1. Tell your story. To get people to join in and support your cause, they have to understand what you do and how you help. An infographic can be a nice way to provide an overview of your place in the world.

2. Facilitate conversations. An infographic can be used as a great way to start the conversation. It can provide a base level of knowledge for all involved in the conversation, help reveal connections within information, or provide a new perspective on the subject matter.

3. Demonstrate the need for specific program or service. Using credible data, infographics can help you quickly convey the value of specific program or service to potential donors.

4. Educate. Infographics are a great educational tool. Especially when you are trying to help people navigate complex systems and process, explain an intricate program, or increase awareness.

5. Analyze and interpret information. Organize the information you have collected with an infographic, and you may see it more clearly. Helping you more effectively direct resources, analyze patterns or trends, and/or respond to a changing environment.

I’d love to hear how you have used infographics to support your cause. Drop me a note below.

Combining a little creativity, design sense and PowerPoint knowledge, you can create your own short animated video clips without being a Flash expert. Now, I wouldn’t recommend using this approach for video clips over a few minutes, but till you might want to use this technique for short clips to help explain complex data or information, provide educational information, engage stakeholders, or for a variety of other reasons.

Below is an example of a video I created using this technique for the Minnesota Youth in Transition Database. It is a short clip explaining the benefits of participating in an upcoming survey.

Here’s the two minute overview of how you can make it happen:

1. Develop your idea. This may be the most challenging step.

2. Create your PowerPoint. Combine the content, graphics and animation you’d like to include in your presentation. Make sure you have the animation set to run automatically. If you want to add audio or music, place it in your PowerPoint and set it to run for the appropriate portions of your presentation.

3. Convert your PowerPoint presentation to video. Once you’ve got your presentation set and running smoothly in PowerPoint, use one of the free or relatively free PowerPoint to video converter softwares to generate your clip. I used Wondershare in my example above.

4. Lastly, share your video. Either upload your video to your website, YouTube, Facebook, etc, or use during a presentation.

A great infographic…

Can stand on its own. If your infographic needs a supporting explanation to be understood it, it is not working successfully.

Engages its audience. Now I am not suggesting you create the flashiest most colorful infographic to capture your audience’s attention, but I do believe presentation is an important component to consider.

Makes complex information digestible without losing its meaning. This task can be a true balancing act. But if done successfully, I believe, a great infographic can not only make complex information digestible without losing its meaning, but can actually enhance understanding by allowing your audience to see connections within the data that weren’t obvious before.

1. Focus your energy on communicating what you hope to accomplish, not so much on format. Be prepared to describe your audience, how you hope the piece will be used, and what actions you hope it will inspire. When it comes to format, focus mostly on communicating any design constraints you might have for your project, rather than specifics. By taking this approach you will most likely end up with the most innovative solutions.

2. Once you’ve discussed the primary objectives of the piece, provide examples to help communicate your design preferences. Why this is this so important? Well, just imagine the color green. How many different greens might you come up with? Or imagine if someone asked you to pick out a “happy” font, what would that look like? As you can see, this could quickly lead to frustration because you and your designer aren’t on the same page. To avoid this problem, provide examples of projects with design styles you like or ask your designer to provide examples of previous projects.   Be prepared to also explain what you like and don’t like about each example. This will help communicate your preference easier, rather than just talking in the abstract.

Below is his best advice on how he works to create an environment that lets the consultant and his permanent staff achieve the greatest success.

The elements I focus on include:

Establish objectives – Before you start clearly define the deliverables, timelines, and performance metrics. Define how decisions will be made. Share the objectives with all team members.

Build a partnership – Team building is the most important element for success. All team members need to know that it is a collaborative effort and that they are an integral part of the team. All contributions are valued. It is also important that permanent staff understand their role and why the organization is using consultant services.

Create an open environment – Create an environment where all team members feel comfortable sharing information, and expressing their concerns, comments and opinions in a constructive manner. Questions should be welcome.

Mentor –Be prepared to coach and mentor consultants as you would a new permanent employee. Consultants may be proficient in a subject area but they probably have only a limited knowledge of your practices and organizational culture.

Provide timely and constructive feedback – Establish regular check in sessions. Recognize success when it occurs and take constructive corrective actions when needed. Don’t throw a task over the wall and wait for the final product before you comment.

Be flexible – When bringing a consultant on board, focus on describing problem and the end result. Let the consultant use their skills, knowledge and tools to develop a solution. Seek out ways to blend ideas to create a better and more effective solution. Be open to new ideas, but maintain your role as the decision maker.

-John Mahlik

John’s experience includes managing project teams charged with information systems development and supporting transportation system design. These teams frequently consist of a blend of consultant and permanent staff. He utilizes consultant to provide additional resources to cover during peak demand, or to acquire knowledge or a skill set that he cannot quickly develop within my permanent staff. The guidelines described above have helped him to improve productivity, improve quality, and meet tight project timelines, while building positive working relationships.

