Great news for defenders of the Arctic today: The Obama Administration pulled the plug on Shell Oil’s plans to drill for oil in the region.
As the lead in the LA Times story put it, “Fearful of a disaster worse than the Gulf of Mexico spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar plans to postpone consideration of drilling off Alaska.”
Connecting the dots between the BP disaster and the threat of similar calamity in the Arctic was exactly the conclusion we wanted decision makers to draw with the TV spot we produced for a coalition of environmental groups.
Fresh from bruising, but ultimately triumphant, campaigns to get Congress to pass President Obama's health care and financial reform packages, hundreds of progressive leaders from around the country will gather in Washington in June to discuss tactics and prepare for the coming mid-term elections in November. Fenton is working with Campaign for America's Future on communications strategies. Continue reading »
Check out the new TV spot we produced for a coalition-led campaign to stop Shell Oil from drilling in the Arctic.
The ad will run this week in the metro DC area on CNN, MSNBC and during "The Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" to pressure the Obama Administration to prevent another ecological disaster waiting to happen.
Fenton is pleased to present the results of The 2010 Fenton Forecast: Leadership and Effectiveness Among Nonprofits, Fenton's first annual national opinion survey based on interviews with 1,000 Americans on their perceptions and attitudes about charitable giving, the causes they are most passionate about, the leadership attributes of high-performing nonprofits, and their perceptions of 50 well-known nonprofit organizations.
Through Fenton's efforts, a coalition of 11 environmental groups including the Sierra Club, NRDC, and WWF banded together to launch a national media blitz to stop Shell Oil from their plans this summer to drill in the Arctic Ocean. To kick off the advocacy campaign, two distinct full-page ads were printed this morning in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Using creative headlines such as "The Weatherman is Calling for Blizzards, 20 Foot Seas, and -13 Degree Fahrenheit. Ideal Conditions for an Oil Spill" and eye-popping visuals, the ads relay a sense of urgency and compel people to call President Obama to stop Arctic Ocean drilling.
Fenton started the MoveTheGame campaign because like so many other Americans we are outraged by Arizona’s unconstitutional and hateful anti-immigrant law. The Arizona law represents the worst of America in that legislates hate, fear and racism.
While others spoke of broad boycotts, Fenton honed in on one precise point of vulnerability: Major League Baseball’s plan to hold the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix, an event calculated to bring $60 million in revenue to the host city. Within days Fenton lined up partner organizations, like Presente.org and MoveOn.org, and launched a website and social media campaign to call on MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to Move The Game. In less than a week, over 100,000 people signed the petition and thousands had joined our Facebook and Twitter campaign.
Fenton is offering a 'Fenton-Fellowship' to 10 non-profit staffers to the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum conference. This year’s focus is “Can the Internet Fix Politics?” The conference will be held June 3-4 in NYC.
“If you’re interested in the intersection of technology and social change, the Personal Democracy Forum is the place to be,” said Lisa Witter, Chief Strategic Officer of Fenton, the country's largest integrated public interest communications firm. “We’re offering this fellowship because it’s our mission to help public interest organizations embrace innovation online for social change.”
Fenton’s Felipe Benitez and Alanna Sobel move quickly to help Amazon Watch and James Cameron protect indigenous communities in Brazil, with pickup on The New York Times’ front page and web home page. Great job!
Last week Lisa Witter gave a presentation at the Conference Board “The New Normal - 13 Driving Forces in Communications” based on research/thinking that Eli Pariser did. You can read about one of the highlights in a piece by Ellen Galinsky (conference convener) in the Huffington Post.
In too many elementary schools, recess is hell. But it doesn't have to be. Read about our friends at Playworks on the front page of the New York Times.
Women make more than 80 PERCENT of all health-related decisions for their families. That goes for choosing a brand of children’s cold medicine to selecting a health insurance plan. Yet many health-related organizations miss the mark when it comes identifying them as a critical audience – or understanding what motivates them.
Say NO records what individuals, organizations and governments worldwide are doing to end violence against women as “actions." The initial goal was to reach 100,000 actions by March 8, International Women’s Day, 2010. And they doubled it.
Congratulations to the UNIFEM Say NO - UNite to End Violence Against Women team and let us all continue to raise our voices - tell governments that you want them to make ending violence against women a top priority.
And help UNIFEM reach their additional goal of 1 million actions by November 2010.
