New World Order: An image makeover helps a peace group face the future
Marilyn Dickey
The Chronicle of Philanthropy - 9/2/04 (Vol. XVI, No. 22), pp. 17-19
Reprinted with the permission of The Chronicle of Philanthropy,

When the World Federalist Association began reinventing itself last year, most of its staff members, trustees, and constituents thought it was a great idea.

Most agreed that the Washington nonprofit organization's name was outdated and didn't reflect its mission of promoting peaceful solutions to global problems. Because the public didn't understand the name, the group was having difficulty getting its message out. To make matters worse, the organization was often confused with another international-affairs group that shared the same office space.

"People who knew us liked what we did," says Heather Hamilton, vice president for programs. But the group had an image problem.

So in March 2003, the association began to change -- revamping its name, mission, vision, organizational structure, Web site, informational materials, and staff. The result was a new look, a new image, a new organizational chart, and a new name: Citizens for Global Solutions.

Winning New Gifts

Since its makeover, the group has found a more hospitable climate for its efforts to tap foundation grants and other support. "Some foundations had written us off before," says Ms. Hamilton.

Among the most promising signs was a $25,000 gift from a new donor -- someone who had been familiar with the group for years, had even worked with its staff, but who said he never would have written out a check to an organization named "World Federalist Association." Online fund raising is also beginning to pick up: Although the group never had much luck raising money through its old, hard-to-navigate Web site, the revamped site brought in $12,976 in the second quarter of this year.

The change reaches all the way to the top: The group's new chief executive officer, Charles J. Brown, a veteran of the Clinton administration and of Amnesty International USA, takes the reins next week.

Overhauling a nonprofit group, while continuing to operate day to day, was an enormous juggling act, says Aaron Knight, Citizens for Global Solutions' interim chief executive officer, who will soon serve as its chief operating officer. The process took long hours of staff and board time and stirred sometimes contentious debate among people whose ties to the organization had been long and deeply felt. But for an institution that was decades old and had not kept up with the times, he says, the change was sorely needed.

And, says Ms. Hamilton, it has been greatly beneficial to the group's work. "Within months of the changes, we've seen a lot of new doors open to us," she says. "It wasn't even that they were shut before, but they weren't even hearing us knocking."

Postwar Origins

The World Federalist Association was founded by military veterans and peace activists -- including the physicist Albert Einstein -- in 1947 as an effort to forge peace in the world. Back then, just after World War II, the word "federalist" called to mind a popular movement to unite nations of the world for peace.

"In 1947, most people knew what 'federalist' meant," says Mr. Knight. Decades later, instead of conjuring up images of world peace, the name was more likely to produce blank stares. "We weren't getting through to people," he says.

The group's newsletter, Ms. Hamilton says, didn't help convey the message. It was geared toward sharing information about its members, such as accounts of meetings and interviews with the group's founders, rather than promoting the organization's work on international-affairs issues. The Web site, she adds, didn't have a professional look or promote the association's work. "It wasn't very good at communicating anything," she says. "We didn't really use it for a lot."

The organization had two spinoff Web sites that focused on specific issues, such as its campaign to end genocide, but the sites weren't well coordinated. "We had a proliferation of Web sites and communications without a 'brand,'" she says.

In addition to its name and communication problems, the organization was often confused with a group that rented the basement of its town-house office. For years, the World Federalist Association had had close ties with the Campaign for U.N. Reform, a group that supports the United Nations' mission and works on improving its ability to carry it out. In addition to sharing office space, the two groups shared a similar vision and mission. They held specific interests in common, such as U.N. financing. Supporters would occasionally call to suggest the two combine as one permanently.

It made sense. Besides sharing the same goals, the organizations shared some of the same donors and volunteers. But each had its own staff, fund-raising appeals, newsletter, board, and logo. Each had a separate set of auditors and lawyers. Joining forces could save money, reduce overlapping demands on the staff, and create a larger, more powerful organization with far greater reach and influence.

Getting Started

The idea for change had been around for a long time, says Mr. Knight. A dozen years earlier, before Mr. Knight came to work for the organization, several staff and board members had tried to modernize it, he says, but they weren't able to get a consensus. Those interested in change were too small a minority back then, he says, and lacked a unified vision for the group's future.

It was Don Kraus -- then executive director of the Campaign for U.N. Reform and now executive vice president of Citizens for Global Solutions -- who prompted change this time around.

"It seemed because of the attitude of the [World Federalist Association] staff, it was really time to make this happen," he says. "We pulled together a proposal, and it was passed by my board and pretty much remained intact through the end of the process."

The trustees, staff members, and volunteers who were behind the change decided to enlist the help of experienced consultants to lead them through the thicket of decisions that lay ahead.

"We swallowed hard and got good advice -- and spent a lot of money," says Ms. Hamilton.

The group spent about $100,000 on consultants, who helped with market research and on restructuring the organization, says Mr. Knight.

Consulting longtime trustees from the start helped smooth the way for change, he says.

"A number of founders were 100 percent behind this from the very beginning, so it was not a pitting of new ideas versus longstanding ideas. This wasn't a battle of, 'Well, you've only been with the organization for five years, so you don't really care what this organization is and what it stands for.'"

The boards of both organizations, which each numbered just under 25 members, led the process, forming two committees to pursue two paths leading to change, says Ms. Hamilton: One was to work on the organization's name, identity, and message, the other on its structure.

The Name Game

The revamping effort began with cautious steps, and the association's staff members and committees took pains to keep all interested parties informed. The World Federalist Association had 12,000 members at the time, 300 of whom were particularly active. Print surveys and e-mail messages went out to those 300, asking how they felt about the organization.

