The Value of PR in the Fundraising Mix

The following text and images form the basis of a presentation given by Fiona Fountain at the CHASE 2009 Exhibition. The opinions expressed here may not be published elsewhere without prior permission from Fiona Fountain Associates.

Building Relationships with the Media

Fiona Fountain FCIPR MInstF

Good morning and welcome. For the past 15 years I've run a PR and fundraising consultancy; I’m a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and a member of the Institute of Fundraising and I’m proud of the involvement I’ve had with both. I'm a former charity chief executive and am presently chair of Trustees of an arts organisation. I'm also a part-time journalist; something I've been doing for about thirty years. I have also been responsible for PR at the Charities Aid Foundation.

I'm going to talk to you about building relationships with journalists, about writing a basic news release and about placing features. I'm also going to ask you to consider whether these are the best routes to reach your targets and whether others might be better, So, what is a journalist? Generally we journalists are inquisitive - we want to know things and we want to impart that information to others. That's what drives us. Most journalists know a little about a lot - they rely on experts (the people who know a lot about a little) to feed them the background information. Ideally, you want to become one of their experts so they turn to you when they need more information on a story. But let's not run too far ahead. To begin with, you've got to get to know them and build a relationship with them. Journalists tend to come in two types, whatever their job title and whoever they are working for. There are those who are after news and those who write features (like me). News journalists are busy people with tight deadlines. You need to be very careful when you call them with your ideas. You also need to be careful about wasting their time with stories that aren't news or that aren't relevant. We all want to be in the news because it has the greatest impact - it's the first story on the broadcast, the front page of the paper.

Ideally you'll start by getting yourself a good media directory - there are several.

I like to use a service called PR Planner but it's not cheap. It comes on a DVD (updated quarterly) and supplies me with a lot of background information and, in many cases, direct email links to individuals. You can subscribe to printed directories - like Editors or Willings Press Guide which may be cheaper or you can go more up-market and get the expensive on-line ones like Vocus or Mediadisk. These guides will help you identify the media you want to target. If you work in a niche market or within a particular geographic area your relevant media may be a fairly small group, in which case it may be better value to simply buy a one off list and keep it updated yourself by making regular contact with the media. Which leads me onto my next point. You need to get to know your media so, if possible, start buying them or watching / listening to the programmes you think you want to target. You'll soon get an idea of the kind of things they like to cover and it may be you find you really don't fit. Don't give up, there will be others. Alternatively, you may realise you can make an idea fit if you present it in a different way. For example, I chair a regional theatre and arts centre. We have an Italian actor coming to premier a Dario Fo play later this year.

If I tried to send a story to my local newspaper about Dario Fo they would probably bin it. Telling them that their local theatre is holding a world premier by a Nobel prize-winning Italian playwright is far more likely to engage them. On the other hand if I want to target a TV arts programme I am not going to lead with telling them about the local theatre, I'm going to lead with Dario Fo!

So, you need to think about your message and make sure you present it in the right way when you start making those all important phone calls. Trying to speak to a national newspaper journalist is always tricky. They will normally go into planning sessions around 10:00am so if you've got really HOT news for them, you need to speak to them before they go in. Otherwise a little later on in the morning is probably okay but never call them late in the afternoon, they will be rushing to finish stories. TV and Radio are always topical but avoid calling them just before they go on air. With magazines, find out what their copy deadlines are and don't call on the day. What you are trying to do in all cases is approach them when they have time to talk to you. Start your conversation with something like

"Hello, I'm calling with a possible story for you about … do you have time to talk now or shall I call you later?"

If they ask you to call back and you've had to go through a switchboard you can ask for a direct line but don't take up too much of their time at this point. When you call back later again, check if they are free to talk - they may have been given another urgent piece to write. You will need to have a news release prepared before you start any conversation with them though Almost certainly at some point in the conversation they will say "Have you got a news release you can send me"! So let's look at what a news release is and how you construct one. First of all, don't be fooled by people who tell you there is a standard format - every PR person I know has a preference for layout. Here's one of mine.

First up, please ignore the indentations at the start of the paragraphs. I don't send releases out like this, that was Powerpoint refusing me to let me format the paragraphs the way I wanted. You can see there are no logos, pictures or images. That's because these days almost all releases are sent by email. You can send them by post (in which case, use headed paper and make it smarter) but if the story is to qualify as news it needs to get there quickly and email is a lot faster than snail mail. With any news release remember to put what the topic is right up front. Look at the publications you are targeting and make sure the title is going to appeal right away.

