Ray Mitchell of Trident Communications Group recently sat down to discuss his business and is featured here as the January 2011 – Business of the Month.
How long have you been in business?
Trident Communications Group was established in 1995. (16 years in June 2011)
How did you get started? What made you choose this particular business?
In mid-June of 1995, my position as Vice President for Development and Public Relations at Addison Gilbert Hospital (Gloucester, MA) was eliminated, after four and a half years of service, due to a merger of AGH with Beverly Hospital. I was given my severance package, and off I went. It seemed to me a perfect opportunity and juncture to establish my own consulting practice, and I concluded that if I was ever going to take the plunge, this was the time to try.
This was not a case of trying a new business. Organizational advancement, particularly in the nonprofit sector, was the kind of work I had done for just about all of my professional life. With the exception of four years spent in corporate communications, public relations and marketing, I have been involved in nonprofit organizational advancement since 1970 --- about 36 years. In the nonprofit sector, organizational advancement encompasses governance management, constituency building, constituent-relationship cultivation and management, public relations and communications, marketing, and fund raising (philanthropy).
When you meet someone and they ask you what you do, what do you say?
I say that we are professional organizational advancement consultants providing counsel and direct services to both nonprofit organizations and conventional businesses.
The more formal response to that questions is: “Trident Communications Group is a full-service consultancy, providing a wide range of organizational advancement counsel and direct services to nonprofit organizations throughout New England and the northeast region.
We are skilled, experienced professionals consulting in fundraising and donor relations, governance management, public relations, special events management and marketing communications --- focused on your organization's strategic interests.
Trident Communications Group's mission is to help organizations, large and small, to build and communicate with constituencies --- to manage and nurture the relationship with them, to enhance perceptions, to earn and sustain loyalties, to encourage and steward their philanthropic support --- and to achieve the goal of successful competition in today's challenging marketplace.
We provide a range of organizational advancement services to nonprofit organizations and specialize in fully integrated fund raising, governance management, public relations, special events, marketing communications and related advancement services. We also work with traditional businesses in the advancement of their strategic communications interests, providing services that address issues of branding, market position and market share.”
What makes your business stand out from your competition?
We are a full-service consultancy, providing counsel and direct services across the entire range of disciplines that constitute and operate within the process of organizational advancement, most especially in the nonprofit sector. In other words, a “one-stop shop” that brings together, under one roof, all of the expertise and resources needed for client projects.
We provide fully integrated services that address the critical role of communication, education and relationship management in all aspects of nonprofit organizational advancement, particularly fund raising.
We are a small, independent consulting firm that operates on the consortium model, thereby minimizing our mission-critical overhead and enabling us to offer our clients first-quality counsel and services, a very competitive schedule of service fees, and more flexible contractual arrangements.
Why did you choose to locate in the greater Dover area?
In 2003, I decided to move my full-time residence and business location from Gloucester, Massachusetts to New Hampshire. I already had a residence and a business office in Plaistow (NH) but wanted to get closer to the New Hampshire seacoast. I was interested in concentrating my consulting business in New Hampshire, because the state has a very vibrant nonprofit environment and community.
I chose Dover as my residence location, because I found an excellent housing value here; I also had family roots here. I sold my properties in both Gloucester and Plaistow and moved to Dover in December 2004. Shortly thereafter, I moved my business here as well. It was the right decision.
Over the years, what do you see as the single biggest change that’s taken place in your business?
The explosive growth in the overall size of the nonprofit sector, both in New Hampshire and across the nation, has made the business of organizational advancement consulting much more varied and interesting. It also has become better understood and much more competitive at the same time.
As nonprofit organizations have become more skilled and discerning in their engagement of outside resources and services, such as consulting, it has made the process of cultivating a client from a prospect a lot more time-consuming and challenging. Over the past two calendar years, the economy also has negatively impacted the volume of consulting business undertaken in the nonprofit sector.
What are your visions for the short and long-term future of your business?
Short-term goals include an expansion of TCG’s own marketing efforts, a broadening of the types of nonprofit organizations with which we work, as well as a renewed emphasis on the cultivation of more clients among conventional businesses.
