On the surface, Nancy Lublin’s book seems to be about non-profits, but as you get a few pages in, it becomes apparent that Lublin uses her experience as a non-profit CEO to inspire for-profits to think about business differently. Non-profits have no budgets and small staffs made up primarily of volunteers, yet they often attain high productivity and impact. Corporations have budgets and large, well-paid staffs, yet often find themselves in gridlock. What can the two learn from each other?

Lublin encourages both to tap the power of zero in business. Doing more with less is becoming a business mantra these days, and Zilch is a guidebook on some of the best practices. From developing quality in products and people, to building a better brand, to finding purpose, to collaborating externally, Lublin explains the myriad ways companies can accomplish big things without spending.

A simple example that struck me was the brief section on saying, “Thank You,” to employees. It’s simple, and it’s free, Lublin says. And yet, such a small gesture can go a long way toward inspiring employees to be part of the team, put more creativity and skill into projects, and stay committed. Similarly, on the customer side, Lublin encourages companies to “See people first, buyers second.” Making people (internal and external) feel that they are a part of something bigger can make them commit, both financially and as followers. Working on creative ways to build that perception can be done through a series of words, actions, and work—and not necessarily by spending.

Through grassroots marketing efforts and applied philosophy, doing more with less is not just a theory. It is something people like Lublin live successfully by. The important lesson of this book is that all business should have an impact while reducing spending—and Zilch shows us how.

Reviewer Jack Covert is the founder of 800-CEO-READ, a leading bookseller to corporations and large organizations, based in Milwaukee.

Riddle me this: You have no money, no car, and no help from adults. How are you going to change the world?

Nancy Lublin, CEO of DoSomething.org, has been motivating teenagers worldwide by asking this seemingly simple question. Nancy is a world-renowned, highly respected business leader with an entrepreneurial mind. Her business philosophy emulates that of Pierre Omidyar or Steve Jobs, but if you ask her she is Do Something’s “Chief Old Person,” and just a regular girl from Connecticut. While she is as humble as she is charismatic, Nancy Lublin has become a living legend. She is changing the world by challenging future generations to do something.

