Thursday, August 27, 2009
EFFECTIVE PROMOTIONS!

by Sherie P Smith
The Fundraising Designer
3 Hours To Fundraising Success Group

Promoting your event may seem obvious when you are trying to achieve
some degree of success with fundraising. But you'd be surprised how many excellent fundraising ideas are wasted
because of feeble (or even non-existent) promotions. In fact, many projects are held with 'word-of-mouth' advertising only!
(You know, like 'Ya'll Come!') Promotion is simply TOO important to be ignored. Lack of promotion will make or break
your results. (It's that simple!)

Many clubs have the attitude 'Whatever money we make will be more than we had before!' (Well, duh!)  What a waste
of time and people-power if you only do a halfway job.  Do you only wash the front of your car when it's dirty? Or does
a farmer only harvest part of his crop?  Of course not!  If you are going  hold an event, at least do the BEST JOB POSSIBLE! 
Utilize every TOOL you can dream up, every TALENT that is within arms' reach and every OPTION available to you for
every single event!  If you do that consistently, you will see a huge improvement in your fundraising success, far more
than you ever dreamed you could achieve!

Be a smart Commander and pick your 'soldiers' wisely!  Be sure to delegate specific tasks to specific members, based
on their talents, expertise, contacts, experience, etc.  Make sure as much promotion as possible can be achieved within
the time available.  Don't recruit people for your committee for the WRONG REASONS! In other words, don't ad Big Jed's
nephew to the advertising committee because he can stand curbside with shotgun in hand. (That's NOT what we mean by
talented or experienced!) You want people drawn to your event the right way and to come with a happy and cheerful mindset.
They'll have a much better time while they are there and spend a whole lot more money while they are with you, hence, more
fun and bigger profits!

This 'Big Jed' comment may seem funny, but I personally know of one group that always included one particular committee
member because he provided the bloody marys.  (No kidding!)

Back to serious now...Don't forget to check with newspapers, radio stations and local and social media websites.  Many will
let you post your non-profit fundraising event details for free! Potential media exposure can be HUGE on top of other typical
promotion ideas. Make sure you don't miss out on any of these FREE media opportunities.  While I'm thinking about it, check
with your clubmembers to see if anyone happens to own an unused billboard.  You'd be surprised how many billboards sit without
a current lease and they will usually get GREAT attention.  You might even get your local newspaper to run a picture of the billboard
to help promote your event. Or have someone on top of the billboard (yes, live, looking silly and waving at everyone!) as part of
your publicity stunt during drive-time.  Get creative, you can work lots of good ideas around that.

Now that you know how important EFFECTIVE PROMOTION really is, don't forget to come up with a sound business plan
that includes 1) adequate, 2) varied and 3) most especially, creative promotion ideas!

As always, I'm wishing you and your group Ultimate Fundraising Success!

Sherie Smith, Editor
The Fundraising Designer
email: fundraisingdesigner@gmail.com
Twitter: Twitter.com/fundraisingdsnr

About Sherie Smith:
Sherie Smith shows people how to achieve the Ultimate Fundraising Success in her free multi-part minicourse which can be
found at: http://www.3hourstofundraisingsuccess.com. Her newest book, '3 Hours to Fundraising Success', a step-by-step
copycat manual to the $4,500 in 3 Hours project, will be released Mid-August 2009.

Copyright c Sherie Smith All Rights Reserved
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