When Doug Ulman, chief executive of the Livestrong Foundation, gathered his staff this summer, he greeted them with a PowerPoint photo of the Grand Canyon.
“Do you know what this is?” Mr. Ulman asked.
Some did, some didn’t. So he told them: It’s the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
“This is where we are,” he said. Bottom. Rock bottom. Bottom-of-the-Grand-Canyon bottom.
They all knew why. In January, Livestrong’s founder, Lance Armstrong, admitted to doping his way to the pro-cycling fame that made the charity a worldwide brand. And in May, Nike, creator of the ubiquitous yellow wristbands that are the nonprofit’s most famous symbol, said it would stop selling Livestrong gear this winter and cut all ties in 2014.
Now, Mr. Ulman told them, “we get to decide how we climb out, who we climb out with, and how fast we climb out.”
Survival Strategy
But the hole Livestrong is in goes far deeper than the one dug by its fallen founder.
A little-known but equally worrisome threat to Livestrong’s future centers on its public-identity crisis: Most people have no clue what the cancer-survival charity does and mistakenly think it supports research for a cure, according to a public-opinion survey the organization conducted to better understand its image.
The results also contained good news: A majority of Americans said Livestrong’s services to help cancer patients and survivors navigate treatment and recovery is a more important mission than finding cures for cancer.
That has made Mr. Ulman’s 2013 rebuilding strategy strikingly clear despite steep obstacles: “Everything we do has to communicate that mission,” he says.
After a revenue decline of 18.7 percent last year, he must move fast.
That shouldn’t be hard for him. As a marathoner who has survived cancer three times, Mr. Ulman, 36, has never been one to sit still.
His low-slung cubicle is equipped with a desk designed for standing and a treadmill that he uses while on conference calls. Even awaiting his son’s birth this summer, Mr. Ulman was on the go, telling his 1.1 million Twitter followers before the delivery that eight laps around the hospital floor equaled a mile.
“I’m so impatient,” he says. “As hard as it is, I see the future. I see where we’re going.”
To get there, he has embarked on a strategy to:
- Personally rebuild relationships with disillusioned donors. “This year has been less about fundraising and more about communicating with donors,” says Mr. Ulman. “I’m not making as many asks this year as I did last year. But I’m spending a ton of time with people, being very open and talking about everything.”
- Lift morale by getting employees directly involved in building a new future for the charity. They are all working to decide which among 90 programs and services should be ended, kept, or expanded.
- Dispel confusion about Livestrong with an advertising blitz depicting its results for survivors, not vague messages of hope relayed by Nike and Mr. Armstrong.
Cutting Ties
To succeed, Mr. Ulman must sever the organization’s image from its founder while forging an independent identity as a valuable resource for cancer patients.
A recent gift to Mr. Ulman from AOL’s chief executive, Tim Armstrong, exemplified that daunting dual task: It was a long steel sword inscribed with a quote from an expert on independence, Thomas Jefferson: “In matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
Mr. Ulman has been credited with maintaining exactly that kind of steady posture while Lance Armstrong admitted to cheating.
Mr. Ulman and his colleagues say that when they visit donors angered by Mr. Armstrong’s actions, they always make one thing clear: He lied to us, too.
Says Nick Denby, Livestrong’s vice president for development: “I can say, I’m every bit as frustrated as you are.”
Mr. Ulman and Mr. Denby have been contacting donors all year rather than waiting for them to call first. “Everybody wants to talk about it. It’s cathartic to talk it through,” Mr. Ulman says. “You can’t do that sending e-mails and letters.”
Falling Revenue
In the past, such outreach was unnecessary.
“Everything was just a little bit easier” with Nike and Lance, Mr. Ulman says, because the high-profile company and celebrity helped open doors to lots of supporters.
That hasn’t been the case recently. Revenue through April trailed last year’s results. And tax returns Livestrong released last month show that donations in 2012 dropped 8 percent while revenue from licensing deals with companies dropped 35 percent.
Wooing back disaffected donors will clearly be a long-term challenge.
Consider Steven Schooner, a George Washington University law professor. His cycling teams have raised about $85,000 over the years for Livestrong. For nearly a decade, he never removed his yellow wristband—until January 1, after he had digested all the allegations against Mr. Armstrong.