Nancy Lublin, a woman with more layers than a French pastry, continues to defy social norms in order to redefine the way the world looks at non-profit organizations. At age 24, while enrolled in law school, Nancy founded the organization Dress for Success with a $5,000 inheritance she received from her Great Grandfather. Nancy was surprised by her sudden windfall, and decided to use the inheritance to honor her Great Grandfather’s memory by using it to help others start a new life, just like her Great Grandfather did after he had emigrated from Europe. I would like to think that I would be that selflessly charitable, but, to be honest, if I received $5,000 out of the blue, I would undoubtedly run straight to Saks Fifth Avenue, buy black straight-legged pants, Christian Lacroix ballet flats, a red striped shirt, a beret, and a ticket to Paris. Nancy, however, looked at this “free” money as an opportunity to change the world, and she did.
Nancy adopted the saying of Jim Rohn that “happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” Nancy now had a decision to make. She could either stay in law school, utterly miserable, or she could leave her studies without a concrete plan for her future. She chose to drop out of law school and pursue Dress for Success full time. Within three years, over 50 locations were established worldwide. Through her passion, knowledge, and intuition Nancy successfully built the brand as well as the franchise for Dress for Success in multiple countries. While Dress for Success was certainly on the upward trajectory of becoming one of the most reputable non-profit organizations in the world, Nancy stunned everyone by stepping down from her role as Executive Director only after five short years. Her reason for stepping down: she believes that leaders should build sustainable foundations and then move on.
To Nancy, it is worse to fail than never try. So, after taking a year off, she accepted a CEO position at Do Something. Do Something was in need of a massive makeover. The organization was $250,000 in debt and had only a little over $70,000 in the bank. However, Nancy was determined to save this organization by motivating youth to get off the couch, to volunteer, and to start making a difference. If everyone intrinsically wants to make a difference, then everyone most likely wishes to put his or her stamp on something that will live on long after he or she is gone. But, how many individuals actually know how to take these pipe dreams and turn them into a palpable reality? Nancy not only encourages youth to figure out their own unique solution to that question, but she also takes her intuition of what teens already know well and utilizes this knowledge in order to capture their interest. This skill gave Nancy the idea to take the Do Something organization, and put it completely online. Thus, she created www.DoSomething.org. She then closed the remaining satellite offices throughout the country and essentially started from scratch. She fought through the bureaucratic red tape and started managing DoSomething.org like a for-profit corporation, while teaching her for-profit corporate partners how to run their companies more like non-profit organizations. (Nancy highlights this principle in her book, Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business.)
It was Nancy’s innovative thinking that turned Do Something from a drowning non-profit company into the vibrant organization it is today. Detailed on their website, “DoSomething.org is one of the largest organizations in the US that helps young people rock causes they care about. A driving force in creating a culture of volunteerism, DoSomething.org is on track to activate two million young people in 2011. By leveraging the web, television, mobile, and pop culture, DoSomething.org inspires, empowers and celebrates a generation of doers: teenagers who recognize the need to do something, believe in their ability to get it done, and then take action.”
What I love most about Nancy is her ability to stay completely grounded and balanced while living an above-average, imaginative life. As much as I want her to be this over-the-top, whimsical character in the fairy tale that is my life, she is abnormally normal. Like many of us, Nancy presses the “close door” button on the elevator multiple times, thinking that it will actually make the elevator doors close faster. (Don’t lie to yourself, we all do it!) She and I, along with the rest of America, share an unhealthy obsession with Eric Northman from True Blood; and at the end of the day, accredits her desire to make a difference to “being born this way.”
By marching to the beat of her own drum, Nancy has manifested a candid and authentic scripture that is as vibrant as she is. What I took away from our interview is something I hope to implement in my everyday life. Live with honor and defend it when necessary. Think for yourself and question everything. Seek truth and beauty in life. Have. Fun. Always. Stand up for what you believe in and always follow your own path. Strive to be the best at whatever you do and always remember that life is short, so make sure that you enjoy each day.

While we can’t do everything, we can do something. Nancy Lublin, through her hard work and dedication, inspires this idea in today’s youth. She leads by example and shows everyone that service and volunteerism is at the very heart of any community’s soul.
To find out more about how you can Do Something, please check out www.DoSomething.org, or follow them on twitter at www.twitter.com/dosomething.

In Zilch, Lublin, the founder of Dress for Success and CEO of Do Something, a nonprofit that helps young people take action to improve their neighborhoods and communities, shares how she and other nonprofit leaders have done more on low (or no) budgets and offers a very practical guide for executives — of all types — who are looking to do more with less. Indeed, says Lublin, “Zilch is what drives us to be more innovative, more passionate, more creative.”

Founded in 1993 by actor Andrew Shue (“Billy” in the hit television show Melrose Place), Do Something benefited from “many celebrity-filled events, heaps of press coverage, and an army of high-profile founders” up until the series ended in 1999. But by the time Lublin joined the organization in 2003, it “had only $75,000 in the bank and twenty-one of twenty-two staff members had just been laid off.” Even though the organization was essentially broke, Lublin turned down a two-year, $600,000 grant from a corporate funder because of the restrictions attached to the money, which included the opening of additional offices in markets selected by the funder — something that “would have crippled” the organization, writes Lublin. “Given the high level of uncertainty that not-for-profits face — flush with funds one moment thanks to a big event, then nearly broke the next because a corporate sponsor wants a different brand association — [we] opted to use multiyear budgeting [instead].” Doing so, adds Lublin, helped the leadership team at Do Something avoid making rash decisions with potentially negative long-term consequences.

