I may be biting my own hand here, butI think there is much value in what Melissa has to say. When I was the communications director at a nonprofit organization, I was always frustrated by the difficulty in finding consultants who were better at what they do than we were. It was often easier to do the work in house and it was often of better quality than what we could pay for. It was also a way to avoid having a consultant grind against the bill by doing a lot of things that frankly did not need to be done.
But I would caution here that many if not most nonprofits, academic institutions and foundations lack the resources of PEW and are not able to run their own “midsize pr firm” Communications often gets short shrift and little budget, and important tasks are often assigned to well meaning but unskilled and unprepared staff members. The result is often an ineffective communications effort, and I would argue, an ineffective organization.
For agencies such as these, a really good consultant can help to think through communications challenges, develop effective messages, strategies and tactics, and create clear, concise and visually appealing communications materials that tell their story. They can also be very effective in reaching out to the news media and implementing communication outreach activities with specific audiences.
The trick is in finding really good consultants. My advice, avoid larger firms, find individuals who have worked in the nonprofit field, have experience in journalism and politics, and are committed to the issues your organization cares about And try to build long term relationships so that the consultant gains an understanding of your organization and what it is trying to achieve. In some cases, retaining consultants may be a good idea. They may be a little expensive, but they are often cheaper than an employee, and worth the freight if they help your organization to communicate effectively.
Holy smokes Ms. Skolfield you buried the lead ...
“The quality and consistency of our work product was demonstrably better ...and we had saved the institution more than a million dollars in a single year.” Wow & Congrats!
As a recently departed employee (I worked for Pew for 5 years on a project team) I can assure you that the “clients” were not nearly as happy as this article might indicate, not by a long shot. I can say, without hesitation, that my job and my team’s work suffered from the way Pew and Ms. Skolfield went about implementing these changes.
Thanks for this interesting and informative post. Having gone through a similar change (on a much smaller scale) I know that vendor relationships, like habits, are heard to break. But we certainly found having communications work performed in-house led to greater quality and consistency.
inhouse is good but dont throw away outside consultants completely especially to do evaluation of the effectiveness of your inhouse PR strategies once in a while
By cutting out the middle man and keeping PR strategies in house, gives the outreach a more personal touch. The person reaching out to the community has a good sense of the company’s mission, vision, and value of which can be reflected at all times.
Arianna Christopher
Public Relations Intern
GuideStar USA, Inc.
A bit more insight:
1) I am amazed that Pew allowed this post to even happen as they generally are fearful of any internal items, glad to see they are open to this now.
2) They still used external agencies to rebuild and relaunch the Pew website, which took over two years and cost an enormous sum- by far the largest fees one has ever seen for a non-profit.
3) A lot of the consolidation took place well before Ms Skolfield took over.
4) There are still huge gaps in taking advantage of social media as the campaigns for years have been using their own staff to get around the overwhelming restrictions that are in place surrounding social media by the communications staff.
5) The work itself is amazing, but it’s hampered by control from executive management approving everything, even down to tweets.
6) Pew Trusts is NOT the Pew Research Center. Totally different orgs and management.
Project management is always the hardest part. Traditional media, video, social media, collateral material + internal communications is difficult to do well simultaneously.
COMMENTS
BY John McDonald
ON March 26, 2015 10:53 AM
I may be biting my own hand here, butI think there is much value in what Melissa has to say. When I was the communications director at a nonprofit organization, I was always frustrated by the difficulty in finding consultants who were better at what they do than we were. It was often easier to do the work in house and it was often of better quality than what we could pay for. It was also a way to avoid having a consultant grind against the bill by doing a lot of things that frankly did not need to be done.
But I would caution here that many if not most nonprofits, academic institutions and foundations lack the resources of PEW and are not able to run their own “midsize pr firm” Communications often gets short shrift and little budget, and important tasks are often assigned to well meaning but unskilled and unprepared staff members. The result is often an ineffective communications effort, and I would argue, an ineffective organization.
For agencies such as these, a really good consultant can help to think through communications challenges, develop effective messages, strategies and tactics, and create clear, concise and visually appealing communications materials that tell their story. They can also be very effective in reaching out to the news media and implementing communication outreach activities with specific audiences.
The trick is in finding really good consultants. My advice, avoid larger firms, find individuals who have worked in the nonprofit field, have experience in journalism and politics, and are committed to the issues your organization cares about And try to build long term relationships so that the consultant gains an understanding of your organization and what it is trying to achieve. In some cases, retaining consultants may be a good idea. They may be a little expensive, but they are often cheaper than an employee, and worth the freight if they help your organization to communicate effectively.
John McDonald
BY Deirdre Patterson
ON March 26, 2015 03:27 PM
Holy smokes Ms. Skolfield you buried the lead ...
“The quality and consistency of our work product was demonstrably better ...and we had saved the institution more than a million dollars in a single year.” Wow & Congrats!
BY Linda Whitmore
ON March 27, 2015 11:48 AM
I would love to know what type of system you adopted re project management - always a bugaboo for me.
BY Previous Pew Employee
ON March 27, 2015 08:50 PM
As a recently departed employee (I worked for Pew for 5 years on a project team) I can assure you that the “clients” were not nearly as happy as this article might indicate, not by a long shot. I can say, without hesitation, that my job and my team’s work suffered from the way Pew and Ms. Skolfield went about implementing these changes.
BY Andrew
ON March 30, 2015 04:35 AM
Thanks for this interesting and informative post. Having gone through a similar change (on a much smaller scale) I know that vendor relationships, like habits, are heard to break. But we certainly found having communications work performed in-house led to greater quality and consistency.
BY Shela Zane
ON March 31, 2015 04:51 AM
inhouse is good but dont throw away outside consultants completely especially to do evaluation of the effectiveness of your inhouse PR strategies once in a while
BY Arianna Christopher
ON March 31, 2015 05:23 AM
By cutting out the middle man and keeping PR strategies in house, gives the outreach a more personal touch. The person reaching out to the community has a good sense of the company’s mission, vision, and value of which can be reflected at all times.
Arianna Christopher
Public Relations Intern
GuideStar USA, Inc.
BY Frank Smith
ON March 31, 2015 02:11 PM
A bit more insight:
1) I am amazed that Pew allowed this post to even happen as they generally are fearful of any internal items, glad to see they are open to this now.
2) They still used external agencies to rebuild and relaunch the Pew website, which took over two years and cost an enormous sum- by far the largest fees one has ever seen for a non-profit.
3) A lot of the consolidation took place well before Ms Skolfield took over.
4) There are still huge gaps in taking advantage of social media as the campaigns for years have been using their own staff to get around the overwhelming restrictions that are in place surrounding social media by the communications staff.
5) The work itself is amazing, but it’s hampered by control from executive management approving everything, even down to tweets.
6) Pew Trusts is NOT the Pew Research Center. Totally different orgs and management.
BY Sally
ON April 5, 2015 06:01 AM
Project management is always the hardest part. Traditional media, video, social media, collateral material + internal communications is difficult to do well simultaneously.