple stupid)

Calling

Don't take that promotion if you aren't going to be happy. The problem with promotions is that they end up getting you into a new job. It's great if it's the work you're best suited for. And it might not be a great move if the work you are doing right now is the work you're most suited for.

The biblical author Paul wrote a lot about the nature of our skills and motivations (gifts given us by God). We were created with a certain set of gifts. And when we use them and work in areas that exercise those skills, we excel.

Pursue something you're good at or something you like. A lot of times they are the same thing. You will make a greater contribution to the world doing what you were meant to do, promotion or not.

For more on this watch the movie Happy Feet.

Or listen to this interview with Seth Godin.

Passion and work

A friend of mine posted this video on Facebook recently. I commented:

this is a very important issue - the nature of the deeper passion - the essence of this video - what is it you like doing? I have been uncovering the importance of a 15-year-long passion in my life and finding that it lies at the heart of what I do best at camp. And I'm learning to teach our college-age staff about the importance of this underlying love and passion and to release themselves to embrace it.

Another friend commented about God's plan. I commented

I agree! God's "plan"/way/intention/expectation for us is better than our own. In this sense, God is like a manufacturer of a product and has a full understanding of what the product is capable of and how to use it best. While this analogy is pretty weak (because products don't feel things and we do), it helps me when thinking about how best to serve, as Jesus instructed. I've experienced a deep fulfillment when fulfilling my call and at times, a lack of fulfillment when running from my call.

 

Where does your passion lie?

What do the Hobbit, Sandy Hook and CCCA have in common?

We all know about The Hobbit and many of us in the USA on the East Coast know what Sandy Hook means.  CCCA, however, may not be a familiar acronym to you.  It stands for Christian Camp and Conference Center.  Bethany Birches, where I work, is a member.

So here's what the Hobbit, Sandy Hook and CCCA, especially this video, have in common: they all show us what we already know.  That life isn't safe. And furthermore, a meaningful life requires risk, challenge, struggle.

I love this section starting right here.  Take a look...

Servant Leadership, Marketing, Jesus

Reading a post today from Tanveer Naseer's blog I found the stuff of Jesus. I love when this happens!

In this post he's talking about Peter Drucker and an ancient book ('Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War'). In the book, a father asks his son: "Tell me how best to get a man to do something that must be done..." The son replies with an answer that is inferior. 

 The father's reply:
“’Simply take care of those you lead better even than they would or could take care of themselves. Always put their needs before your own.’”

Jesus said (as recorded in Mark 10):

Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else.

Think leadership that changes things.  Think people like MLK, Ghandi, Lincoln. More recently, we have Steve Jobs who was a bit of a tyrant and was not a slave to others but was certainly a slave to his vision and arguably his customers, or at least his idea of what they would most like.