Are You Using Your Power or Giving it Away?

Far too many social impact orgs are giving their power away — and they don’t even know they’re doing it. 

There’s a fundamental tension in the social impact space. 

A tension between the generosity that powers this sector and the need for social impact brands to leverage their power so they can make a true impact. 

But when this healthy tension strays out of balance — in either direction — the results can be disastrous. 

Relying solely on the generosity of your supporters leads to the common “hat in hand” position that leaves many incredible organizations begging for money/resources and stuck in the scarcity mindset/starvation cycle. 

Too much focus on power (this is rarer, but it does happen) means that bigger, more established organizations suck up resources and leave smaller (and sometimes more impactful) orgs begging for the scraps of available funding within an issue area. 

And giving your power away can happen with the smallest of well-intentioned actions. From how you craft your donation appeals, to how you position yourself in your niche, to how you develop your team’s internal culture. 

Today, Jonathan and Eric break down all the ways that social impact orgs are unknowingly giving their power away and how to strike a healthy balance between the generosity that powers your work and strength in your approach to reaching your mission.

Have you ever felt like you’ve given your power away, or felt powerless in your social impact work? Then this episode is a must listen.

Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Episode Highlights 

• [00:00] - Introduction and Topic Setup
• [01:15] - Exploring Power in Social Impact
• [02:24] - Personal Experiences with Power Dynamics
• [04:05] - The Power Crisis in Social Impact
• [06:04] - The Trap of Transactional Marketing
• [12:00] - Brand Building as a Power Tool
• [08:01] - Balancing Values with Financial Necessity
• [14:47] - The Importance of Credibility and Reputation

Quotes

• "I think too many social impact organizations are unintentionally giving their power away... There's a tension between the generosity that powers the sector and the need to skillfully leverage the power they already have." - Eric Ressler [00:00] 
• "Power really is the ability to influence behavior or change the course of events, and when used wisely, it can shape the future, especially in the social impact space." - Eric Ressler [01:15]
• "As an executive director and marketer, questions of power often arise in conversations with influential stakeholders, whose power could move the needle significantly for the organization I serve." - Jonathan Hicken [02:24]
• "There are things that are systemic and hard to control, but also things we have control of in our day-to-day work that we could change." -Jonathan Hicken [05:21]
• "One big way that social impact organizations are giving their power away is by practicing transactional marketing and fundraising, which might hit short-term goals but comes with long-term costs." - Eric Ressler [06:04]
• "Another side effect of too much transactional marketing is that it becomes about the organization rather than the impact you're seeking, which dilutes your power." - Jonathan Hicken [06:32]
• "As a leader, paying attention to the voices that matter while checking yourself is crucial... It’s important to remind yourself who you're doing the project for." - Jonathan Hicken [14:21]
• "Building a solid brand and marketing muscle can help your organization build credibility and authority, which opens up new opportunities, resources, and, ultimately, power." - Eric Ressler [15:10]

Resources

• Article - Brand Building: An Authentic Approach to Growing a Fierce, Loyal, and Supportive Community

Transcript

Eric Ressler [00:00]:

Jonathan, I think too many social impact organizations are unintentionally giving their power away. And what I mean by that is that there's this kind of tension between a kind of hat in hand approach to being a social impact organization and a more confident approach around knowing your value and the impact that you're creating and the purpose and the need for your work as a social impact organization. This is kind of a big topic, it's kind of a meaty one. I'm hoping we can get through it in a way that's helpful to our listeners because I think there is this kind of tension, this healthy tension even between the generosity that powers so much social impact work and a need for social impact organizations to build power and leverage their power skillfully. And so today I'm hoping that we can talk about how did we get here as a sector to this current state, what does that even look like? And if I'm successful, I'm going to try and make an argument for how brand building can help you more effectively utilize the power that you have, build more power, and create a bigger impact. Are you ready? Oh yeah.

Jonathan Hicken [01:09]:

This is spicy. Let's do

Eric Ressler [01:10]:

It. Okay. I'm Eric Wrestler.

Jonathan Hicken [01:17]:

I'm Jonathan Hicken,

Eric Ressler [01:18]:

And this is Designing Tomorrow.