In another chapter titled “Do More With Less Cash to Throw at People,” Lublin explains how some nonprofits have managed to keep staff motivated even when the economy turns sour. Her suggestions include everything from crafting big, lofty vision and mission statements and making sure that individuals at every level of the organization are engaged in the pursuit of the prize, to laying out clear career development paths and working with staff to build their skills, to never underestimating the importance of fun and remembering to say “thank you.”

The nonprofit world is accustomed to using stories to engage the public and drive donations, but Lublin says for-profit corporations “seem to forget that they….have stories,” too. Hewlett-Packard, for example, was founded in 1939 by two guys in a garage, and according to Lublin, President Obama frequently cites the HP “genesis story” as an example of small-business success. How can companies do more with their stories at no extra cost? Lublin suggests that corporations follow HP’s example and honor their history while working to create a culture of storytelling; in so doing, she adds, remember that image is everything and that, today more than ever, buzz can be created with tools that are free or cost next to nothing.

To that end, for-profit companies can learn from charity: water, a nonprofit that works to bring clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations — and one of the first to use the free social networking site Twitter to increase its network of followers and donors. Now, whenever the nonprofit has something to share, “[it] doesn’t need to push out a press release or beg CNN to tell its story — its following [on Twitter] is the media it wants to see.”

Nonprofits also use barter, notes Lublin, “to create more diverse, more meaningful, and longer-lasting alliances.” For example, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a global leader in the fight against breast cancer, has built a long-standing relationship with Yoplait yogurt, which prints a pink ribbon on the outside of every one of its yogurt containers. Komen gains exposure through the partnership and Yoplait gains influence with grocery store operators because shoppers often choose “to buy [their brand] instead of some other yogurt that doesn’t support breast cancer research.” Organizations have also started bartering brand equity to enhance their reputation. United Parcel Service, for example, has entered into a barter arrangement with New York Road Runners to transport the personal belongings of forty thousand marathoners who travel to New York City every November to run the New York City Marathon. “Does UPS care about running? Maybe,” writes Lublin. “More likely the marathon connotes excellence in service. NYRR has a reputation for execution….UPS wants to be associated with that kind of service excellence.”

In the book’s final chapter, “Do More With Innovation,” Lublin explains that nonprofits have long worked creatively to “keep costs down, to find fresh sources of funding, to energize our own overworked, underpaid staffers, and to figure out an original way to put on an annual event.” And while there’s more risk involved whenever a new idea is in play, writes Lublin, “without [new ideas], there also isn’t any of the potentially huge reward.” To illustrate her point, Lublin shares the story of the Mozilla Foundation, which is best known for the open-source Firefox Web browser and was a project of for-profit Netscape/AOL before it was established as an independent foundation. Today, notes Lublin, the foundation gives the legions of volunteer programmers who work to improve Firefox the freedom to “take risks, try new approaches, and push the envelope” — a level of risk-taking that’s unheard of in most corporations, where bureaucracy and long chains of command typically leach much of the creativity out of even the most promising innovations.

Lublin knits together similar stories in each of the book’s eleven chapters to drive home the point that it is not only possible to do more with less, it’s an organizational imperative. It’s a message that nonprofit/philanthropic leaders and social entrepreneurs as well as corporate business leaders can benefit from, and Lublin backs it up with plenty of practical advice and real-world examples. As she writes at one point, it’s time to “stop whining…and start asking yourself what you would do if you had zilch. You’ll be surprised to discover just how powerful that is.”

Non-profit organisations such as the one formerly known as the YMCA are commonly advised to become more like for-profit businesses. Management experts and consultants view them as horribly inefficient due to the absence of the concentrating power of the profit motive. The negative reaction to the Y’s rebranding suggests that non-profit outfits are not all that good at emulating business even when they try. There has been barely any reciprocal pressure on for-profit firms to learn from the non-profits. Yet this is what Nancy Lublin, one of America’s most successful non-profit leaders, proposes in a new book, “Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business.”

