How to … Obscure Your Mission
Last week New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made big headlines with a speech in Los Angeles that served, according to the Associated Press, as “a scorching assessment of Washington” with respect to its spending practices. “In remarks clearly aimed at a national audience,” wrote AP’s Michael R. Blood, “the mayor said politics trumps common sense in Congress, where pork-barrel spending takes priority.”
Though he denies it, Bloomberg is said to be considering an independent run for the presidency, and the Republican’s appearance with fellow GOP moderate Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, only fueled speculation of a bipartisan bid for the White House. Throw in his harsh criticism of congressional practices and you had a ready-made story about a potential hand grenade about to be tossed smack dab into primary season.
Oh, yeah, Bloomberg’s speech also was meant to announce the launch of a nonprofit effort, Building America’s Future, a coalition of elected and other official seeking to inject infrastructure issues — the need for greater investments in roads, bridges, airports, utilities, and so on — into the national debate. As you can imagine, the circumstances cited above rather pushed the nonprofit announcement to the side, which is a shame, since, as last year’s Minnesota bridge collapse demonstrated, there’s clearly a need for more vigilance.
The situation got me to thinking, and I came up with a few modest insights on how to obscure one’s mission, especially at the outset:
- Wrap your cause in so much star power that it is completely overwhelmed and overlooked.
- Schedule your launch announcement to coincide so nicely with current events that those events completely subsume the effort you’re promoting.
- And, finally, fail to remember that the mission is the message.
Building America’s Future learned those lessons well, and as a result risks being forgotten about nearly as soon as it was started.
No such danger for Michael Bloomberg, though.
This is the first in what I hope will be a weekly series offering insights to nonprofits on how to go about doing things both beneficial and destructive (and, occasionally, self-destructive). | 501(c)
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