Creative Fundraising and Cost-Cutting For Non-Profits

If you’re interested in being more effective with your fundraising…and doing it more efficiently…you’ll find this webinar time well spent.

Hosted by OneWorld.net in Washington, D.C., four speakers presented to a local and an online audience on May 21, 2009.

My presentation, “Understanding Your Donors and Using this Knowledge Effectively,” was the second one.

Use the following links to bring up in different browser tabs or windows the podcast (audio only) and the slide show.

With the .mov version of the slide show, you’ll need to PAUSE and PLAY the movie to keep pace with my comments on each slide. First launch and play the podcast and advance it to when I am introduced (about one-quarter of the way into the podcast), then launch the movie of the slide show.

Click Here for Podcast

Click Here for Slide Show Movie

You’ll hear references to my document with a list of key questions to have answered before developing any appeal or marketing piece. Contact me for a free copy.

I look forward to your comments and questions.

Meanwhile, the three other presenters were excellent and the audio of their presentations are worth your time, as well.

Congratulations PLGA Foundation

To the families and friends of the PLGA Foundation and to the 500+ good people who turned out for the event on May 31, congratulations on making the first annual PLGA Foundation Ride and Family Fun Festival a great success.

You’re close to reaching the goal of raising $500,000, yet you’ve accomplished so, so much by demonstrating and delivering “hope” for kids…and their families…with PLGA brain tumors.

Do you act on your convictions?

After reviewing a good number of quotes on “conviction” (one of the 7 C’s of Persuasion), I found one that makes a good point…

“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”

-  Thomas Carlyle

Your conviction not only challenges you to act it out…work it and live it out…it is one of most powerful catalysts for motivating others to take action.

How are your convictions leading to actions with your marketing, sales and fund-raising?

If you were king…

Fill in the blank, and then answer the question.

“If you were king, what would you do to improve __________?”

At least once a year, everyone in your management team should address this question, with the pressing issues filling in the blank.

A good way to know what to place in the blank is to ask and answer the question, “What is the largest challenge facing our organization?”

The “king” question should be posed to middle management, line and staff, customers, channel and center-of-influence constituents, as well, once a year or when your conducting research to strengthen your brand and key strategic issues.

Have you ever asked and answered the “king” question? Were you surprised by the results?

Dear Leaders,

Author Harold J. Seymour wrote, “Leaders are the ones who keep faith with the past, keep step with the present and keep the promise to posterity.”

What are you doing to keep step with today and keep that promise of your brand and your business for the future?

The Power of a Positive Sampling Experience

With the addition of one new product sampling program, one of our clients realized a 28% growth in their business last year.

Did you know that a positive sampling experience (whether you’re selling a product or service) is one of the most powerful of all marketing tools?

What are you doing to create sampling opportunities?

Why do customers choose/not choose you?

It’s essential to know why customers say “yes” to you and…equally so…why customers say “no.”

These are two important questions in our strategic evaluation, when we’re assessing a new client’s current situation and as part of our periodic evaluations and strategic planning. 

Without knowing the answers to both questions, all that is communicated through marketing and sales is vulnerable and potentially handicapped. Yet, it’s common to see these questions have not been asked, at least for some time.

Do you know why people are saying “yes” and “no” to you?

When was the last time you asked?

Gain Market Share Now – Part 4

The curtain opens at Carnegie Hall and each of the 12 members of the Big Apple A Cappella Choir takes a deep breath, preparing to fill lift their voices in song and delight the audience with a performance worthy of a standing ovation. Yet the audience is instantly overwhelmed with confusion. The singing has begun but everyone is out of key in a perplexing mess no one could possibly describe as music. Each member is singing a different song.

Ideally, each member of the choir sings a part of the same song that harmonizes with and supports the other singers.

The same is true with the different parts of your marketing, and never before has it been more important for marketers and fundraisers to take this, the sixth step towards gaining market share now:

6.  Increase the integration of all marketing actions and initiatives with your website and Internet marketing.

Time and again I’ve seen the results of a campaign (whether it’s only a direct mailing or a multi-media program) being strengthen by incorporating the client’s web site, as well as the use of other media. And frequently I’m seeing marketers and fundraisers not taking the time or steps to combine their most powerful communications tools.

At the heart of the rationale for integration are three parts:

1. Improved results
2. Increased efficiencies
3. Strengthening of the brand

With huge populations turning first to websites to garner information for the decisions they make and as the place where they take action, it’s essential to make Internet marketing a core, foundational part of every marketing component.

Is your organization fully integrating all marketing, sales or fundraising assets?

 

You Know What?…

It’s a chilling 20 degrees right now and many furnaces are hard at work here in New England.

What’s more important to oil-heat customers than reducing our dependance on foreign oil? According to our research…

• Oil that burns cleanlier
• Oil that is more environmentally friendly
• Oil that keeps the burner components cleanlier

Are you surprised?

Merry Christmas

 

May your Christmas and New Year

Be Smooth Sailing