Chapter 4 Results
4.5 Public relations strategy
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"Those are quite VIP relations, when the donor already knows us personally, we have been to 5 meetings, drink coffee or beer together. In that moment, the personal relations start to be important more than our PR."
(Tomas Vyhnalek, Head of Fundraising Department)
One of the ways to find new members of the club is direct dialogue, when people are being approached on the streets and informed about People in Need activities. The communication between PIN and members of the club is usually via email and also phone. For the major donors, who contribute larger amounts, the fundraising section prepared more personalized communication.
4.5 Public relations strategy
Unlikely the private organizations, the communication of nonprofits does not aim to increase the sales. Their communication strategy of nonprofits focuses rather on informing the public.
Important aspect for the public relations strategy is based on the NPO’s transparency and professionalism. 10, 5 per cent of the budget comes from private resources and so it is important for the current or future donors to know that the resources are utilized well.
"We aim that PIN is perceived as honest and professional organization which utilizes the entrusted funding32 well."
(Tomas Vyhnalek, Head of Fundraising Department)
One of the policies of PIN that should support the above mentioned professionalism strategy, is the delegation of the public communication (especially the communication with the media) on the “regular employees” who are involved in the communicated agenda. There is no spokesperson and one of the important tasks of Media and Information department is to connect journalists with the other sections of the NPO.
32 Resources that donors entrust to the NPO
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“We want to introduce PIN as transparent, trustworthy, professional and friendly. We aim to be transparent, so we let the people speak: those people, who actually deal with the topic, such as field workers, the directors of missions and others regular NGO workers etc. Having no spokesperson, we let our colleagues to speak and we aim to support them in their media work. “ Tomas Urban, Head of Information and Media Department“
The most critical view of the respondents has the CEO of People in Need Simon Panek, who can see that nowadays PR is often misused just to hide the absence of quality content.
"I am enemy of the empty phrases, which aim to sell some kind of things. We don’t need that, we need truthfully and moderately inform. The moderateness is very important. It is always about the content first…it is mainly about communicating the concrete/tangible results. Sometimes I am in conflict with our Media and Information department, which wants to emphasize some things more, but I am mainly for the moderateness and against the empty PR."
(Simon Panek, CEO)
Goals of PR
Public relations aims to support the functioning of the PNO in several ways. The long-term goals of PIN’s public relations are following:
Brand-building:
"We want people to continue recognizing People in Need including its logo etc., because that is big part of our power, that we have the support of the public, because people know us."
(Tereza Hronova, Media Coordinator)
Fundraising/support:
"As we aim to increase the number of our supporters and fans, offer them more topic and to gain donors when doing so: We want to increase the likelihood of the fan becoming a donor who starts regularly contribute with the funds."
(Tomas Urban)
Education/ public awareness
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"We aim for raising public awareness about various issues. For example, one of the sections is dealing with socially excluded communities aims to educate their clients about the loans and prevent them from taking the loans from unreliable companies. "
(Tomas Urban)
Advocacy
"We aim with PR for advocacy, and support of the political will – we push for the change."
(Tereza Hronova, Media coordinator)
Visibitity
"Partly we also aim for the visibility of our donors. Some organizations such as Agency Echo give us founds and we are trying to make organization visible. On the national level, we inform public that Czech Republic has committed to support other countries and that it is doing so. We are like a mediators who inform the public about this. "
(Tereza Hronova, Media coordinator)
Over the short term, PR of PIN also aims to promote the events and make people want to come and get involved. Additionally, one of the short-term goals is also the support of fundraising campaigns, for example for the SOS collections or other campaigns.
"When we have SOS collection of when we collect money for our building school in Africa, there is one clear message being send out: send us the money and we will do something good with them."
(Tereza Hronova, Media coordinator)
Expert voice
PIN is being profiled as a professional nonprofit organization. For the areas where PIN is active, its employees try to represent an expert voice in the media. When it comes to employees who are on the mission abroad (PIN is represented in 28 countries), they often become the source for media, not only in regards of their projects, but the whole regions. Most of the 28 countries where PIN operates on long-term projects do not host Czech foreign correspondents.
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"Our colleagues are often as an expert source in the media. When there is something going in in the country where they are based, they often comment it and get space in the media no matter what kind of projects we are running there. One of the reasons is the fact, that the media don’t have their correspondents. If they could send a correspondent there, they would do it. Also, the more distant place it is, the more likely is that it’s our employees who’s peaks there, for example in Ukraine, you would not see us much in the media, it is not far from Czech Republic and so all the media are there. "
(Tereza Hronova, Media coordinator)
The Head of the NPO would like the employees of the NPO to become the expert voices not only in the media, but also in the expert discussions. The obstacles are the lack of capacity and human resources.
"We do the things in the reality, as so often we are missing the capacity and the energy to communicate it afterwards. This would be our weak point, that in the expert topic, not in PR, but for example in the expert discussion about the state budget on education, or segregation of the Czech educational system in particular…in those, it would be better to contribute more into expert discussion."
(Simon Panek, CEO)