Today, Fenton’s client, Care.com holds their inaugural Care Summit in Washington D.C.
The Care Summit is raising awareness of the pressures employees face when providing care and highlights the cost caregiving has on employers and families while providing solutions to benefit both.
The goals of the Care Summit:
Assemble stakeholders in the Care Crisis;
Expose the crucial issues; and
Create a blueprint of how companies can provide employees with the caregiving support structure they need to successfully balance their family caregiving responsibilities with their careers
New York, NY– Lisa Witter, Fenton’s Chief Strategy Officer, was today named
one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders (YGLs) for 2010.
The honor, given each year by the Forum, recognizes up to 200 outstanding
young leaders from around the world for their professional accomplishments,
commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of
the world. The Forum chose this year’s 197 Young Global Leaders from a pool
of more than 5,000 candidates.
Did you know that:
• women control two-thirds of all wealth in the U.S?
• women make 80% of all household purchasing decisions?
• women donate twice as many to charities as men do?
If your nonprofit is not actively marketing to women and recruiting them, your organization is missing out on major fundraising opportunities. Join (http://bit.ly/czYQjG) Fenton’s Lisa Witter, co-author with Lisa Chen of The She Spot, and Morra Aarons-Mele of Women Online for a free, 1-hour webinar on Thursday, February 25th on best practices for recruiting and retaining women donors. The moderator will be Michelle Coyle, Director of Nonprofit Services for Care2, the 12 million member social network of (mostly women) “do-gooders” used successfully by hundreds of nonprofit organizations to recruit loyal donors and advocacy supporters.
The She Spot: Best Practices in Marketing to Women (http://bit.ly/czYQjG) Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 2 pm EST
Today, women are as likely as men to contribute time, expertise, and financial resources to improve communities and meet human needs across the globe. Women are changing our world through philanthropy, and are changing philanthropy in the process. Why does gender matter? How can women give strategically and create awareness about important needs?
Register today for The New York Times Knowledge Network course, Women and Philanthropy – The Time is Now to discuss answers to these critical questions with innovative leaders and research experts who are shaping a movement. Offered online from March 8-15, 2010 in partnership with the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, this course includes a special presentation by Jennifer Buffett and panel discussion about women’s philanthropy in the 21st century with Abigail Disney, Barbara Dobkin, Hali Lee, Michele Minter, and Jackie Zehner – moderated by Lisa Witter, Chief Strategy Officer of Fenton Communications and co-author with Lisa Chen of The She Spot: Why Women are the Market for Changing the World and How to Reach Them.
Many of you have been wading into the social media waters in the last few years. But how do you do it to achieve your goals? And what are some examples from the non-profit community that we can look to as a broader example?
Fenton is organizing a live event involving some great online organizers in the trenches and leading strategists to help you reflect on your own social media strategies and how to improve your results. We’ll be joined by Levana Layendecker from Health Care for America Now, Tim Fullerton of Americans for Climate Protection, Dean Hollander of Fenton, and Ryan Senser, Strategist, SYPartners.
We want to hear from you! Fenton is tapping its networks and expertise in the non-profit sector to help The Atlantic Philanthropies find a Communications Executive. This unique role at Atlantic will help further the foundation’s mission of bringing about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people by focusingon aging, children & youth, population health and reconciliation & human rights. Programs funded by Atlantic operate in Australia, Bermuda, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the United States and Viet Nam. Please pass this job description along to your contacts to help us recruit for an excellent organization.
Leadership
changes were announced today by Fenton, the nation’s largest public interest
communications firm. Parker
Blackman was named Chief Operating Officer, and Lisa Witter became Chief
Strategy Officer.
Witter
has been serving as COO, while Blackman has been Managing Director of Fenton’s
San Francisco office. Witter will now lead innovation, strategy and marketing
for the firm, while Blackman will be responsible for the day to day management
of staff and client services at Fenton’s three offices in New York, Washington,
D.C. and San Francisco.
“With
breathtaking changes underway in the communications and media landscape,
leading innovation and strategy at the firm has become an essential Executive
Position,” explained CEO and founder David Fenton. “We are so fortunate to have
the ‘dream team’ of Witter and Blackman to take us into the new era. Witter
will lead the transformation of our products and services, while Blackman takes
on operating management and staff development.”
