Archive for the ‘Misc’ Category

Tom’s of Maine is a stalwart supporter of good causes, including water-related ones, and I use their products myself. Particularly their “not sickly sweet” toothpaste. They running one of those “vote for your favorite cause” donation drives, and they’ll give $20,000 to the five charities that get the most votes.

Is there a name for this kind of corporate philanthropy? Seems like it ought to have one.

Anyway — I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This type of activity will become a mainstay of corporate philanthropy. Businesses want to be recognized for doing good deeds, and with this type of activity, they know exactly how much recognition they get. Organizations that can rapidly mobilize lots of supporters online — via email, Facebook, Twitter, whatever, will be the ones that take home the cash.

Groups whose primary contact with supporters is via the mail will lose out — it’s too slow, it’s too expensive, and the number of people who will actually visit a website after getting a letter is very small.

This time around I voted for the Kootenai Environmental Alliance, because they asked me to. If they win one of Tom’s of Maine’s grants, they’ll use it to create a community garden and “demonstrate drought-tolerant and water-wise crops and techniques.”

Click here to vote for the good cause of your choice! And thanks, Tom’s of Maine, for being such a good friend to us over the years.

Environmental donors generally look like this

I cut a deal with one of your peers — I’ll give them a free critique of their forthcoming fundraising appeals if they let me blog about it (without naming them). Click here to review one of the drafts. Here goes!

First, let’s all get oriented. On the left: Meet Dorothy Donor, a typical donor to a nature protection or pollution control organization. You need to mail to a lot of people like this to raise meaningful amounts of money.

Whenever I think about direct mail fundraising, I often think of my grandmother. She had a drawer where she would put the fundraising letters as they arrived. At some point during the holiday season, she’d pull them all out and sit down with my grandfather (who good spirited about the whole exercise, but not nearly as into as she was) and the grandkids (if we were around) and pick which ones to support and for how much.

She quite literally thought she was making choice between saving an acre of rainforest, providing beds for 10 homeless women and their children, preventing 50 puppies with big brown eyes from being put to sleep, paying the stipends for 2 Catholic missionaries, or building a school in some unfortunate corner of the world.

Market research suggests that my grandmother’s charitable habits were pretty typical for her generation. To be successful, you have to accept that you’re competing for Dorothy’s attention and generosity: She’ll pick 3-7 causes for the year out of dozens of appeals than arrive in her mailbox in November and December. You must convince her that her $50 (or whatever) gift to you will make a bigger difference and do more good in the world than the other charities seeking her support. And if you never thanked her for her last gift she gave you, she’ll remember that.

So now that we’re oriented, here’s my first piece of advice. When Dorothy opens your letter, you want her to reach for her checkbook — not a magnifying glass. So bump up the text size from 12 point to 14. Break those long paragraphs up into shorter ones.

More critiques tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m curious if my experience with my own grandmother is familiar to any of you? Can you think of anyone who took the holiday giving tradition so seriously?

“The more you deny it, they more they believe it.” That’s one of the phrases I toss around in my “Combat Communications for Conservationists” workshops. Kristen Grimm, fearless leader of Spitfire Strategies, agrees. In her latest email newsletter, she writes:

Do yourself a favor, skip the myth vs. fact sheet…Research shows that using the myths vs. facts format to present information actually reinforces the very point(s) an organization may be trying to discredit.

When confronting lies or misleading statements from other parties to an environmental dispute, Grimm recommends “make an assertion that is factual without referring to the incorrect information.”

I agree completely — and I encourage you to click the link to sign up for Spitfire Strategies’ helpful email newsletter, which is full of great advice for environmental writing communication.

Here’s a nice use of the Words That Work, even if the context is a different kind of liquid than what we usually focus on here. The federal government and a partnership of “adult beverage” industry associations are running a social marketing/behavior change campaigns aimed at raising awareness about teen alcohol abuse. They’ve set up a website at www.dontserveteens.gov and are promoting it with billboards, newspaper psas (pictured above), and other advertisements.

Let’s evaluate the campaign against the Water Words That Work method and see how it fares:

• Begin with Behavior. Check. The goal is to persuade adults to not buy booze for teens.
• Foolproof Photos. Check. A family discussion. You can see the mom’s face.
• Swap the Shoptalk. Check. No jargon from the substance-abuse profession anywhere
• Use Words That Work. Check. The key message points use three — “unsafe,” “illegal,” “irresponsible.” The photo caption uses another, “do you part.”

Nice work!