"Charity receives donation from bank" is probably going to find its way straight into the bin but "ABC Bank pays for new canoes for local youth club" is more likely to attract the interest of a local paper. If you can send a picture of a suited bank manager, sitting in a canoe with a cheque attached to one of the paddles, so much the better!

You need to include the date of the event AND the date of the release if the two are different. You must include your contact details - and do include your out-of-hours number too. BUT never, never put you own number in the body text of your release (unless you intend to for some reason) otherwise you could find they put it in print or read it out on air! It's my preference but it's not everyone's, to include a word count. As a journalist, I find it helpful as a reminder to keep things short! Any news release needs to be short and snappy - and your very first sentence has got to grab the attention of the reader.

We used to be told we had to say "who, what, when, where and why" in the first sentence and if you read local papers, you will see many of them still use that format. Don't use any fancy fonts or formatting - remember it's best if you can send it as a straight email, without any attachments. If you got on well with the journalist you spoke to, follow up the email with a phone call asking if there is any further information he or she needs. If you sensed the journalist was under pressure or was a bit short with you, just send the email with a request for a read receipt. If you don't know how to do that, ask your IT department.

Most publications and almost every news department for TV and radio has a Forward Features department. If your news is something that's about to happen then alert them to it. For example, when I was working at CAF, we would always alert the national media at least a week in advance of the publication of Charity Trends. It's worth doing but be aware you could then be put under pressure to break your embargo.

Which brings me neatly to features. Journalists working on features are often less pressured than those working in news. That's not always true when the features are in a national daily newspaper but for most weekly publications and TV/radio magazine programmes they are more likely to have time to talk to you. BUT and it's a big but - you will need to be clued up as to what their audiences are likely to want. Take the same approach as you did to news journalists, ask if they have a moment to talk to you before launching in with your idea. You don't so much need to send a news release to features journalists as background information - on the story and your organisation. Again, keep it brief and keep it relevant. This is one I did for the launch of a pet behavioural psychologist's service!

Feature journalists are used to asking for more information if they want it and one thing most of them will want is case studies. It is very difficult to use the same case study in more than one publication - unless the case study is very famous. If you find a features journalist whose interests you can see closely match the work you do, then cultivate them. If you can, arrange to see them for a cup of coffee and brief them about what your organisation has got coming up. A favourite trick with US PR companies used to be to visit the journalists in their offices, bearing doughnuts but these days security is so tight in most buildings, you'd never get past the front door.

Do keep them in the loop however and keep friendly with them without bombarding them. Features don't have to be as "of the moment" as news stories but they do have to be topical In time. If you build your relationships, you will find journalists will come to you for stories or opinions. But that takes careful cultivation and trust. The journalist needs to know that when they come to you the information you provide will be relevant and newsworthy. As a PR consultant, I hate being pushed by clients to put out stories that I know are not worthwhile because it affects my reputation with the journalists as someone they can rely on. Building a strong relationship stands you in good stead when things go wrong, too - and, as long as you handle a crisis properly, a friendly journalist can help you to turn a negative story into a positive one. Finally, don't give up! If you don't succeed with one area of the media, try others. Success breeds success too - if one local radio station won't cover you and another one does, repeatedly, then sooner or later the first station will want to know more about you too. As Deborah Allcock Tyler said in this week's Third Sector (quoting Winston Churchill) "Courage is going from failure to failure, without losing enthusiasm" so be courageous with the media BUT be careful - make sure you know what you are saying and that the media is the right audience to be talking to. I've covered building relationships with journalists, writing a basic news release and placing features.

Now I'd like to talk a bit more about the background to what you're doing with the media and discuss if they are the best people for you to talk to. A lot of charities think it's crucial to involve the media in their work but I don't believe that's always the case. There are times when using the media as a tool to get your message across is a good thing - there are other times when other tools are more suitable. So forget about journalists for a moment and consider what it is you are trying to achieve. Before you start communicating with anyone you need a plan so that you can be sure that what you are going to say is meaningful and worthwhile. If there's no plan it's like setting out on a journey without any idea of the route. You may well get there in the end but it could take you much longer than expected. Or you may simply get lost.

