This weekend I am going to a board of director’s retreat for a non-profit animal rescue group with whom I work. The goal is to come up with a strategy for 2006 that will help us adopt out more dogs and gain more volunteers and donors to help us with this endeavor.

My role over the last 6 months has been to try to get more press attention for our organization. To do this, I have sent out a number of press releases, info e-mails and short stories about successes. Overall the effort has been pretty successful thanks to the willingness of a colleague, Russ, to be on TV and talk about the dogs.

Today, I got my first, “gee thanks” but that is not a worthy story e-mail from a reporter who had solicited for heartwarming stories about adoptions. That caused me to wonder what will make us stand out and be noticed. This story was about an animal that was picked up by animal control because of neglect. Actually, the owners (if you can call them that) had chained this dog and its puppy to a tree. They had not changed the collar on the dog since it was a puppy. Subsequently, the collar had become embedded in the dogs neck and had to be carefully removed. It left a pretty bad scar, but has healed ok. The volunteers at OPP were able to find a great home for the dog and now she is living in the lap of luxury.

So that made me think… how can I make things stand out… and what kind of world are in that animal neglect with a happy outcome is not noteworthy? What could make us different? What would be noteworthy? How can I present what we do in a new and interesting way?

Technorati tags: , ,