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Working yourself out of business is not working Wednesday, January, 27, 2010
Great Non-Profits Deserve A Great Rating System Wednesday, December, 16, 2009
Missing the Mark: Why Business-Mindedness Cannot Solve the Problems of the Non-Profit Sector Tuesday, December, 8, 2009
Too Many Non-Profits? Tuesday, December, 1, 2009
The Poverty Business Tuesday, November, 17, 2009
Poor By Design Monday, November, 16, 2009
The Poverty Landscape Wednesday, November, 11, 2009
We Need Inforum Thursday, November, 5, 2009
Effective Social Investing Wednesday, November, 4, 2009
Social Services Cause Homelessness
Tuesday, November, 17, 2009
Poor By Design
Marketing is an important part of any business. There is a saying that you can have the best product in the world, but if it's not marketed well, then it really doesn't matter. The same thing is true in social services. Part of program effectiveness is marketing our services to those who need them most, and making it as easy for people to receive social services as it is to buy books on Amazon.com.
A few years back, I went to an event at Los Angeles Trade-Tech Community College promoting Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites throughout Los Angeles. California First Lady Maria Shriver, who attended the event, gave a brief speech in which she said the government is the only entity that spends considerable time and resources on goods and services that it never really markets to the general public. Seeing as there is a clear overlap between the non-profit and government social service system, the First Lady's point applies to all of us in social services.
In Joel John Robert's recent Inforum post about the convoluted service entry system established by the Veteran Services Administration (VA), he suggests "... the VA, and the rest of the federal government for that matter, should hire Steve Jobs to make their system user friendly. Think Apple Store. iPod. MacBook. iPhone. Wouldn't it be amazing if homeless men and women, veteran or not, could walk into a government office and be greeted by smiling sales people with colored T-Shirts who are eager to explain every product in the store? "
While Joel's suggested solution is hyperbole, the sentiment is spot on. We provide important supportive services to low-income and unhoused adults and families. But if those services are not highly visible and easily navigable, we will fail to meet our social potential.
So, what does your organization do to market its services? What steps has your organization taken to streamline the service delivery process?
(Photo by spackletoe)
Posted 2009-11-17 15:00:36
A Third Wave Of Addressing Homelesness Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Civil Overestimation Friday, April 3, 2009
WWYD? Monday, November 13, 2006
705 Missing Homeless People: Where Did They Go? Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Body Found In A River Near Long Beach
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Linda Valverde & General Dogon The authors have lived and worked in Central City East—commonly known as Skid Row—for a combined thirty years. During all of our decades of living in Los Angeles, neither of us had ever heard of gentrification until about five years ago, when we became members of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN). Now it seems that gentrification has become a common household word in cities throughout the United States, and nowhere more than downtown Los Angeles. When redevelopment really took off in downtown L.A. in 2002, LA CAN and our allies created five principles for fair redevelopment. We wanted to see our neighborhood revitalized, not gentrified. The principles were....
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