A Conversation on Integrated Marketing and Fundraising, Part 3

[Editor's note: This is third and final part of a three-part conversation on integrated marketing and fundraising with members of the fundraising sector's newly formed Integrated Marketing Advisory Board (IMAB). Click here to view part 1 and here for part 2.]
Here, FundRaising Success wraps up its conversation with IMAB Chairman Michael Johnston, founder and president of Hewitt and Johnston Consultants (hjc), and IMAB member Sara Spivey
, chief marketing officer at Convio, about the role of the IMAB and the importance of integrated marketing and fundraising in today's landscape.
FundRaising Success: How can organizations break down the silos to begin becoming an integrated organization?
Michael Johnston: My wife is a Glaswegian engineer, and as a Scottish person she said, "Effective change is a full-contact sport." Maybe she means rugby in her case. It means getting people in a room, and it's as simple as that. Change and integration doesn't happen unless you have a process to listen to people, see what the issues are, where are the barriers, and then you have to get everybody in a room. Then it's facilitating agreement — how do we realign and align properly to get this done or to do these things better? That's a strategic weakness in organizations who say we can just rearrange all this stuff on paper and with vendors, and we're going to do it.
It means getting people in a room. What's the shared reality? Do we all know that we're in the same place? If there isn't a shared reality, you can't move forward to be integrated. Is there a shared vision of the future after shared reality? Where are we going to end up? How is that better? Once you get that kind of agreement in a room, then you can start putting those tactical plans together about making the trains run better and on time.