[01:35]:

So power is kind of a meaty topic, and the word power has a lot of connotations. We could be talking about power dynamics or collective action, structural power, influential people who have financial power. There's all kinds of flavors of that. And when I'm talking about power, at the end of the day, power really is the ability to influence behavior in one way or another to change the course of events. At the end of the day, power can be used to literally shape the future. And especially in the social impact space, I think there's been a lot of conversations around power dynamics, around fundraising and individual donors, around even the structure of some of these larger foundations and institutional philanthropy and how that money gets spent and invested and overhead and all these kinds of thorny topics. I'm talking more about I want social impact organizations to be better at using the power that they have and to build more power and to not fall into some of the traps that I think are pretty prevalent within the space. And it's even kind of subconscious. So we'll break all that down, but when I use the word power and we're talking about social impact, what comes to mind for you in your experience

Jonathan Hicken [02:46]:

As an executive director, as a major donor fundraiser and marketer? Oftentimes the questions of power pop up for me when I'm in conversation or in dialogue with one of these influential stakeholders. So this is with a prominent board member or a funder, whether that's a private donor or a foundation where their power could move the needle pretty significantly for the organization that I'm serving at that moment. And the question becomes is that individual's vision for the impact we seek or that foundation's vision in close enough alignment where I'm going to agree to proceed with this partner and with this partnership. So that's what comes up for me in the position that I occupy at the moment. But I understand that there are dozens if not hundreds of flavors of power. So thanks for focusing us in on that.

Eric Ressler [03:42]:

Yeah, and I mean, I think it's worth mentioning also that power is not equal and it's not always fair, and that's obviously wrong. And there's a lot of really great people and great organizations working on issues of equity and racial justice. And I think we need to acknowledge that that is a dynamic of power. And I think in today's episode, I'm really hoping that we can just help organizations think about again, how to best leverage the power that they do have to today we should work on these larger structural issues of power and equity, but we can't put everything on hold while we fix that if we ever fully can even, right. I guess my first question for you is what I describe this kind of power crisis, if we want to call it that, this kind of hat in hand approach to social impact. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Jonathan Hicken [04:38]:

Absolutely. I experience it most with boards and major donors and to a certain extent foundation funders as well in the nonprofit space. But even just using the word power dynamic instantly had me hooked.

Eric Ressler [04:54]:

Yeah. So I mean, I think what you're describing right away is governance power, if we're talking about the board or financial power, a major influential donor or customer having the ability to control you because you need what they have, the resources that they have. But I'm also talking about something even more kind of intractable than that, which is just the general perception of the social impact sector at large about needing support from their community, needing we need your support, we need your help. Please help us do this kind of almost hat in hand culture. And again, the generosity that powers this sector is beautiful. And I don't want to say that that's bad or wrong, but I think it can go too far. Do you agree?

Jonathan Hicken [05:44]:

Absolutely agree. And I think that there are things that are historic and systemic that are hard to turn and hard to control. And there are things that we do in our day-to-day work that we very much have control of that we could change. Very curious to hear what you see from the agency side.

Eric Ressler [06:00]:

So I mean, I think there's a couple, let's start with why are social impact brands giving their power away? How are they doing that? What are some of those conditions? So I actually think one of the big ways that social impact organizations are giving their power away is by practicing transactional marketing and fundraising where they're making these kind of short-term plays because they're trying to meet their fundraising goals or their sales goals and they're just doing what they're meant to do in some regard. They're trying to hit their goals, they're trying to fundraise, they're trying to meet their quota, whatever it is, and they're doing that effectively in the short term, but there's this bigger long-term cost that they're teaching people that they're no more than just a checkbook or they're a transaction or that there's this urgent need. And then wait a minute, there's this urgent need over and over and over again. Is it truly urgent anymore? So to me, this kind of transactional approach to marketing and fundraising is actually a long-term way to give your power away unintentionally.

Jonathan Hicken [06:59]:

And I think another side effect of too much transactional marketing is that you make it about your own organization rather than making it about the impact that you seek.

Eric Ressler [07:11]:

We need to hit this quota by this date or else blah, blah, blah, and this zip code. Yeah, I mean we've all seen this or

Jonathan Hicken [07:18]:

My personal pet peeve is seeing volunteers needed. Yeah, great. You need volunteers. Understood why, for what reason? Donations now. Okay, why for what? It's not about you. It's not about your organization, it's about the community you serve or the impact you seek. And so yeah, when you make it about you give away your power

Eric Ressler [07:41]:

And then you get into the situation where you have to essentially beg for support. And again, there's a balance here. You want to ask for support, you want to invite support, but you don't want to beg for it. I think regardless of who you're begging from,

[08:04]:

We've talked about this a little bit, but essentially letting donors or funders shape your decisions because of being in a place of scarcity, right? Because you need them to keep the lights on because if you lose that next donor that you counted on, then you have to lay off part of your staff. Or if you don't hit your fundraising goals from your large network of donors, then you're going to have to shut down the program. So essentially you get stuck in this starvation cycle where you don't have enough buffer of resources that you can say no to a donor that doesn't align with your values, or not launch that fundraising campaign because it's not a culturally good time to do that, or whatever the reason might be that allows you to hold onto your power and wield it a little bit more skillfully. Yeah.