Longer-term goals include an expanded reach into new areas of New England and the northeast region, an increase in the number of participating consultants, and the development of packages of smaller-scale and collaborative services for partnered or merged nonprofit organizations.
If there was one thing that you’d want people to know about your business, what would it be?
That we are highly skilled professionals working in a field of endeavor that many do not see as requiring any special skills or experience to practice and achieve success, particularly in the nonprofit sector. That we are dedicated to optimum client service and committed to doing whatever it takes to achieve our client’s advancement goals. That we offer first-class services with very competitive fees.
What do you think is the most difficult thing about owning/running a business?
Living with it and thinking about it, day and night. Eating, drinking, sleeping, walking and recreating with it “by your side” all day, every day. It’s like parenting!
What is the most rewarding?
Knowing that you have complete control of your own work life and that your ability to be successful begins first inside of yourself and depends on your own personal commitment to achieving goals.
Knowing that our counsel and direct services are instrumental and make all the difference in helping a nonprofit organization or a business to achieve its advancement goals.
Completing a client project and realizing that people do understand the difference your involvement has made in the success of that project.
Based on your experience, what advice would you have for someone just starting up a business today?
Work especially hard. Be willing to maintain a focus on your business in every waking hour of the day (and sometimes the sleeping ones, too!). Concentrate on what you do best and what differentiates you from your competitors. Get some professional advice on a regular basis. Network a lot with others “in your boat.” Take great pride in what you do. Remember that your name is on every action that you take on behalf of your clients or customers.
Any particularly funny, poignant, memorable or otherwise noteworthy stories or anecdotes about your business that you could share?
While it did not seem or feel like a particularly funny occurrence at the time, an incident that nearly upset a major fund-raising event for a big Catholic client is now something that I can look back on and chuckle (at least a bit). We were staging a big gathering for a diocesan bishop to thank some major donors. On the day before the event, we learned that the hotel we were using as a venue had the Chippendales, a well-known male strip show, booked into the adjacent ballroom on the same evening. One might ask why the hotel staff would have made such an arrangement in the first place! Thanks to some quick thinking and action by all involved, including the hotel staff, we were able to put a “firewall” between the two events. As best we could determine, none of the women attending the bishop’s event stole away to see the Chippendales!
In another vein, I was personally involved some years ago in arranging a major, commemorative gift to a capital campaign by a very elderly gentleman who wanted to honor his deceased wife. I got to know this man very well during the process, and we became fast friends. He established an annuity contract that would pay him income during life and revert to the organization after his death. Before any payments could be made to him, he passed away. His family asked me to be a speaker at his funeral service. The story illustrates just how personal and intimate the role of advancement professionals can be in the lives of the people they encounter and with whom they interact.
Is there a question(s) that you wish you’d been asked about your business? If so, what is it, and what is the answer?
Why did you choose the name “Trident Communications Group” for your particular type of consulting firm?
Originally, the “trident” concept appealed to me, because we were focused on fund raising, public relations/marketing and special events. As time has passed, and our service offerings actually have broadened, particularly for nonprofits, I see the “three teeth” more as a metaphor for building constituencies, cultivating and managing relationships, and turning strangers and acquaintances into “investors” or “stakeholders.”
The word “communications” in our name confuses some people and often leads them to ask if we are in the telephone or computer-networking fields. The simple answer is that communication (along with education, which is also based on communication) is at the very heart and core of the entire organizational advancement process. It’s the instrument for the entire process, from the beginning to a conclusion.
The word “group” defines and denotes our approach to consulting. We are a consortium of skilled and experienced professionals who align their capabilities and interact, as needed, in an integrated manner, to meet the needs of a specific client.
Please add any notes or thoughts that you think might not have been conveyed in your responses above.
Trident Communications Group was proud to serve as fund-raising counsel for the successful capital campaign in support of the new headquarters and visitor center of the Greater Dover Chamber of Commerce. Between late 2007 and late 2010, we were privileged to work with the Chamber staff and many dedicated volunteers who shared the vision of a new home for the organization. We were delighted to play a role in this project.
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