All years are interesting historically. When you look back on them, you always discover something you’d forgotten or didn’t know that surprises or astonishes, especially among the “firsts” that occur.
In 1956, for example, the year I graduated from high school, the headline “firsts” included:
Seeing these entries in Wikipedia, I realized I had forgotten them all, especially Ike’s authorized pledge and his Congress’s mandated motto. How could I have thought for most of my life that he was one of the good guys regarding separation of church and state? History has a way of upsetting assumptions.
There are also hundreds of “firsts” each year that all but disappear over time because the consequences aren’t so profound or far-reaching. Nonetheless, they have great relevance for particular segments of the population.
During 1956, one of these less conspicuous “firsts” eventually had an enormous impact on the evolution of professional public relations, especially in the U.S.
That was the year an organization came into being to improve PR research and education. Called the Foundation for Public Relations Research and Education, it was the charitable arm of the Public Relations Society of America. PRSA was founded in 1947 from an amalgamation of the American Council on Public Relations and the National Association of Public Relations Councils, and a merger in 1961 with the American Public Relations Association. In 1962, the Society created its accreditation (APR) program.
When established, the FPRR&E was separately incorporated because of its eleemosynary mission, even though there was an assumed political relationship with PRSA on many research and education decisions. The foundation was also housed rent-free at the then Society’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan.
One of the foundation’s initial goals was to raise $1 million from practitioners to fund educator and student research projects, and to help underwrite future projects such as “The Public Relations Quarterly.” It published PRQ for many years until it gave it to Editor-in-Chief Ray Hiebert to continue on his own with a private publisher. The foundation also underwrote the first textbook on “Public Relations Law” by Morton J. Simon (1969, 882 pages!), and the first documentary film on PR entitled “Opinion of the Publics” (1973, 33 minutes), which was viewed by more than 15 million people. The $1 million fundraising goal has yet to be achieved, but it’s getting close because of another “first” that occurred 33 years later, 15 years after I entered corporate public relations following my reporter days in Boston. At the time, I didn’t realize I would be a front-row witness to a significant moment in PR history.
Research and education get a new dedication
In 1989, the Institute for Public Relations Research and Education succeeded the FPRR&E when it “broke away” from PRSA because of the Society’s requirement that the foundation’s board had to be all accredited (APR) members.
There is nothing wrong with APR per se (I’ve been proudly accredited since 1975), but the requirement effectively denied anyone who wasn’t APR from being on the board and providing the leadership – and funds, most notably – needed to run a more robust organization with a more ambitious mission that went beyond existing party lines.
From 1981-1990, I administered the foundation as an account of my then public relations firm, The Bates Company, after Rea Smith, PRSA’s top-staffer executive vice president, died. Two years before, she had become the foundation head.
Rea had become a valued friend and mentor when I handled professional development programs for the Society in the late 1970s. She was the first woman I had worked for and what a terrific person. She never cursed, never raised her voice, never denigrated her staff, never shirked her duties, and never softened her view that the management of PRSA was a “stewardship responsibility.” She not only helped PRSA to prosper. She helped the foundation to do the same. Among her many skills was an uncanny writing ability.
Rea could compose a grammatically and syntactically flawless five-page, single-space report or speech from beginning to end with only one or two typos – in two or three hours on a manual typewriter and with an unmatched clarity! I should have entered her feat in the Guinness Book of World Records. Rea also brought women into Society and professional leadership roles well before it was PC. She didn’t ask. She just did it. She cracked the glass ceiling with a soft touch and a knowing smile.
Letters after a name changed the game
One day while handling the foundation’s business, I had an idea. I had one of my agency staff, Donna Erickson, research the top executive practitioners in U.S. corporations, PR firms, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations to determine how many were APR so we could reach out to them as board slots became available. Donna discovered that more than 95 percent of the 300 or so practitioners she tracked weren’t accredited, including virtually all of the vice-president-and -above corporate communicators in the Fortune 500.
This research, shared with the existing boards, made it crystal clear that the leadership required to grow the foundation wouldn’t be forthcoming unless the APR requirement was dropped. Thus began a contentious discussion during which the PRSA board president, Patrick Jackson, head of Jackson Jackson and Wagner, and a respected colleague and friend, said he would start another foundation if the current foundation’s board persisted in opposing the accreditation rule. Paul, Steve and I – with the help of several PRSA board members – tried several times to reach an accommodation with PRSA, but to no avail.
