Our company, Cooke Pictures, helps numerous national organizations tell their story in today’s cluttered and distracted culture. As a result, I love hearing the stories of others who are helping their churches, nonprofits, and other organizations tell their stories more effectively. A number of years ago, I met Lt. Colonel Ron Busroe, who is currently National Community Relations & Development Secretary at The Salvation Army’s National Headquarters. In simpler terms, that means he’s the
Every day, people misunderstand email messages. In fact, one study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reports that the tone in an email is misinterpreted 50 percent of the time. But it gets worse – the same study discovered 90 percent of people think they’ve actually correctly interpreted the tone of emails they receive. That means
Hardly a day goes by without seeing a number of Christians on social media criticizing large churches. Just like the Instagram meme in this post below, it’s assumed that just because a church is big, they must be compromising the gospel, not preaching the Bible, or some other lame charge. It seems that for far too many people in the Church today, large numbers of people automatically mean
If your advertising or media programming hasn’t been getting a response lately, the first place you should look is viewer fatigue. In other words, is the audience simply tired of seeing what you’re presenting? Too often, programmers and advertisers (and speakers and pastors) get into a rut. Our spots and videos look alike, we use the same voice over artist, show the same graphic style, or tend to write the same way – over and over again. Viewer fatigue means that
A few years ago while speaking at the African Christian Broadcasting Conference in South Africa, I asked Mary Hutchinson who founded a donor development firm to submit a guest post on a topic that would make a difference for our readers. After reading my post on How to be a Better Communications or Media Director, she began to consider how ministry staff on the “donor side” of communications could be more effective. It’s great to have a brilliant and effective program, podcast, and website, but what can you do to keep those people engaged and supporting your cause? Sadly, Mary passed away since that time, but her advice is still worth hearing. Here’s Mary’s top ten suggestions for cultivating donors for your nonprofit or ministry:
In the Christian community, the last generation of leaders has often been called the “builder generation.” These were men and women who accomplished great things – including founding universities, launching massive media networks, and building ministries with a global outreach. They were great “doers.” The problem was, far too often they
We see many churches on national television these days, and for pastors who feel they have a message beyond their own communities, I’m all for reaching out through TV. In a media driven culture, I’m interested in exploring any media platform that engages today’s culture with the message of the gospel. However, many pastors only think about a national program and never consider how much a local television broadcast can
I actually met a prospective filmmaker recently who moved to Los Angeles to become a film director. I asked him what he’d directed so far and he replied, “Nothing.” But that wasn’t all. I discovered he’d never taken a class, never read any books on the subject, never worked on any projects at all. All he had was the desire to become a director, and he was sure that