Coordinating your message: getting chapters on the same marketing page as national.

When messages suddenly appeared on buses in June that showed the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America's campaign to help children, the event came as part of the first national effort by the Phoenix, Ariz.-based organization. The national campaign ran with the support of 67 chapters around the country.

Parts of the national campaign aired on television, inside elevators, and stood out on Niagara Falls' famous boat Maid of the Mist. "As a result, we generated 1.3 million consumer impressions in 30 days," said Jennifer Maher, vice president of marketing and corporate alliances for Make-A-Wish. "We had nothing like that ever before."

Make-A-Wish is leveraging the Web to fred volunteers and bring in donations. Previously, the organization's Web site directed visitors to local chapters. The nonprofit has 25,000 volunteers nationwide, although 8,000 new people jumped to become involved because of the campaign. That figure came during three months of the effort in a goal that hoped to raise 20,000 volunteers during the next five years.

This is the image of a national campaign, but if the organization has numerous chapters, how does the planning happen so the national office and the many chapters hit the ground running in the same direction? The answer depends on the governance, building teams, and using the Web.

"We're in the middle of a national campaign because the message of the brand wasn't unified," Maher said. "The chapters were going in a different direction."

Because of the national approach, the nonprofit used national agencies and vendors for the first year even though those tools could be used lo cally in the future. Many companies became attracted because of the larger than local activity. This interest offered Maher with a way to tap into new relationships.

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"We wanted to give our media partners a way to embrace Make-A-Wish and give the chapters a tool and a time frame when we could all draw at the same time to break through a general media clutter," she said.

Make-A-Wish chapters across the country each typically sponsored efforts to find volunteers, raise money and encourage donations.

While many organizations have a forum so the national office is on the same page as chapters, the organization doesn't always have the governance in place for a streamlined effect, according to Paulette Maehara, president and CEO of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) in Arlington, Va.

"The organization might be an independent (c)(3) and have separate boards of directors while the national organization is related," she said. "That national body may be set up through an affiliation agreement and the problem is the independence or perceived independence of the local body."

She recounted that the American Diabetes Association (ADA) decided to nationalize the entire organization. "That was a bold move because they eliminated the policy-making element of the local boards," she said. "When you do that, it makes the communication up and down more efficient."

Maehara explained that branding was critical in 1981 for the American Red Cross when the organization decided to standardize its brand. Individual chapters could no longer use symbols such as a black cross or a cross with a line though the image."If the public doesn't know who you are, you can lose donors," she said.

The AFP might pose a different scenario, as the organization is not a (c)(3) nonprofit. The AFP exists as a (c)(6) association with local units as (c)(3)s. The AFP has affiliate agreements and for the majority of chapters, no staff exists. Volunteers handle the office, so those leaders change every two years.

"The policies become the consistency because the policy tends to come from the staff, which exists mainly on the national level," she said. "When the local board makes policies, the situation can develop into a conflict or challenge for the national organization."

National organizations are realizing a disconnect between chapters and the national office, according to David Lawson, vice president, market strategies for Kintera, Inc., based in San Diego. "This disconnect affects a disconnect with the donors," he said.

The answer for many organizations, he said, is to give the national office control of the message so they can have a coherent, consistent message. "A connected organization leads to connected giving" he said. "Donors are starting to ask for this because they see this in their banks with checking and they expect the same when dealing with a nonprofit."

Donors want consistency no matter where they go and that means having systems that are different from many organizations, especially when an extreme independence breeds a love-hate relationship between chapter and the national office, according to Lawson.

"Some national offices have moved away from local chapters to regional entities," he said. "Part of the reason is for efficiency and part because of the realization that the donor may want to support at the local level where their winter home lies, but also where their summer home resides as well"

As you start to have a cohesive brand, "the constituency sees the look and feel of a brand of the mission," Lawson said. "People can be thrown off when they expect certain colors and feel as though they are hit by a variation--that's confusing."

Make-A-Wish's Maher brought the national and chapter offices on the same track by setting up teams from each to set goals for the national campaign. The teams were built to get the maximum mix of people from chapters. "We had a debate about the mix," she said. "Some thought the make-up should be senior management, but we wanted different perspectives from programming, marketing, and production people to get better results."

Teams met to set goals that would be agreeable to the national and chapter people. Tool kits, called Campaign in a Box, gave teams short specific in formation about how to proceed.

Major topics revolved around media relations, fundraising tools, and corporate sponsorship. Items included, what's in it for the local chapter, how different would the operation be from before, how would media relations benefit the chapters, and how could the fundraising help grant more wishes in the local community.

What happens when disagreements occurred? "We stopped at some point that was decided in advance and we made the collective decision to go forward with a senior leadership team," Maher said. "It's a process we try to improve each year by trying to get input as much as possible--but you need communication internally to have a buy-in between the chapter and the national."

Lawson calls breaking the division between the national and chapter a silo-busting necessity. "It's possible to see silos in different areas like e-fundraising, direct mail, major gifts, and planned gifts each having a separate world," he said.

"When we take that to a national level, the New York chapter may share some affinity with the Florida chapter although they probably don't share information," he said. "But the donor knows he might be giving to both the New York and Florida chapters so why not share needed information?"

The answer needs to start at the leadership level. Boards both on the national and local level include business people dealing with the same issues. Leaders have to view the donor as seeing the national picture. "We make the mistake of thinking of donors instead of consumers or constituents," he said."But the point is the donor acts no differently than the consumer--the donor is giving an emotional purchase to help someone."

Much of Make-A-Wish's national effort is focused on the Web site. For example, Destination Joy is sponsored by the national company Frito-Lay where people can visit the Make-A-Wish site to help grant wishes to seriously ill children. These viewers donate frequent flier miles, hotel points, or professional services. The new "Ways to Help" section also enables visitors to explore volunteer opportunities and wish-granting needs at Make-A-Wish chapters nationwide. In the past, the volunteers would get in touch with local chapters. Now the site is a sourcing tool to allow people to offer various services.

"We had to build an interactive tool to receive in-kind donations," Maher said. "We raised around 360 million airline miles, but we need more."

Developing the national site didn't mean that local chapters had to upgrade. "We made sure that the national site had cutting edge technology," she said. "Currently, local chapters continue to have local sites with local news and they can use Web templates."

The templates are being designed now, and part of a continuum of tools means the chapters will have local URLs, according to Maher. "For the campaign, we provide a lot of the Web tools for chapters to have key banner ads about Destination Joy," she said.

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Nonprofits could have the situation where people volunteer in major market cities instead of some rural areas. "That's why we have the tool," she said. "Chapters can communicate about other areas of volunteering from a national resource as the national site forwards the information to the local level."

Other results promise a lift in the frequent flyer points. "We're starting to see an increase and we never promoted it well before."

The AFP recently brought local chapters more together by helping each chapter to access the same technology. "This way a small organization can be at the top because technology allows the smallest and largest to be on the same platform," Lawson said. "Technology isn't as expensive as before."