Jonathan Hicken [08:47]:

Look, this one's really tough, Eric, because as a CEO executive director, and you may have actually experienced this as an agency director, when you're faced with a large gift that you may have the sort of spidey sense that this is going to make me sacrifice or compromise on my values or my focus in some way. Yet at the same time, you have people that work for you and whose livelihoods depend on you. There is this natural balance that I think any human being is going to experience where I could take this gift and figure it out, and now everybody on my team and their families are in good shape, or I turn it down because I know that something's smelling a little fishy about it. But I know that that puts my team at risk, and that's a really hard decision to make.

Eric Ressler [09:36]:

And I've definitely been in that place before with needing to bring on another project to keep payroll or whatever it might be, and knowing this isn't going to be fun or this isn't going to align, or this isn't really our core kind of skillset. Now, luckily we're in a position now where that's something we typically have to do anymore, but especially in the early days, those are sacrifices that sometimes you have to make even if you know it's going to lead to some pain. So yeah, agree and have empathy for all the reasons you might find yourself in this situation. I do think we should continue to work towards, and as I've done with cosmic, one of the reasons I've stayed small is I could say no to all kinds of stuff. We say no to a lot of things that come our way because it's not a good fit or the budget's not there, whatever it is. And the power that I build from that is that we get to only choose projects that we think are going to be wildly successful, that align with our values that we know we can really help clients with. That took 15 years to really get to that point. So it's not to say that it's easy to get there, but with social impact organizations, I think we've all experienced that, or I've seen a lot of organizations struggle with that.

[10:51]:

I would say the other way that these organizations are leaving power on the table is by not having a solid brand marketing and communications approach to their work. And the reason I say that is because I've seen how much power effective branding and marketing can build for your organization because you can use your brand and your marketing to connect people to make a case for your work, to generate engagement and support to raise money. All of these things can help you kind of build and maintain power and move away from some of that kind of transactional urgency, kind of non-relationship based marketing approach. So when you're not doing that, in my opinion, that's another way to give power away.

Jonathan Hicken [11:34]:

Yeah, I think you're right. And I think the flavor of power you're talking about here is really horsepower, the ability to fuel impact and fuel your mission and really get it moving quickly and powerfully. And in that sense, absolutely. I'm a believer. I'm a believer, and I think that's really true.

Eric Ressler [11:52]:

So let's talk a little bit about how, in more detail, how investing in brand building, brand marketing communications for your social impact organization can actually help you build more power. So here's one way that I think is often overlooked. If you do branding well, in my opinion, you are going to have a clearly defined niche that you own clear positioning and differentiation for your organization, and that immediately gives you more power because you can be more efficient, you can be more effective, you have more clarity around what you say yes and what you say no to. And so in certain ways it's like a power concentrator instead of a power which can happen if those things are not clear.

Jonathan Hicken [12:37]:

I like that you put it that way, right? It's almost like being a bigger fish in a smaller pond in a sense where if you can focus those elements, your vision and your mission and your purpose and all those things, you can get those down really tight, then your ability to be influential within that sphere would proportionally grow. And I think that as an executive director, I had be lying if I said I wasn't guilty of seeking for the next bigger, broader way to have an impact when really sometimes the most powerful way to seek that depth of power and impact is to get smaller and get more focused,

Eric Ressler [13:15]:

Right? More focused, but deeper with your impact. And I think this is one also that doesn't require that you build any more power than you already have. It's just a way to focus that power in a better way.

[13:36]:

So the other thing that I've seen branding and marketing really help with is to capture attention and attention when used skillfully is a form of power because you can convert attention into engagement, into action. You can build a movement literally around your cause if you do this fully well. And I think that this is where a lot of organizations get kind of stuck is they have a meaningful mission. They're doing even legitimately good effective work, but because they don't have the branding muscle and the marketing muscle in place, they're just not getting attention. They're not getting attention from donors, they're not getting attention from potential employees and staff members that need to fill key roles. They're not getting attention from really good board members who could help advise on how to take things to the next level. So attention in and of itself is not a superpower, but the right kind of attention converted into meaningful action in my opinion, is possibly the most important superpower.

Jonathan Hicken [14:34]:

And I would say it's paying attention yourself as a leader, paying attention to the people or the audience you are getting attention from that makes sense. And really knowing whose voice you're hearing and deciding whether or not that's the voice or a group voices that I need to be paying attention to. There's a project I'm working on right now where there's a loud and passionate group of people who feel a particular way about this project, but ultimately I'm not doing this project for them. And so I need to constantly check myself on paying attention to their input and paying attention to the points they're bringing up and validating those things and factoring them into the decision making, but constantly reminding myself that I'm not doing this for them.

