I love it when a big project can be distilled into a simple message. A recent project funded by the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries Safety & Health Investment Projects (“SHIP”) was one of those.
SHIP funds ideas to reduce workplace injuries. Nonprofits are workplaces, too, but sometimes, they get wrapped up in their mission and forget about safety. Working with Nancy Bacon of Washington Nonprofits, I designed a guide to Safety & Health in Nonprofits. It includes a booklet, sample documents, useful tools, videos, and an interactive graphic. It’s all available for free on a page on the Washington Nonprofit Institute.
All the materials were published, but there was one final task: How do you get busy members of the nonprofit sector to look at it?
My answer was: Humor.
Unlike some training materials that use macabre humor to highlight life-threatening issues (I have never recovered from watching the Klaus the Forklift Operator videos), I used characters from the design with simple speech balloons. It was just silly enough to post on my bulletin board, and I am certain others will do the same.
