TNN Chapters 5 & 6

Chapter 5: Listening, Engaging, and Building Relationships

All organizations need to collaborate with other people to be creative and interesting.

Strong relationships are built when you not only take information, but give it as well.

Two-way communication is pertinent when establishing a relationship from the beginning because you want there to be mutual understanding, agreement and respect.

Networking is the #1 way to build new relationships for your organization!

*Safe Harbor project groups have all elaborated with other organizations on campus in order to successfully achieve their goals in promoting domestic violence education.

Organizations need to be: patient, resilient, and resourceful in building relationships.

Publicly announce that you appreciate the help from other organizations so they feel good about giving you their efforts.


Chapter 6: Building Trust Through Transparency

I have always been taught through my PR classes how important it is to have a transparent organization. The act of an organization being transparent can be summed up to keeping no secrets about your organization and telling all of your news to your workers and your clients/users. It can be hard for an organization to be transparent because if they have a "mess up", they are not going to want to admit it to their consumers.

The Penn State communication crisis is a prime example of an organization being transparent because it is very unclear to the PSU students, alumni, fans, etc. about what exactly happened with Sandusky and Joe Paterno. The University's Communication Department needs to do a better job, in my opinion, of addressing the situation fully and explaining it to the whole public.

Transparency is also important for customers/clients to be able to see who works for the nonprofit, the background of the nonprofit, etc. Being honest with the public about "who you are" as  nonprofit is the key to success. Even if it does not seem like it currently, there will be a time in a nonprofit's journey when NOT being transparent will bite them in the rear!