Ms Lublin dismisses the common charge that non-profits are inefficient. Some are, but many of them are not. She also dislikes the use of “non-profit” to describe the sort of organisation that she once founded (Dress For Success, which gives smart suits to poor women to wear in job interviews) and that she now runs (DoSomething.org, which encourages social activism by young people). “Non-profits include loss-making companies like General Motors,” she explains. “We’re a not-for-profit, as we’re not even trying to make a profit.”

Some non-profits, as Schumpeter will continue to call them, are almost indistinguishable from for-profit businesses. America’s big non-profit hospitals can wield budgets as big as its for-profit ones. But most have to scrape by on “zilch” or, at most, on a fraction of what is taken for granted in the for-profit world. The ones that succeed typically do so by being highly efficient. Ms Lublin profiles non-profits as varied as Habitat for Humanity, which builds cheap homes; Make A Wish, which fulfils the dreams of terminally ill people; Kiva, a microlender; and DonorsChoose.org, which funds classroom projects. She argues they are particularly good at motivating workers and at marketing.

In tough economic times businesses would do well to find ways of motivating workers without paying them a fortune—which anyway is no guarantee of success, as the recent performance of generously paid Wall Streeters made clear. Few non-profits pay well and many depend on volunteers. It helps that they tend to have a clear purpose to which these underpaid employees and volunteers are often personally committed. Ms Lublin says she hires only people who are passionate about what DoSomething does, and advises for-profits to hire more people who love their products. She does not believe businesses should all embark on missions to build a better world, as a means to motivate their workers. As long as the firm’s purpose is clear and distinctive, it can do the trick, she says—even if it is simply to be the “first, only, faster, better, or cheaper.”

Faith, hope and charity

Non-profits do plenty of other things to motivate their workers that for-profits could imitate. They often have a flat management structure. Non-profit bosses tend to muck in with volunteers when the heat is on (you’ll find them, for example, helping to stuff goody bags for fund-raising events). New employees are quickly given real responsibility, even if they are young (which is what the Millennials now entering the workforce want, according to Ms Lublin). Ensuring there is plenty of time during the working week for genuine fun, not of the forced kind satirised in “The Office”, can deliver better results than a bonus. Schumpeter recently noted, not entirely happily, that many for-profit firms are already following another of her tips by doling out titles liberally and creatively. “It costs nothing to give [someone] a title that suits them and makes them proud,” she notes. Although still in her 30s, Ms Lublin’s official title at DoSomething is Chief Old Person.

The marketing prowess of many leading non-profits tends to derive from the fact that, unlike most for-profits, they have to persuade people to part with money for goods or services that are used by others. A lot of effort goes into convincing these donors that they are getting value for their money. The key is to focus on building long-term relationships based on frequent contact, repeatedly saying thank you and sending updates through newsletters. This contrasts sharply with the one-off transactional approach to customers that is all too common in the business world. DoSomething tries to stay in touch forever with everyone it has employed (even interns) or who has given it a donation. Ms Lublin argues that businesses would also benefit from cultivating their networks of past employees and customers.

Critics may snipe that there is nothing uniquely non-profit about these traits. For-profit start-ups offer lots of responsibility and workplace fun to young employees, for instance. Some firms, such as McKinsey, win plenty of business by remaining close to former employees. Yet that is surely the point. For too long, for-profit firms have focused on learning only from each other as they try to do better. It is time that business started to tap the valuable know-how of the best non-profits rather than dismissing the whole lot as hopelessly inefficient.

www.Economist.com/blogs/schumpeter

What can not-for-profit organizations teach for-profit businesses? In this time when some of our largest and best known companies have (accidently) become not-for-profit organizations because of their clumsy and dysfunctional operating models there are a lot of things for-profit businesses can learn from the not-for-profit world.

Learning to survive and thrive in tough environments where there is never enough money, or people, or time is a challenge that not-for-profit organizations have been wrestling with for a long time. Nancy Lublin, CEO of a not-for-profit named Do Something has written a book that shows companies how to do more with their brand, their people, their suppliers and their finances. The book is Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business.