Lisa Witter, co-author of 'The She Spot: Why Women Are the Market for Changing the World - And How to Reach Them,' will be featured at a special event on January 28th at Rutgers School of Social Work in New Brunswick, NJ. The book signing and lecture, sponsored by the Center for Nonprofit Management and Governance, will focus on the increasingly prominent role of women in the giving sector, and how nonprofit and advocacy organizations can target and effectively reach this growing population through outreach and marketing efforts.
The message of 'The She Spot' is useful to all nonprofit and advocacy organizations as women vote more, volunteer more and there is every indication that they will be giving more than men since they control over half of the total wealth in America. Women aren't a niche-- they're the primary change-makers. 'The She Spot' offers a practical -- and provocative -- primer on how nonprofit and advocacy organizations can strengthen their outreach to this highly motivated and engaged segment of the population.
Lisa Witter is the C.O.O. of Fenton Communications and heads its work in innovation and the practices in women's issues and global affairs for clients. Additionally, she is the co-founder of the award-winning SheSource.org, an online brain trust of women experts to help close the gender gap among commentators in the news media.
Fenton Communications and Waggener Edstrom Worldwide's joint campaign, Half the Sky Movement: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, has been selected as a finalist in PR News' Corporate Social Responsibility Awards program in the category of Community Affairs.
The Half the Sky campaign lays out an agenda for the world's women and three major
abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence
including honor killings and mass rape; maternal mortality, which
needlessly claims one woman a minute. The campaign and book, "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," purports to start a social movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts.
The award ceremony will be held February 24, 2010 in Washington, DC and will salute the year's most outstanding communications initiatives and
programs in the highly competitive and dynamic Corporate Social Responsibility arena.
When it comes to health and well being --from childhood obesity to violence -- alarming disparities persist between boys and young men of color and other Californians.
To address the problem, The California Endowment has retained Fenton, led by SVP Robert Perez, to develop a communications strategy for its Boy and Young Men of Color Network as a part of its Building Healthy Communities initiative.
Over the next 18 months, we'll be working with The Endowment to provide strategic counsel and build the communications capacity of their grantees in the East Bay Area, Los Angeles and Central Valley to ensure that the issues impacting boy and men of color, their families and their communities are a significant policy priority for California. Stay tuned!
Fenton was honored to join forces with the Pulitzer Prize-winning duo Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn on the release of their book, "Half the Sky Movement: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide."
From the beginning, Kristof and WuDunn knew they wanted the book to be an active catalyst for change. The PRWeek story below describes the communications campaign that made it happen.
Ecuador is a significant presence in December's Copenhagen climate talks, part of a rain forest coalition that is seeking support from the Developed World to curtail cutting in the forests and preserve them as carbon-capturing assets.
Senior Account Executive Felipe Benitez from Fenton's Washington office is in Copenhagen assisting the foreign ministry of Ecuador in promoting its unique rain forest preservation plan for the Yasuni region along the Amazon River. The forest has nearly 1 billion barrels of exploitable petroleum beneath its surface, but Ecuador is promoting a plan to create an international trust that would underwrite keeping the petroleum in the ground and, instead, exploit the forest for eco-tourism.
Social media tools like Twitter and Facebook present exciting new
opportunities for nonprofits to do online outreach, but many
organizations lack the resources to explore them - especially right
now.
Fenton is offering a $10,000 Social Media
Grant to nonprofits in the Washington, DC area. This is the perfect
opportunity for organizations if they're ready to jump into the
social media waters but are unsure about how, or if they're not sure if
their current social media strategy is working.
The selected grant recipient will receive up to $10,000 worth of social
media analysis, monitoring and strategy services from Fenton
Communications. Work will be completed in the winter of 2010.
Washington, DC - The Center for Reproductive Rights released a new television and online advertisement today calling on pro-choice constituents to contact their senators and demand they not ban abortion coverage that millions of American women already have.
NEW YORK, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Fenton Communications has named Rob
Anderson, a nationally recognized expert on social marketing and cause
branding as managing director of its New York office.
Anderson
was previously executive vice president for GolinHarris and director of
the firm's corporate citizenship, social marketing and cause branding
practice Change. His public sector clients included the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug
Administration, National Institutes of Health, American Legacy
Foundation, Home Safety Council, Special Olympics, Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, the Ad Council, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and the
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, among other non-profits and
government agencies. He has also advised corporate clients including
State Farm, Lowe's, Toyota, PacifiCare, Capital One, and Burger King
Corporation.
