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Tonight, during dinner, I was thinking about the panel discussion I’m going to be a part of the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Seattle on Thursday. I had the pleasure tonight of broiling one and a half pounds of line caught Columbia river King salmon, and serving it with sauteed kale and cannelini beans, seasoned with bacon. If you haven’t had fresh, wild, Pacific salmon, you don’t know what you’re missing. Native North Americans in this area supplied a great percentage of their daily calories with salmon–fresh, smoked, dried. I have to assume that made them pretty content. At least until we got here.

What does salmon have to do with my panel discussion?

I’m currently building a CRM system with Friends of Wild Salmon up on the Skena river in northern British Columbia. We’re using Salesforce.com to help them in their efforts to keep open pen farming of Atlantic salmon out of their rivers. Open pen farming has been shown to lead to the destruction of native fish populations. If the pens come in, the salmon and steelhead will die out. It’s pretty much that simple.

I love salmon, but the fish aren’t the most interesting part of this project. the people who oppose these fish farms aren’t environmentalists. Well, some are. And others are sports fishermen who fly in from the US, Japan, and elsewhere. Others are commercial fishermen who make a living off the salmon catch. Some are Native North Americans, who believe that the salmon and their epic life journey is worth saving because it is nature, and nature is sacred. Others are fishing guides and lodge owners who get hired by fishing tourists. The diversity of support is fascinating, and makes Friends of Wild Salmon the broadest-based advocacy group I’ve had the pleasure to work with.

But it also makes it hard. When they talk to their supporters, they have to be careful. If you talk to a commercial fisherman about the sacred nature of the fish, you might not get very far. If you talk to a sport angler about the importance of the fish to the local economy, it may not resonate. If you talk to Native North Americans about the pleasure of a fly fishing expedition, you’ll likely not connect.

So we’ve worked with them in great depth on identifying the “audiences” their supporters fall into and honing the message for each audience. We’ve helped them implement a beautiful website and email newsletter tool that speaks to these audiences. And now I’m building them a database that allows them to keep track of their donors and supporters by the audience they are a part of. It’s very exciting as we’re helping them embed their communications strategy all the way through the tools they will use to implement it.

In my presentation at the panel discussion, I’ll be talking about this project and how strategy and technology come together to help Friends of Wild Salmon build relationships with it’s diverse supporters, all with the goal of keeping these amazing fish around for another millennium or two.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 9:52 pm and is filed under CRM, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.