Newsletter: A Dead, Forgotten President Has More Followers Than You 🪦 ; Two Fast-Growing C-Stores to Add to Your Prospect List 💨 ; Conspiracy Theorists Have Their Own Dating Sites 🤔
Last week at the New Strategies Forum at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, I talked - for the first time live after a three-year hiatus - about raising more money with audience-centric fundraising.
Here's my basic premise:
The nonprofits that are most successful with corporate partnerships are the ones that are laser-focused on building an audience that knows, likes, and trusts them. Building an audience is critical for nonprofits because companies look for audiences to tell them what is good, popular, and profitable in this world. Having an audience makes prospecting for partners easier - if not unnecessary. 🫢
But there's more!
When you build an audience that knows, likes, and trusts you, you won't just raise more money from companies - get this! - you'll raise more money from individuals and foundations!
🌊 Audience is the tide that lifts all boats.
During my presentation, I gave several examples of this approach in action. It works!
Here's part one of a new example of audience-building that I'm sharing for the first time today!
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Many of you know that besides being a huge fan of corporate partnerships (and gardening, of course! 💐🥰), I'm also a big history buff! Last year, I committed to learning more about the presidents that came after Lincoln, as I knew little about the period from Reconstruction to the dawn of the 20th century.
As I worked my way through books on late 19th century presidents, I read a fantastic book by Candice Millard called Destiny of the Republic. It covers the presidency of America's 20th president James Garfield.
If you've never heard of James Garfield, I wouldn't be surprised.
He only served for a few months before being shot by an assassin. He lingered for two months and died in September 1881. Still, he was an incredible man and showed great leadership potential.
Whenever I read a history book, I go down the rabbit hole on the subject. And reading about James Garfield was no different. I started researching online and quickly discovered the National Park Service's Twitter handle for the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio.
I immediately noticed that whoever was managing the Twitter handle was doing an outstanding job.
He/she was tweeting multiple times a day with informative, engaging, and even funny tweets that captured my attention.
Those tweets captured the attention of a lot of others too! Over 25,000 Twitter followers to be exact. That's an amazing number, especially for a historical site.
Now that's audience-building! I had to know who this person is!
And I knew exactly how to reach him: Twitter! He immediately wrote back, and Todd Arrington, site manager of the historical site, and I spoke via Zoom earlier this month.
I was interested in learning three things.
How did Todd build such a large following on Twitter?
How has the historical site benefited from Todd's activity on Twitter? Was this just a hobby? An obsession? Or was the site seeing some bottom-line benefits?
What could nonprofits learn from Todd on using Twitter and building an audience?
Are you interested in learning more? Tune in next week for part two and all the answers!
✍️ Partnership Notes
1. File this under how to do cause marketing with a restaurant chain using local influencers.
The partnership is between Ohio-based Gold Star Chili and Freestore Food Bank in Cincinnati. Learn about it here at the 2:15 mark.
Freestore honors 13 local "Flavor Makers" - people who are actively working to improve Cincy - one for each day of the campaign. On their special day, these local influencers show up at Gold Star with all their friends and a portion of sales of all menu items benefit Freestore.
Freestore ED Kurt Reiber, a New Strategies alumni, reported that this year's campaign raised $24k, $4k more than last year!
2. Two fast-growing c-stores to add to your prospect list.
3. The old and new way to make cold calls. #1 under the new way: Find prospects who best represent where your case studies are strongest.💥💥💥
Oh, but you don't have any case studies.😭 That's so sad. But wait! I can help you with that! Just hit reply to this email and I'll share the details.
A client recently wrote: "We are so appreciative of the time you spent pulling together our case studies last year. They are well received and are being used widely."
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
1. Nonprofits need more marketing help, but the question is how to get it without breaking the bank? In steps the fractional marketing director. I might roll this out as a service if there's enough interest.
2. Not convinced you need a fractional marketing director? Scroll down on this page and check out the graph of which channels produce leads with the highest ROI. Yeah, think again!
3. How the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation turned comments over a logo misunderstanding into social media gold!
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
1. Manager, Corporate Giving, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, NYC ($64k - $80k)
2. Senior Associate Director, Corporate Partnerships, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Glendale, CA
3. Associate Director, Corporate Partnerships, Safe Horizon, NYC ($68k - $77k)
4. Partnership Communications Specialist, Community Solutions, Remote ($62k - $77k)
5. Development Manager, Keep America Beautiful, Remote ($60k - $70k)
6. Director, Partnership Marketing, Operation Homefront, McLean, VA
7. Director, Corporate Development, Lucas Museum, Los Angeles ($129k - $147k)
🧠🍌 Brain Food
1. I hope a bird poops on them. National Audubon Society faces a backlash after deciding to keep name that evokes a racist enslaver.
2. Supporting racial justice vs. funding expansion and increased militarization of police departments. Turns out companies do both. As always, good luck figuring out what companies really believe in. Oh, wait, it's money. Shockahh!
3. Imagine what they think when someone swipes left. "Those damn Jewish lasers!" Conspiracy theorists have their own dating sites.