Of all the steps that were taken to carry the group into the 21st century, the name change would prove the thorniest, says Ms. Hamilton. Some members were wedded to the old name, she says, and even those who agreed that it needed changing disagreed on what should go into the new name. The new name needed to be concise but descriptive -- a tall order since the organization seeks to influence many issues. It needed to convey a group involved in world affairs, peace, justice, democracy, and political action.

Of the 300 questionnaires sent out, about 120 responses came back, says Ms. Hamilton. "The overwhelming majority hated the word 'federalist' in the name -- and these were some of our most active, older members," she notes.

The response was so strong, says Mr. Knight, that he thinks the change should have taken place years before it did. The survey showed "much more strong enthusiasm for the name change and realignment than suspected, because we'd been hearing only from people who were opposed to it for the past several years. I think we might have been at a point to take action on this 5 or 10 years ago, but we didn't know the opinions of our core supporters as well as we should."

But a few people disagreed with the proposed changes, he says. Some members who had been involved since the late 1940s clung to the old name, he says.

"They said, 'This is my religion. This is my identity, '" he says. "It was hard for them to let go. It was like changing who they were personally."

Most people were eventually swayed, says Mr. Knight -- some by their peers, others by the results of market research, which involved focus groups with the public and telephone interviews with influential people, such as members of Congress, the news media, and foreign-policy experts.

The World Federalist Associations's peers in the public-policy field had long been lobbying for a name change. Eli Pariser, founder of the advocacy group MoveOn.org, once told Ms. Hamilton, "You'd probably be better off with something that doesn't immediately make people think of conspiracy theories."

For the focus groups, consultants chose participants who fit the profile of people who were likely to join the organization -- those who had voted in the most recent election, had college degrees, and were interested in foreign affairs. Some board members watched from behind a one-way mirror as participants commented on four choices of names for the organization. The original name conjured up a variety of inappropriate images. "Blue-haired old ladies," said one participant. "The World Wrestling Federation," said another.

Watching the focus groups "solidified the support of those who may have been slightly wavering or questioning 'do we really need to do this?'" says Mr. Knight. "After that experience, the sense was, 'We really need to do this. How we were communicating for the past 30 years is not working anymore.'"

Combining Forces

In January, the new name became official, and two months later, the group started using its new letterhead. The World Federalist Association and the Campaign for U.N. Reform have ceased to exist, though the new organization has both an educational unit -- the charitable Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund -- and a membership arm, the Citizens for Global Solutions, which registered as an advocacy group under Section 501 (c)(4) of the federal tax code. Such groups are allowed to pursue more aggressive forms of lobbying than charities and foundations, but their donors cannot take a tax deduction, as can donors to groups classified under Section 501 (c)(3).

Each organization has its own board, and the number of active members in each group has been growing, says Ms. Hamilton -- and many of those members, she says, are people who would not probably have joined in the past.

More members, for instance, have participated in the organization's e-mail advocacy campaigns. Before the makeover, says Valerie Schrock, who oversees online advocacy efforts for Citizens for Global Solutions, about 1,000 members sent messages to their Congressional representatives per month. Since the group's new Web site went online in April, that number has increased tenfold.

The combined group has a single interactive Web site (http://www.globalsolutions.org) and a free e-mail newsletter that readers can use to learn about its programs and events, keep up with pending bills in Congress, e-mail legislators, and download reports and articles.

The quarterly print newsletter has a new design, and the articles are now written with an eye toward educating people about issues such as terrorism. The difference between new and old, says Ms. Hamilton, reflects "the difference between an issue advocacy organization and what is essentially a club."

The coordinated communications effort has helped Global Solutions gain more media attention for its work -- such as in The Washington Post, on CNN, and by recent mentions in Walter Cronkite's newspaper column.

"We've ramped up our media presence," says Ms. Hamilton. "In the past, we occasionally would have gotten a media hit, but not with this intensity."

A New Leader

The new staff is slightly smaller than the combined staffs of the former organizations, which numbered about 14 and now number 11, and the priorities have shifted. For example, one new employee spends half of her time focusing on communications.

The new combined staff will have a new leader: Mr. Brown, who was selected last month and whose appointment represents the culmination of the long process of transforming the organization, says Mr. Knight.

Mr. Brown "knows how Washington works and he really 'gets' the idea of how a national membership, education, and advocacy organization does its job," says Mr. Knight.

Mr. Brown says he was attracted to the job in part because of the recent changes, which he saw as emblems of a dynamic organization prepared to engage with important issues. "As CEO," he says, "my priorities will be to move the organization to the next level -- expanding the membership base, expanding our support, and enhancing the already terrific work that the staff has been doing."

The revitalized group's presence is being noticed by public-affairs groups and grant makers.

"Citizens for Global Solutions' new name and related communications efforts demonstrate an impressive commitment to applying some crucial lessons learned about how to reach broad audiences of Americans on global issues," says P.J. Simmons, project director and special adviser at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, in New York.

The group's new attention to communicating its message -- along with its overhaul of its identity and its managerial restructuring -- cover the areas that a group needs to address to remake itself, says David B. Drake, a consultant in Portland, Ore., who specializes in organizational change.

But the work isn't done, he says. Before what he calls the "entrepreneurial buzz" wears off, Mr. Drake says, Citizens for Global Solutions must ask itself, "What are we doing well here and what do we keep doing to sustain some of these early gains?"

In the wake of its makeover, Ms. Hamilton says, the organization is better equipped to convey the importance of its mission.

"Now that we have a new name and mission and structure, we're more likely to send that kind of message," says Ms. Hamilton. "We're doing the same work, but we're not hampered by an outdated name and internal structure."
 

 © 2004 The Chronicle of Philanthropy