In business we talk about being agile. Business agility is very much about embracing constraints and using them to guide us and motivate us. Agility is driven by constraints because if you have all the money and people and time that you want then why would you need to be agile or do anything differently?

In the Land of the Blind the One Eyed Man is King

Nancy gets right to the point and tells it as she sees it, “Recently I was in a meeting at the offices of a ginormous global conglomerate. Eight of us sat around a big, beautiful table made of incredible wood no doubt harvested from some disappearing rain forest. A fancy phone in the middle of the table linked us to voices from three other cities…just the day before, the corporation’s media budget had been ‘slashed’… Everyone in the room was either dejected or in panic.” She pointed out that $1.5 million had been cut but they still had $2 million dollars. Yet instead of brainstorming ways to better leverage their remaining budget, they spent their time scheming about how to get more money from other sources to replace what was lost so they could continue operating as they always had.

When she suggested ways to use low cost social media and leverage sales channel and distribution partnerships and create newsworthy events around the product launch as ideas for stretching their budget, “They looked at me, silently, as if I had three eyes and six arms and were the firstborn spawn of beings from another planet.” At that point, she says, it occurred to her that perhaps she really was an alien from a weird place called “the Land of Zilch”. And she reminds us there are a lot of aliens from this land already among us; they are leaders and staff of not-for-profit organizations.

In an interview Nancy talked about how she started her first not-for-profit in 1996. It is an organization still in operation and now in 100 cities in eight countries. It’s called Dress for Success and it helps women transition from welfare to work by outfitting them with appropriate clothes for job interviews. Then when they get a job it provides them with a starter wardrobe of clothes for their new job. The organization collects these clothes as donations from other women who are better off and no longer need them.

Doing What Founders (or Entrepreneurs) Do So Well

She said, “I do what I think founders ought to do – build things that are sustainable and then move on.” In 2003 she moved on to turn around the organization called Do Something (also known as DoSomething.org). Their mission was and still is to empower teenagers to start projects and take action to improve their lives and their communities. When

she came onboard as its new CEO it had just laid off 21 of its 27 staff members and had only $75,000 left in its bank account.

Instead of fundraising, she first addressed the organization’s structure and operating practices. She felt that unless the organization changed its ways of working there was no chance for it to survive anyway. She decided to transition from operating out of physical offices in different cities to become an online organization using social media.

Nancy explained that she uses five qualities to screen ideas before she acts on them. The more of these qualities an idea has, the better the idea and the higher its chances for success. She outlines these five qualities as: 1) First; 2) Only; 3) Faster; 4) Better; and 5) Cheaper.

By transitioning DoSomething.org to an online organization it could be: faster in the way it delivered its services; better able to expand its reach; and cheaper in its operating model. It could also use the Web and social media to be the only organization that doesn’t require local adult involvement on projects it funds or charge people money to become a member.

Leveraging Social Media to Support Operations and Growth

Nancy has some useful insights for how to use social media. I asked her how she uses media like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. Here are some of the things she said. “We use Twitter to create a buzz. We have 350,000 followers [@dosomething], but we don’t get a lot of click throughs from our tweets; it doesn’t lead to much action.” Nancy explained, “Twitter reminds me of a high school gym locker room where everybody is looking around so see how big each other’s is, but at the end of the day it’s not how big it is but how you use it.”

“Take Ashton Kutcher,” she continued, “He has the largest following on Twitter, about five million followers [@aplusk] and he keeps plugging his movies but they keep bombing. So how important can Twitter be?”

“We use Facebook like a global focus group,” she said. They have about 70,000 Facebook friends and they post new questions every week and listen to the feedback. For instance, they recently posted a question that addresses the teen pregnancy problem. When girls in high school learn they are pregnant they can stay in school up until they start to show and then they have to go to a special high school just for pregnant teenagers. So Do Something asked what should happen to the boys who impregnated those girls. They asked if those boys should also have to go to the special high schools with the girls they got pregnant or if they should take on some other obligation that shows their part in the pregnancy. Nancy said they got 90 answers in the first hour and the feedback gave them ideas for their teen pregnancy prevention program.

