How the Selfish Giving Newsletter is Changing in 2024 🗓 ; How to Do Cause Marketing with a Laundromat 🧺 ; 11 Things to Look Forward to in 2024 🥳
Happy New Year! 🥳🎉🍾
Three things this week.🎶
1️⃣ A big thank you to everyone who took my survey before the holidays. My goal was to get 5% of my subscribers to complete it. I hit 7%! 🙌
2️⃣ Everyone who completed the survey was entered into a random drawing to win a Selfish Giving tee. The first batch of t-shirts will go out this week! Some of you will be getting vintage and collectible CauseTalk Radio tees! 🤩
I'm sending another batch out next week!
3️⃣ Based on the survey results, here's what's changing (and not changing) in 2024.
✌️ The biggest news is that I'll publish my newsletter EVERY OTHER WEEK instead of every week.
59% of you said that getting my newsletter every other week would be fine.
The decision was tough as I've published a weekly newsletter for over a decade. Still, I want to experiment with a bimonthly format to see if it leads to a better newsletter.
I may eventually go back to weekly from time to time. Again, this is an experiment. Your patience, support, and feedback are appreciated.
My next newsletter will be in your inbox on Wednesday, January 17th at 7:50 am shahhhp!
🏅 The overall opinion of my newsletter and its current sections was very positive!
82% of you said my newsletter was moderately or very helpful to your work in corporate partnerships.
One-quarter of you said my newsletter is fabulous "as is."
I'm keeping all the current sections: Note from Joe, Partnership Notes, Marketing Your Cause, Cause Jobs, and Brain Food.
📈 Per your request, I'm focusing on improvements in two areas.
Providing additional context for and deeper insights into the links I share.
Sharing examples of successful corporate partnerships and highlighting what readers can learn from them. I'll need your help with this, so send along your examples!
Haven't filled out my survey yet? You still can. I read every one. I've learned so much!
✍️ Partnership Notes
1. I've written before on the threat/opportunity of tipping culture for checkout charity. According to the Wall Street Journal, the backlash against tipping has begun.
Let's seize this opportunity to redirect people to giving at the register. I believe - when done well - donation requests will be better received than tip requests.
2. How to do cause marketing with a laundromat.
3. Check out how furniture retailer American Freight is supporting St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital through January 10th.
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
1. Email trends you need to know about for 2024. #8: More emojis in subject lines. "53% of email recipients are likelier to open an email with emojis in the subject line." That's why I use two in my subject line!
2. Smahht marketing. The Denver Zoo wasn't sure who fathered a baby orangutan, so they called in an expert: Maury Povich.
3. My mantra with nonprofits is to engage and build an audience and, over time, to monetize that audience with corporate partnerships and other opportunities. While other orchestras are seeing their audiences shrink, here are three that are growing.
BTW, if you are in the orchestra world, you need to be following the post's author, Aubrey Bergauer. She's a supahstah! 🤩
4. My friend and fellow nonprofit newsletter publisher Ephraim Gopin has launched a new newsletter called Email 366 that you should subscribe to. Ephraim is an accomplished email marketer!
Email 366 is fresh, short, actionable daily email tips sent to your inbox that you can use at work. You’ll receive a new tip for all 366 days of 2024 (leap year!). By Dec. 31, 2024, you’ll be amazed at your results.
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
1. Senior Director, Corporate Partnerships, Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation, Oakland, CA
2. Assistant Director, Corporate Partnerships, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, NYC ($90k - $105k)
🧠🍌 Brain Food
1. How gun shops are helping people in crisis get guns out of their homes.
2. An excellent article to share with your current and prospective partners. A 4-point guide for any leader to create social impact.