“The hardest thing was cutting off the band,” recalls Mr. Schooner, a cancer survivor who lost his parents to the disease. He says he stopped seeking donations on the charity’s behalf because people he asked got so angry about Mr. Armstrong.
“In a few years, that may pass,” he says. “But people still think you’re asking for money for Lance Armstrong.”
Getting the Staff Involved
Weathering the fallout from disaffected donors is not Mr. Ulman’s only challenge. He must also energize Livestrong’s demoralized staff. Mr. Ulman’s open communications style has been credited with helping the charity cope with the crisis.
“Some people at the top become isolated and siloed and just start making decisions, cutting heads, cutting programs” during a crisis, says Mark Lipton, a nonprofit expert at the New School, in New York.
Not Mr. Ulman. He has tried to include staff members at every turn by being as open and accessible as possible. “It’s been so hard and so stressful” for them, he says.
Stressful Times
The stress for Mr. Ulman grew most intense when he met Mr. Armstrong for a Saturday-night dinner at the 34th Street Cafe here.
“During dinner, he said, ‘Look, I have a lot of apologies to make, and you’re one of the first people,’” said Mr. Ulman, whom Mr. Armstrong recruited in 2001 from his Maryland nonprofit for young cancer survivors. “I wasn’t angry or happy. I was surprised.”
He said he was also relieved that the truth was finally out.
“Are there days when I’m upset and frustrated? Sure,” Mr. Ulman says today. “But what am I going to get out of that?”
During the January dinner, Mr. Armstrong asked to address the Livestrong staff a few hours before he was set to tape his interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Staff members met with him in a conference room whose windows were covered with paper to block news photographers’ view from outside.
“He was shaking,” Mr. Ulman said. “It was very emotional.”
Three days later, after the first interview had aired, staff members were fielding calls from friends and relatives questioning the charity’s future.
To Mr. Ulman’s surprise, they rallied with a video expressing their passion for helping cancer patients. The message was clear: They were at Livestrong for the mission, not for the founder.
Boosting Loyalty
But the staff was hit again in May when Nike announced it was ending a nine-year deal that had raised $100-million for Livestrong.
Mr. Ulman responded by asking his colleagues to submit ideas for new partnerships and services that Livestrong had never tried.
“We went out to the whole team in early June and said: Any ideas, bring them our way,” he says. The process brought more “energy and excitement.”
It was a smart move to boost loyalty, says Mr. Lipton, the New School scholar. “When you can reach down in the organization and engage them on the question of how can we get out of this, it really pays off.”
At the same time, Mr. Ulman and other executives fielded nearly every request for comment from reporters and donors, aided by the Glover Park Group, a public-relations firm.
“That was the brilliance—to be willing to enter the center of the storm when most would duck and cover,” said Richard Levick, a crisis-communications consultant unaffiliated with Livestrong.
The next step: Refresh the charity with an advertising push that details the 2.5 million people it has helped and that also limits confusion about its work.
Relaying that theme has already begun, with a simple message the charity posted on Facebook: “Livestrong isn’t about a cure tomorrow. It’s about support today.”
Last year, Livestrong spent $4-million on advertising, and its top contractor in 2012 was a marketing-strategy firm it paid $2.1-million.
Greg Lee, Livestrong’s chief financial officer, says the organization will start a “global ad campaign” near the end of the year: “Given our circumstances, we have to have people know who we are and what we do.”
Such promotion should have been a priority all along, says the charity’s leader. “In hindsight, we’ve missed some opportunities to communicate more effectively what we were achieving,” says Mr. Ulman. “To me, it’s back to basics: Tell people what you’re doing.”
Scandals ‘Will Fade’
The face of that push will be average survivors like Cecile Hollyfield, a 61-year-old Austin artist who sells $4 origami items at a local market.
Ms. Hollyfield received her first chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer on the same day Mr. Armstrong was on television confessing to Oprah. A Livestrong volunteer drove her to and from her treatment.
Like most people, she did not know what Livestrong did when she called late last year. But she knew enough to ask for help.
“Lance has proven that he can pretty much be a fool,” she says, but Livestrong will be remembered for helping people, not his lies and cheating.
“The rest will fade,” she adds. “Just probably not as quickly as they would like.”