On YouTube they post videos of celebrity public service announcements. Nancy said they also post the video outtakes of these celebrity announcements – the flubs and mistakes celebrities make during tapping. She said it was like the way the Native Americans used to use every bit of the buffaloes they killed; they used the hides, the bones, the organs, the sinews, the meat, nothing went to waste. And she said they find the outtake videos often get more views than the polished public service announcements do.

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Put Zilch to Work

As Nancy puts it, “Zilch is what drives us to be more innovative, more passionate, more creative. Stop whining about your budget cuts and start asking yourself what you would do if you had zilch. You’ll be surprised to discover just how powerful that is.”

Over the last 20 years there has been a lot of talk about how not-for-profit and arts organizations need to act more like businesses. And many of these organizations have done just that. They put business people on their boards and they read business books and they learned; now the shoe is on the other foot. It’s time for businesses to learn from successful not-for-profits. (In the interest of full disclosure, my wife is executive director of a successful not-for-profit dance arts organization in Chicago called the Ruth Page Center for the Arts.)

Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business will help companies learn. It is written in a clear and at times in-your-face style. Nancy does not pull her punches. She uses words like “always” and “never” and some people will find her tone of voice strident. She also glosses over problems like the burn out that comes from constantly striving to do something with nothing and putting in the long hours that not-for-profit organizations call for.

But think of what could happen if businesses combined their resources with the energy and techniques developed by not-for-profits. For-profit companies and not-for-profit organizations need each other these days more than ever. As a great artist once said, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

[Michael Hugos, principal at Center for Systems Innovaton [c4si], delivers seminars and briefings on strategies for business and IT agility and mentors teams in agile systems development. His newest book is Business Agility: Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World.]

By Donna Fenn

July 12th, 2010

Any bootstrapping start-up CEO will tell you that a limited budget forces you to be creative in ways you might never imagine if you had deep pockets. Not-for-profit diva Nancy Lublin agrees. Lublin, who founded Dress for Success and is now the CEO of the youth volunteer organization, Do Something, thinks that most companies have a lot to learn from their leaner brethren in the not-for-profit world. That’s the subject of her new book, Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business (Portfolio, 2010). I recently caught up with Lublin, who was kind enough to share some advice on doing more with less:

Build a glass house. “When for-profit companies do their filing, they lump SG&A (selling, general, and administrative) expenses together,” says Lublin. “Not-for-profits have to break out all our expenses and it’s all public. I can tell you how much the Red Cross spent on postage last year.” When you live a financial glass house, it changes how you operate, says Lublin. “All those executives who spent $20,000 redecorating their offices – would that have happened if those expenses were transparent?” she poses. Her suggestion: build your own glass house by keeping track of every penny you spend, making it all public to your employees, and then measuring the impact of transparency.

Dole out meaningful titles. “Give them out liberally to your employees because they engender pride and a sense of purpose,” says Lublin. That’s particularly important at small companies, where financial resources are not as plentiful and owners need to find creative ways to engage employees. Your titles should be specific and creative, suggests Lublin. “Jerry Yang’s card said “Chief Yahoo” and that said a lot about the spirit of the company.”

Crowdsource your branding. Before you hire an outside agency to work on logos, taglines, and your brand message, Lublin suggests you do a little internal crowdsourcing with your employees. “No one knows your company better than your employees, especially at a small start-up,” she says. “They’re going to have much better ideas than a team from McKinsey.” Offer a reward — say, $500 – for the best ideas and don’t forget to ask everyone in the company to participate. “Sometimes we forget to ask the tech guys what they think about stuff,” says Lublin.

