Since I started Selfish Giving way back in 2004/5, I've had a very simple business model:

I publish valuable content on win-win partnerships and readers contact me with business opportunities.

It really is that simple. Crazy way to run a business, right? But I love it this way! ❤️❤️❤️

I can't remember the last time I made a cold call. I don't have to! You contact me before I can ever pick up the phone or hit send on an email.

It's a wonderful business because it's built on me serving you first. I give and eventually I get enough to earn a good living that's fun and rewarding.

However, one thing I haven't been clear enough on is all the different ways we can work together….

Yowza! 🤩

We've gotten some great questions for our Cause Docs clinic tomorrow, Thursday, October 28th at 2pm EDT. Joining us are Philips McCarty and Charisse Brown Marcus from the social impact consultancy Good Scout.

They'll be answering all your questions on how to effectively grow your partnership team.

Here are just a few of the questions Phil and Charisse will be answering…

The Cause Docs are back! 🩺🥼

Joining us on Thursday, October 28th at 2pm EDT are Philips McCarty and Charisse Brown Marcus from the social impact consultancy Good Scout.

Whether you are a one-person department or a team of ten, Phil and Charisse will be answering your questions on how to effectively grow your partnership team.

As your corporate partnership program grows so does the demand on internal resources. Phil and Charisse will help you determine where the most critical investments need to be, types of roles you need to plan for during the growth phase, and how better to align with other internal departments to ensure partnership success.

They'll be sharing their prescriptions on…

There's an old saying that you can't hook a fish that won't open its mouth. That's certainly true in corporate partnerships when a potential prospect won't return your calls or emails.

The question is, what should you do? Should you keep calling, or should you move on?

That's the subject of an article Dan Cohen (aka the pleasantly persistent corporate partnership consultant) sent over to me: 5 Ways to Handle the Prospect Who Won’t Respond.

Dan wrote:

One thing I strongly believe about corporate partnerships is that companies look for audiences to tell them what is good, popular and profitable in this world. In short, nonprofits with a strong and engaged audience that they can readily communicate with will attract more corporate partners than one without an addressable audience.

The second thing I strongly believe is that to build this audience you need to choose a keystone content asset. I prefer email - for a lot of good reasons - but you may choose a podcast, a blog, social media (maybe not Facebook or Instagram, etc.

Let's face it, nonprofits don't have the time, staff or energy to focus on more than one content asset. You're just fooling yourself if you think otherwise. Stop doing crappy work on five channels and do outstanding work (i.e. audience-building) on just one.

Are you ready to get started?

I don't use LinkedIn a lot, but I know a lot of you do for your partnership work. More than once people have asked me for help in this area.

🤷‍♂️

Thankfully, I ran across someone who can help: Data scientist Christopher S. Penn.

After doing some deep research on the machine learning that powers LinkedIn, Christopher conducted an experiment.

He asked: "What would happen if I picked one channel - LinkedIn - and did what the algorithms were looking for?"

This is what he did…

Why are round-up fundraisers so popular and effective?

I always thought it was because the requested donation never exceeded 99 cents, which made it easy (and cheap) for shoppers to donate.

This may be true, but I recently read about another possible reason.

Kristen Berman of Irrational Labs shared a study last week in Lenny’s Newsletter on a fintech app that wanted to help its users pay down debt faster, saving them thousands of dollars in interest.

Kristen's company created a basic A/B email test on a random selection of the company's users…

I recently finished writing a bunch of case studies for Penn State Health Children’s Hospital, a member of Children’s Miracle Network. I was happy how they came out, but what I was really impressed with is how the team at Penn State Health used them.

1. They gave the case studies their very own web page. A dedicated page will make it easy to share the case studies with potential partners. A web page will also be indexed on all the major search engines, which means it will be discoverable in search - an added bonus…

With Labor Day over, the end of the year will be here before you know it! Time to start shopping for my Christmas present! 🎁 But really...

What's your partnership strategy for Giving Tuesday (Monday, November 30th) and the holiday season?

Here are a few resources that will help you….

This is the last newsletter before Labor Day (aka "the unofficial last day of summer") and I just want to say thank you!

🙏 Thank you to everyone who has emailed me this summer thanking me for publishing this newsletter every week. Folks - as Mark Twain said - I can live for two months on a good compliment!

I'm currently feasting on this one.…

I'm dropping these two knuckleheads off at college. Cate will be a senior at George Washington University (School motto is "God is our trust"🙏), and Ryan will be a freshman at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Go Goats! 🐐).

I'll see you next week….

Just because you're selling partnerships for a nonprofit doesn't make rejection by a prospect any easier. It hurts when you get turned down, right?

I asked Dan Cohen (aka "The Grand Poobah of Persuasion") for a salve for you wounds. Here's what he said.

"All great sales people share one quality: resiliency," said Dan. "If you don't have the ability to bounce back after rejection you'll never survive in sales. I don't care what you sell."

Three tips from Dan….

The link most clicked in my newsletter last week was an article on how to avoid email spam filters and reach your subscribers' inbox.

I'm glad you're thinking more about email because I really believe it's critical to your success with partnerships.

Now that you've avoided those dreadful spam filters, here are three things to do so your email gets opened. (Getting your emails read is another ball of wax.)…

This article in Event Marketer specifically talks about the post-pandemic landscape for sports sponsorships, but it could be easily be applied to nonprofit event sponsorships.

Let me paraphrase...

1. You now have an at-home audience you need to appeal to. If you opt for hybrid events, you have to find ways to deliver the event experience to couch supporters. For example…

Another article - this one from the Tampa Bay Times - questioning the audacity (No, the GALL!! I'm clutching my pearls) of a retailer asking for a donation at the register!

Oh, the misery! 😩 Oh, the effrontery! 😠 Oh, the embarrassment! 😬

Give. Me. A. Break.

There is no violation, but checkout charity IS VOLUNTARY. So, if the cashier asks you to donate and you don't want to, take it from Nancy Reagan: JUST SAY NO….

Last week I read a wonderfully detailed article on Hubspot called Sales Email vs. Cold Call: When to Use Each According to Data. The article was even written by a Boston guy, which increased my respect for it even more.

But then I thought, "I wonder if Dan Cohen (aka 'The King of Cause Sales') would agree with his advice?"

Heck, maybe the guy who wrote this article isn't even from Boston?? Maybe he's a Yankees fan hiding out in the 'burbs?? Brrrr.

Dan's a busy guy, but fortunately he got right back to me…

I'm proud that my newsletter has inspired others to start a newsletter or to improve the one they have. Since I've fielded a number of questions on newsletters this past week - and it's on my brain - here are a few bits of newsletter advice!

1. Consistency (almost) trumps quality. Sure, your newsletter has to be good. That's table stakes. But people will never stick with your newsletter if it's not delivered consistently (e.g. daily, weekly, bi-monthly). You're trying to create a habit with readers, and if you're not consistent it will never happen. And believe me, consistency can be a grind. But it's also when the magic happens!

2. Send out your newsletter twice. The first time, send it out to everyone…

The Fourth of July is over, but I'm still thinking about it because it really didn't happen here in Boston. The whole weekend was a disaster. We got five inches of rain and we set a new record low temperature for July 3rd.

Don't get me wrong, the gahhden ❤️❤️❤️ the rain, but did it have to fall on a holiday weekend???

Of course, events were cancelled due to weather.

Every year I try to attend a reading of Frederick Douglass' speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? It was cancelled and moved to this Friday when the speech will be read at the newly refurbished Shaw Memorial that honors black Civil War soldiers. If you've seen the movie GLORY, you know the story….