Eric Ressler [15:27]:

So the other big thing that I think building a solid brand and building a marketing muscle can do for your social impact organization is that it can build credibility for your organization. It can help you garner a reputation, and this is something that marketing alone cannot build a reputation for you, but it can help plant the seeds you have to come through in the real world on any promises that you make as a brand and actually be authentically true to those promises. And not just otherwise, you're just doing cause marketing. But when you're doing that well and you build credibility, you build reputation to some degree, you build authority within your niche that gives you power as well. It gives you power to stand out. It gives you power to have an influence on the ecosystem that your issue area is in, not just your issue area. So this opens up all kinds of avenues for opportunity and resources and power in a way that I think is honestly, again, kind of underutilized and underappreciated in the space.

Jonathan Hicken [16:27]:

Where do you find that brands are doing themselves damage when it comes to this particular way of trust building or essentially the reciprocal? How are people losing trust or losing power in this kind of conversation surrounding credibility?

Eric Ressler [16:46]:

I think there's two main ways. The first is by putting out marketing and communications messages that they do not come through on in the real world. So that would be essentially cause washing, right? You're putting out these messages of social impact or all the impact that you're having, but you're not actually coming through on those promises that you're making. So that's one way, and it does happen. I would say it's the less common of the two. The second is just not building that reputation in the first place because you're essentially doing this work kind of scrappily behind the scenes, and maybe you're even proud of that and you're not telling your story, you're not getting your message out there. You're not figuring out how to capture and sustain attention and convert that attention into meaningful action for your cause. That is by far more common, either because you're not investing in it or because it is hard to do and you haven't built the skills or the experience or the curiosity to do that well. So those are the two kind of main flavors. Of course, there's many in between, but those are the two I see the most.

[17:54]:

There's one more point I want to make before we wrap up today, which is that language I think is so important and framing is so important when it comes to this. How you are communicating subconsciously or consciously really affects how people perceive you as an individual or as an organization. So when we use words and phrases, we need your support and please help support us. This, again, this hat in hand style, charity style language. Again, generosity is important in the space. I respect generosity. I think it empowers a lot of what we do. I think we should strive for more confident language in our work language that proves that our work is important and invites people who believe in that work to take part in creating a better future for humanity. So that is a big takeaway that I leave the audience with, but I'd love to hear any takeaways that you have.

Jonathan Hicken [18:46]:

Can we unpack that last piece? Yeah, let's do it a little bit, right? So what does it look like to use confident language as opposed to a hat in hand language? Let's run through an example. I mean, something that's coming to mind for me right now is let's say collecting backpack donations for school drive. Okay, so how would we phrase that in a confident way to drive participation and interest in that versus a way that gives up power or loses credibility?

Eric Ressler [19:14]:

So I think if you focus the language on the positive impact, so let's say you had a goal, right, of trying to get 200 backpacks donated. You could say something along the lines of, help us give 200 kids new backpacks this year. That's still very clear that you need help, but you're reframing it in a way that's showing how your supporters can be part of the change. And again, this is subtle, this distinction is subtle, but as humans and our psychology is trained to pick up on these subtle signals and they're over time building a story about what kind of organization you are. So I don't know, that's one quick riff on how we might be a little bit more confident in our language.

Jonathan Hicken [19:58]:

And I think that there's so many directions you could go once you make the shift to let's make a difference on these kids, let's improve their school experience in some way. That's an invitation, but it's also a tease about the impact that this drive is going to have.

Eric Ressler [20:14]:

Right? Exactly. It's serving two purposes there. I think it's also, it's aspirational, it's exciting, it's invitational, and if you start to write copy and tell stories in this way, it feels more like a partnership. I think that's really what I'm just realizing we're talking about here at the end of the day. And what it should be at the end of the day is a true partnership between people who want to get involved in support and your organization. That's essentially kind of like the guide on how to support based on your expertise doing this work day in and day out. Did you have any other takeaways?

Jonathan Hicken [20:46]:

Honestly, it was just that when you create space as a leader for others to contribute to the impact, that is actually a way to garner power in using the terms of this episode is you're essentially creating a team of people, whether they're on your payroll or not, and by enlisting more people into the cause that is inherently in a space making way, that is inherently a way to build power. So absolutely, I'm with you on

Eric Ressler [21:14]:

That. Yeah, so I mean, this is a super interesting topic. We could go way longer on it. I think we'll leave it at that today. But Jonathan, thanks for having the conversation.

Jonathan Hicken [21:23]:

Thank you, Eric.