The die was cast despite the fact that all the foundation board wanted to do was open membership to highly qualified individuals who were practice leaders and thought leaders in the top rank of PR executives. These leaders could also help to raise more corporate contributions because of their C-Suite connections.
Institute succeeds with good deeds
After a few years of back and forth on the issue, the foundation board voted unanimously to revise its New York charter and bylaws. It also changed its name to the Institute for Public Relations Research and Education, subsequently abbreviated to the Institute for Public Relations. In creating a new entity, there was no intention of harming accreditation; APR was PRSA’s business. There was also no intention to provide membership benefits to PR practitioners; that was PRSA’s job.
Although I and many foundation board members at the time played important parts in the drama that brought the Institute into existence, the marquee roles were played by Paul Alvarez, now retired chairman of Ketchum, and corporate VP Steve Kaye, now deceased, and their boards of directors, which included many PR luminaries, a tradition that continues today. More than 200 top professionals and educators have served on the foundation/Institute boards. Paul and Steve were presidents respectively in 1988-1989 and 1990-1992.
Alas, perception, as we know too well in PR, quickly evolved as a reality that undermined the trust of leaders within both organizations. Thankfully, tempers calmed and attitudes shifted. Today, whatever upset there was 33 years ago has long dissipated and cooperation has become the norm, in large part because what was expected as a result of the APR change quickly took center stage.
Under its new name, the Institute, the new organization was able to attract more of the best and brightest talent in the profession. This talent, in turn, got deeply involved in setting a new agenda and soon was raising tens of thousands more in corporate contributions to build a more visible and vigorous research program that addresses the latest PR issues and ideas.
In 1990, I resigned the Institute account, after nine years in the trenches, to devote more time to my agency. Soon, other administrators with bigger titles came along who turned those tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, most conspicuously Frank Oviatt, who recently retired from PR altogether so he can raise horses and enjoy more time with family. I hope he names one his foals “Institute” and if it wins the Triple Crown that he’ll graciously donate half the purse to the IPR.
Institute a star in new world of PR
Today, the Institute’s annual budget is still shy of $1 million, but almost there, even though it can use $2 million or more to underwrite the incredible need within the profession – globally as well as nationally – for new research-based thinking that delivers greater PR value on behalf of the tens of thousands of for-profit and nonprofit institutions that PR now serves worldwide. Professional public relations is, as the Department of Labor has reported for years, one of the fastest growing occupations in the U.S. and globally. The Institute is a reflection of that growth as well as a bellwether for practitioner research and education.
In the end, the Institute’s founders understood that no occupation attains the status of a profession without a substantial body of codified professional knowledge, and without educational systems to help develop and disseminate that knowledge. This is as true of public relations as it is of medicine, law, accounting or teaching. In each case, there is science underlying the art, and it is the working knowledge of that science, combined with creativity, that marks the best professionals. They also knew the Institute needed to operate more broadly and openly than it had in the past to pursue its dedication to the science beneath the art of public relations.™
Because of the founder’s foresight and determination, the Institute has become the premier source of the latest knowledge driving the power and presence of professional public relations in the world.
Now in its 60th anniversary year, it is expanding the frontiers of PR research and knowledge. Its agenda includes benchmarking studies of organizational communication, social media, measurement, evaluation, and research standards.
Now in its 60th anniversary year, it is mainstreaming the results as part of public relations practice and education. It is building bridges of understanding and mutual interest among educators and practitioners and the institutions they serve.
Amazingly, because of the support it receives from leading practitioners and their organizations, the Institute is able to do something no other PR organization can or does:
Provide all of its research reports and publications free of charge from its website to anyone who wants them and without filling out forms.
What more can we ask? A lot, of course, and it will come. It will come faster and with greater force if as many as possible in the profession contribute to the fulfillment of its mission this year and well beyond. For me, this is one of the best ways to give back to the profession that has been so good to us and that will continue the legacy of old and new thinking that we know provides vision and value to society’s institutions of business, government and nonprofit assistance.
Don Bates, APR, Fellow PRSA, is an honorary trustee of the Institute, an instructor at New York University’s graduate program and a senior counselor for Gould Partners. Follow him on Twitter @batesdon1.
Don this is extremely interesting, and almost totally new to me even though I have been actively involved in Institute activities well over a decade… thank you.