Marketing Your Nonprofit with Behavioral Science, Part 3

This is a post about selling social change. This is also a post about selling innovations. Veganism, policing by consent, solar power co-ops are, what? Innovations. People adopt new behaviors and use new products or services. 

Innovation is not a technology thing - "We've just launched the most fun and useful personal fitness app on the planet! Download it today!" 

Innovation is not a financial thing - "We offer the most innovative products in personal investing! Click here to learn more!"

If you want to advocate for something or get people to adopt a new behavior, you are promoting innovation. To do this successfully, you need to understand some things that fall outside the usual realm of marketing and fundraising communication. You need to understand what makes innovations take hold or fade away. Let's take a closer look at the characteristics of successful innovations. 

Characteristics of Successful Innovations: 

Many nonprofits have selling social or technological innovations as part of their mission. Did you think of your mission that way? Probably not. But, isn't it true? If you are advocating for a plant-based diet or renewable energy or policing by consent or whatnot, then you are selling social change. This means you want to know what makes changes stick or not stick. 

The best place to start is to think about some old, but valuable, work by social scientist Everett M. Rogers. To cut to the good stuff, Rogers and others have identified five characteristics of an innovation that determine how fast and far it goes.

1. Relative advantage - How much better is this innovation than what exists now? In business, you would focus on cost savings, or risk management, or access to a new niche. An innovation that slashes the cost of a product makes it possible to cut the price and attract new customers. 
2. Compatibility - Is the innovation a fit for existing values, experiences, and needs? Norms, skills, and standard practices are also relevant. 
3. Complexity - Simpler is better. The more work it takes to integrate a particular innovation into life or work, the less likely it will catch on. Think of vegan, local eating. Isn't eating a vegan diet composed of local products the best for our health and the environment? Maybe. Moving from a standard American diet to a local, vegan diet is kind of complicated. People won't do it just because; you need to make the vegan lifestyle easier to adopt. 
4. Trialability - Can someone try out the idea and reverse course if things aren't working out? If someone cuts back on driving and uses the bus, they can go back to driving if the bus proves to be frustrating and slow. If state law bans hunting, you can't easily reverse the economic damage by making some hunting legal again. 
5. Observability - Seeing is believing. The easier it is to see people using your innovation and benefiting from it, the more likely they'll accept it. It can be hard to see the results of an innovation though. If your neighbor starts walking and biking as much as possible, would you even know they did it? Would you know they've lost a little weight, saved a little money, and started feeling better about themselves? Probably not. 

Time to put on your management consultant's hat. Look at the idea from the perspective of a disinterested outsider. How does the idea stack up against each of those characteristics? Would an outsider really think your idea has decent observability - is it easy for people to see other people using the innovation and benefiting from it?

Repeat this little exercise. What weaknesses have you found? How can you correct them? 

If you want to sell an idea, you need to understand the worldview and perspective of the people who would use the innovation, vote for the new policy, or whatever. You can do this kind of evaluation work by sanity testing your proposed innovation using two simple tools. 

Sanity Testing Your Innovation:

We have to think of two related things here - the innovation, the way you are "selling it" to your audience. We should all know that simply presenting facts will not work. We all know that simply saying that X is immoral or Y is wrecking the climate will not move people to act. There is rarely a simple "A causes B" logic to why people do things. 

Logic Bubbles - This is a "thinking tool" introduced by creativity guru Edward de Bono many years ago as a way to examine other peoples' perceptions. A logic bubble is what drives a person's perceptions. Is this a good idea? Are they on my side or not? What is the smart thing to do? Our answers to those questions always depend on perceptions at least as much as on facts. 

Other Peoples' Views - This is another of Edward de Bono's thinking tools. You think about the person and how they would be affected by the idea. You reflect on what their views would be. 

In principle, both OPV and logic bubbles help you find and correct weaknesses in your idea. Then, you can revise your idea before putting it out in the world. 

Lastly, do some real-world testing. Roll out a small marketing campaign on LI and FB. Track the result for a couple of weeks. Adjust your messaging and try again, if the results were unsatisfactory. If the results were good, scale up your campaign. You have found an innovation that might stick, and you have found a way to sell it. 

Conclusion:

If you want to sell a new behavior, policy, law, or lifestyle, you'll have to make sure your innovation has real potential. To test that potential, you can invest lots of time in blogs and social media. Don't do that until you test your idea against five key characteristics of successful innovations. 

You'll also want to check your innovation against the needs, values, and perceptions of people who are supposed to use the idea. Are you trying to sell walking and mass transit to people in rural America and Canada? Don't do that. If you want to reduce pollution and increase renewable energy use, find a better way to speak to those segments of the population. 

Sources:

https://www.incrementa.co.uk/blog/innovation-success/

https://www.zsolt.blog/2020/12/de-bonos-algorithms-of-thought-for.html

https://www.stickyminds.com/article/broadening-your-perspective-logic-bubbles