Convincing someone of something we believe in will help them, isn’t always an easy task. But I have found these things can help move your great ideas into great impacts.

1. Know who determines whether an idea can be adopted. Who is the critical decision-maker or makers? Find out their criteria for decision making. When you know who’s in charge, it will help you build the case for why the idea is needed.
2. Get the decision makers on board. Do your homework. Understand the environment. Develop as much detail as is practical. Be descriptive but concise in describing the idea. Share your knowledge with the decision makers. Expect many questions and be prepared to answer with confidence. Your audience needs to be able to visualize how the idea will be put into practice and feel comfortable with how it works.
3. Carpe diem. Something needs to occur to stimulate people to act. These are events that are generally outside of your control. The stimulus can be something simple or significant. Commonly in organizations these are budget related, a world event, or an organizational change. You need to be alert and ready to seize the opportunity when it presents itself.

How can visual aids help?

• A picture is worth a thousand words. Visual tools can help paint a picture of the current or projected environment. They help the decision makers visualize the need.
• Making abstract concepts easier to grasp. These tools can help support your presentation by moving ideas from the abstract to something concrete and easier to understand.
• Providing layers of detail in a more understandable format. Depending upon the graphics tools used you may also provide the decision maker with the ability to drill down in to the detail easier or explore other features.

Getting an idea accepted and adopted can take many years, or hours depending upon the nature of the idea or the need. No matter your time frame, I have found graphics and visual tools help to accelerate the idea adoption process.

How have you found visual aids helpful in making your case?

-John Mahlik

This simple principle is something I have been trying to apply to my work as well (and may be something you find helpful to your work too).

For example, really try to put yourself into your audience’s shoes when creating a communication piece. Don’t just think about them in the abstract, but create personas that help you understand what critical information they will need, what will be important to them, and what level of detail to include to best communicate your message.

This may also mean taking your data, information or ideas and putting it into a visual, graph, chart or map. By transforming the format of your information it may make it easier to see trends, reveal patterns, and make comparisons.

Anytime you approach a situation, a problem or your environment from a new perspective, you might be surprised by what you see.

Infographics (or infoposters) are showing up everywhere. You may think they look cool and are interested in integrating them into your own work, but you don’t know how you could use them effectively.

Below I’ve compiled a few questions to help you determine when strategically applying this tool could save you time, communicate more effectively, and support your mission.

If you answer yes to any of the questions an infographic might be an effective tool try.

• Are you trying to communicate a complex process or concept, but are you are receiving blank stares when you try to explain it to others?

• Do you want to educate your community about a particular issue, but you are having a hard time engaging audiences?

• Do you spend the majority of your presentations explaining your program evaluation or research findings, rather than discussing important policy implications and responses?

• Have you collected lots of wonderful data, but you are having a hard time seeing how it relates to other critical pieces of information?

• Are you excited to share your organizational vision and purpose with the world, but no one seems to truly grasp what you do or why you do it (yet alone seems moved to become a supporter)?

How have infographics been helpful to your own work?

Regardless of whether you are a large organization or a single person business, the following simple guides can help toward ensuring that you can maintain a secure and reliable information systems environment.

• Document your processes. Write down how you do business. Whether in a electronic document or a simple three ring binder, have your systems procedures and data defined.

• Backup your critical information. Make copies of critical files and store them in a safe location. Critical information today includes phone contact lists and critical email.

• Keep your security processes current. Keep computer security software current. Stay aware of the latest data threats.

• Protect your access. Protect passwords by changing them regularly and not posting them on a note next to your computer or opting for having the computer remember your password.

• Audit your data and processes on a regular schedule. Conduct periodic reviews of how your work gets done. Conduct virus scans on a regular schedule.

• Have a recovery plan. How will you respond if things go bad? Will your stored data run on your recovery devices? Talk your plan through with someone you trust to verify that the plan will accomplish its goal. Conduct a table top exercise to see what happens.

These suggested guidelines are a few simple steps toward developing a secure and reliable information system. You may never need to implement a system or data recovery, but if you do, following these simple steps should help to reduce the effort needed to get your systems up and running and back to work.

- John Mahlik

Why?

Start by thinking about WHY you want to communicate. What is the point? Big Duck during their webinar yesterday suggested nonprofits communicate for three reasons. They illustrated this message in a simple Venn diagram, which I thought provided a nice visual tool for helping you think about WHY you are communicating.

Who?

Do your homework and really think about WHO you’re trying to speak to. It is important to know your audience.

What?

Develop WHAT the content should look like based on the wonderful research and thinking you’ve done about WHY and WHO you are communicating.

How?

Only after answering the first three questions should you determine HOW your message will be presented. Will it take the shape of an infographic, website, brochure, video, tweet, etc?

Want to learn more?

I’d recommend checking out the book, Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications. It covers Big Duck’s Brandraising model developed to help nonprofits communicate more effectively in order to advance fundraising, programs and advocacy goals.