So step back a moment and think about where you are, where you want to be. Think about your objectives; in the voluntary sector one of our objectives is very often to change or influence attitudes so then think about who you want to reach. You don't have to do this on your own, in fact it's a good thing if you involve other people in your organisation. Get their support early on and they are more likely to be supportive later. Going back to the people we want to reach, you need to think carefully and not generalise. There are five groups of people that we need to consider when we draw up a list of our audiences;

You'll find there are only a very few Decision Makers you need to reach but their impact or their effect can be greater than anyone else. For example, if you want to target the John Smith Charitable Trust and your Chairman is John Smith's golf partner, chances are anything you do with the media to try and influence John Smith will be wasted effort. Far better that the Chairman should have a quiet word in his ear! I can't tell you who your decision makers are - they may be government ministers, local councillors, heads of social services or company directors. It all depends on the decisions you want made. But you do need to identify them and identify what you want them to do.

The next group are the Influencers. These can be important people who may not necessarily hold positions at the top but nonetheless are people whose opinions are sought by others. Returning to my theatre example again, an influential would be the head of leisure services for Tunbridge Wells Borough Council. She may not be able to decide how much money the theatre should get but the Chief Executive, the local councillors and those on the council's finance team will talk to him when they are involved in the decision making. Again, he's not interested in what the local paper say about us - he's far more interested in checking that we're managing properly, are staying solvent and have a proper business plan in place. Influencers may be asked to look at things by Decision makers and Decision makers will quite often like the security of having their position backed up by the opinions of Influencers. The head of the finance committee, an elected local councillor who will make the decision about a grant to my theatre will rely on the views of the head of leisure services. Influencers might be members of a company's executive committee, business executives, community leaders, academics and leading members of the clergy. You simply need to think about the ones around you.

Opinion leaders can include people within a particular field of expertise - using my theatre again, if our regional Arts Council representative were to write a good report about us this is likely to affect how others see us. Such experts can affect the views of influentials and also decision makers - and charities themselves can often be opinion leaders if their opinion is respected. There are also some journalists who could be classed as opinion leaders - they write an opinion piece in a newspaper, for example.

Multipliers are sometimes difficult to identify and unless you have a big budget or are working very locally, I wouldn't worry too much about them. They're the people others turn to for advice, information or endorsement of a topic and they can be very useful. For example, drug companies will target GPs so that they will endorse a particular new medicine; in my theatre's case someone who is a member of a group and recommends a show to others is a multiplier.

Lastly, the General Public and I don't really like the term because its very unspecific. You may not be an arts organisation but do have a look at Arts Council England's arts-based audience segmentation tool called "Audience Insight". It's an arts-based segmentation of English adults comprising 13 distinct groups. I do recommend you go to the website and have a look at it in more detail - it's an online publication and well worth considering even though the groups won't apply to you all.

We should try and segment our so called "general public" to make sure we reach the right people in the right way. You know what you want to achieve and now you've thought about the people you want to reach. So think about what you want to say. In the voluntary sector we have a lot of different types of audience and we may want then to do different things For example, we may want their financial support, we want them to be active on our behalf, or to offer them services.

Although they are all audiences we have to be careful that a message targeted at one doesn't upset another. For my theatre, I don't want to reach everyone in my local area. I only want to reach those with a specific interest in the sort of programmes my theatre puts on, people who are interested in attending shows or else supporting the arts. I can use the Arts Council's tool to identify who these people are and that will help me plan routes to reach them. What we are starting to do is draw up a plan.

If I'd said to you when I started that you should draw up a strategic communications plan, some people would have thrown up their hands in horror. But I hope you can now see, returning to my metaphor about a journey, that if you don't make a plan, there's every chance you'll fair or get lost.

A strategic communications plan is just a written document listing your organisation's specific goals and objectives and your route to achieving them. Ideally, it needs input from everyone - staff, board members, and other stakeholders who have views about where your organisation should be going.

What's needed then is to think about the routes you'll need to use to reach the people that matter. There are so many different communications outlets - from those we discussed earlier - the print and media outlets to goodness alone knows how many more. Add in all the social networking sites, the blog sites, Twitter, etc. and the list could be vast.!

However, never forget the power of personal letters and phone calls. These days we are bombarded with messages from so many sources. So if you have the ability to make a personal contact it is probably more powerful than anything else! So before you rush into print (TV or radio) do please make sure that there isn't a more powerful route to achieve your objectives. Thank you.