Love your alums. When employee leave your company, it’s easy to forget them. But that’s a big mistake. “You are forever on their resume, ” says Lublin, “When you go on LinkedIn and look up your company, you’ll be shocked at who comes up.” Those people are still intimately connected to you, so it makes sense for you to stay connected to them. “We invite them back to holiday parties and to our annual event,” says Lublin. “We create a list serve for alumni, like a university.” The result: great word of mouth from former employees, who just might be your best source of referrals for future employees.

Embrace the barter economy. Not-for-profits tend to be very creative when it comes to leveraging their existing resources to get access to the goods and services they need to grow. You should be, too. “Maybe you have a guy who is brilliant at HTML and you need an accountant,” poses Lublin. “See if you can swap employees temporarily with another company.” Finding a good barter partner can be as easy as chatting up your office neighbors in the elevator. But you should also involve your employees in the process. “Tell them ‘here’ s some of the good stuff we have and here’s what we need. Who do you know?’” Think creatively. If you have a fabulous office that closes down at 6 pm, can you offer it to, say, a Weight Watcher’s group that meets in the evening in exchange for free participation for your employees? Remember, though, that the IRS has rules that govern bartering.

Do you think that lean budgets foster creativity and innovation, or do they simply make you feel poor? Share your own strategies for doing more with less.

Go ahead and search your company on LinkedIn. Your former employees are all there. Your company is forever listed on their resume and they remain an ambassador of your brand for all eternity, for the entire world to see. How do those alumns feel about you? What are they saying to their friends and new co-workers?

Or, look more closely at the guy who delivers your Fed Ex packages every day. He is “your people” too. When he goes home at night, does he tell his wife that your office is full of miserable people? Or, does he go back to Fed Ex headquarters and marvel to everyone there about how happy people at your company seem.

These humans are potentially enormous resources for your company. How do you make the most of them?

1. Keep in touch. Its simple—and free—to send email updates to these people. They should be keep abreast of company news—but also, think of them as excellent free headhunters! Send them job postings. They know your company intimately and can be a terrific referral source.
2. Invite them to events. Having an office holiday party? Consider inviting last Summer’s interns and even the building Sup’t. It doesn’t cost you much money and you will have catalyzed champions of your brand for life.
3. Ask them for advice. About to spend millions of dollars on a fancy agency to re-work your logo. Stop! Save your money. Ask your people for their ideas. These people are intimately familiar with your brand—and yet they have distance from it. They might have some fabulously creative and on-target ideas.
4. Sell them branded items. Your people are proud to be connected to you, so turn them into billboards with legs. Create t-shirts, hats, sweat-shirts and even onesies for them to purchase and wear proudly.

Thank them. Do your people know you appreciate them? I’ll bet this is a priority for you where your employees are concerned—but what about your former employees and contractors? Let them know about the progress of a project they incubated three years ago. Tell them that their investment of time and energy is now paying off.

By: Nancy Lublin, the queen of Zilch

Zilch — The Power of Zero in Business by Nancy Lublin, CEO of DoSomething.org, is a smart and provocative twist on the tiresome old chestnut that nonprofits need to be better at thinking like for-profits. Puhleeze… I understand the point, but enough already… we’ve got it. If you don’t mind, while the business experts are busy sorting out the gut-wrenching tragedy in the Gulf, I’m going to listen to Nancy for awhile.

This is a business leadership book with a twist. Where other leadership books “zig.” Nancy “zags” and the result is a sharp and thought-provoking guide to find what every successful organization needs — purpose and passion. It turns the old for-profit vs. not-for-profit distinction on its head, seeing instead an emerging world dividing itself into “for-purpose” and “not-for-purpose” organizations.

Zilch is full of behind-the-scenes access to some of America’s most successful social enterprises, including Kiva, The Mozilla Foundation, and DonorsChoose.org — and Nancy isn’t afraid to let the secrets fly.

Zilch is not only a reminder of the remarkable leaders already shaping the social landscape, it is a long overdue guide to help every leader think and act more like, well… a leader.