NEGATIVE NEWS MESSAGE CASE

You’re the Accounting Department manager of a successful andgrowing organic food delivery company: Home Organics. The owner(you can make up a name) recently put you in charge of deciding ona corporate giving program (the company decided to give $5000 to anon-profit organization). Your job was to decide whichorganization. You had the idea of asking the other managers forinput and inviting them each (if they wanted) to give apresentation on a non-profit organization to support. The owner,you, and the managers watched all the presentations, and everyonewas invited to email you feedback after.

You’ve made your decision—one non-profit organization inparticular met all your criteria perfectly. However, it was a muchtougher task than you’d thought—choosing one organization out of abunch of really great causes. Unfortunately, saying yes to onemeans you have to say no to all the others. You took the job ofchoosing the organization very seriously—$5000 is a lot of moneyfor your company. You made sure to really compare each organizationto your criteria. You read all the feedback from the presentationscarefully. You consulted the owner. You’re very confident that theprocess of choosing the organization was good and totally fair.

Now, you have to tell some of the managers that their non-profitorganizations weren’t chosen. Initially, you’d thought that asimple email announcing the chosen organization would be fine, andit would still work fine for many of the managers. However, yourealized from the presentations that one of the managers inparticular (Rupert Hennessey) felt very passionate about hisorganization (the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society), and heclearly had put a lot of work into his presentation. You knowRupert lives in an area of Vancouver with many poor people and thathe’s a strong anti-poverty advocate in his neighbourhood. Thus,you’re afraid he’ll feel hurt and rejected that his organizationwasn’t chosen and will resist the decision. You decide you’d betterwrite him a personal email to explain the reasons and give him thebad news gently, before you make the general announcement. Becauseof his potential emotional/resistant reaction, you’ll use theindirect approach.

The trouble was that Rupert’s organization doesn’t meet thecriteria you’d set up for the non-profit organization. Months ago,you and the owner had talked about what type of non-profitorganization to choose for the $5000, and you’d agreed you wantedan organization that was as good a match or fit as possible withthe Home Organics goals and values. In other words, you wanted anon-profit organization related to issues like environmentalsustainability and of course organic farming and also fair trade.Thus, when you emailed everyone to invite them to givepresentations on a non-profit organization, you’d mentioned in theemail that the company wanted an organization that focused on theseissues. You’d mentioned that ideally the organization would be onethat would provide some education for people on these issues, andone that worked not just with farmers but also with stores. What’smore, you wanted the organization to be for all of BC, rather thanjust the Vancouver area. You work with lots of farmers in all partsof the province, so you want to support an organization that alsodoes work around the province. You’d wanted the managers to knowthat you’d set up specific criteria and a fair process for choosingthe non-profit organization—that’s why you gave them all this infoin your email.

Rupert had simply either not noticed these criteria or ignoredthem. However, you want to make sure he knows that you absolutelythink the food bank is extremely important and should be supported;there may be other ways you can all still do to help the food bank.For example, perhaps Home Organics could set up some kind ofongoing donation of some food? (Note: this is a weak example –think of something creative to suggest to Rupert) And Rupert couldorganize something like a food bank collection at theoffice—inviting the other staff to donate food or money.

The organization you and the owner chose after the presentationsis Simple and Sustainable (SAS), a local organization. SAS doesfantastic work educating people. It tells both businesses andcommunities about all the incredible benefits of sustainableorganic farming and fair trade. It even helps local businesses findfair trade producers around the world. It’s a perfect match forHome Organics’ goals and values. (You can tell Rupert you chose S& S and explain the reasons why.)

Write the email to Rupert (you can make up his email address;remember that Ruper WORKS FOR YOU, FOR HOME ORGANICS) that willachieve the negative-news goals of clarity, acceptance, andpositive image.

Remember that this case deliberately containscontent and wording that may not be appropriate for your message,and the content will need reorganization to fit the 4-part indirectnegative news pattern. Avoid copying long phrases/sentences fromthe case, and be especially careful with tone.Remember this message isn’t only about explaining whyyou didn’t choose the Food Bank—it’s also about making Rupert feelvalued/respected and showing that the process wasfair.