B2: Implementing the Sweet 16 of Communication Success
Session description
Foundations and nonprofits working to achieve social change must leverage every asset to make progress, including communications. Communications is more about quality than quantity. You and your grantees may communicate with key stakeholders frequently, but are you getting the most from these efforts? Using communications effectively isn’t about size or budget; it’s about being strategic with the resources and opportunities available. In this session, participants will assess their knowledge of the 16 things every organization needs to do to be a communicating organization, understand how the communications elements work and learn how to evaluate their use for yourself and your grantees.
Speakers: Fred Mann, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and Dennis Poplin, Spitfire Strategies
Participant learning goals
• Gain knowledge of the elements of a successful communicating organization
• Undergo a self-assessment of your strengths and challenges
• Obtain information on how to assess communications capacity, including recommendations for improving weaknesses and strategies for setting specific metrics for measuring grantees’ progress
Intended learning level
Adoption — strategies and tools for applying concepts and changing practices in your work
Speakers
![[photo]](https://8ca84662c5b8f0cff50d-4baaaf97d63fd7b01243e1b1c57f0cc1.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/14/profile_5fd32cf12f2a8bef101b138767ea1ff3.png "Dennis Poplin, Spitfire Strategies")
Dennis Poplin, Spitfire Strategies
Web site
Speaker Biography
Dennis Poplin brings to Spitfire Strategies more than 20 years experience as an organizer and educator. As the vice president of Spitfire’s training and capacity building projects, he designs and implements Spitfire’s signature and nationally recognized Executive Training Program, a year-long training for nonprofit executive directors. Poplin has led training efforts for scores of foundations and nonprofits — both local and national — that have worked with Spitfire to increase their organizational strategic communications capacity including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation. He is a Texan happily living in Washington, D.C.
![[photo]](https://8ca84662c5b8f0cff50d-4baaaf97d63fd7b01243e1b1c57f0cc1.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/93/profile_7b2e0e2fcc63bb8b4d589ad06e0f1579.png "Gina Ivey, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation")
Gina Ivey, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Web site
Speaker Biography
Gina Ivey joined the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2007. She serves as communications officer specializing in media relations and as the communications director for the foundation's Initiative on the Future of Nursing, a joint initiative of the foundation and the Institute of Medicine, which seeks to examine and redesign the healthcare delivery system. As a communications professional with a passion for media relations and health policy communications, she has spent the past decade working with numerous advocacy organizations and foundations on targeted initiatives to elevate some of the nation's most pressing issues to the attention of policymakers. Ivey currently resides in Princeton with her husband. They enjoy hiking, international travel, summer vacations on North Carolina's Outer Banks, and playing with their dogs, Chai and Wheatley.