Newsletter: Theaters are Your Next Cause Marketing Partners🎄; A New Option for Couples’ Wedding Registries: Donations 💒 ; Forget ‘Sincerely’ This Email Closing Works Best 📧
It's not even Thanksgiving yet, but I'm already thinking about Christmas.🎄🎅🏼
Ever since I was a kid I've been a huge fanboy of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, which was published way back in 1843. I collect Carol memorabilia and have seen EVERY version of the story. I've even held three first editions of the book in my sanitized hands. One that is housed at the Burns Library at Boston College, and two that are kept under lock and key at the British Library in London.
Every year for Christmas I ask Santa for the same thing: My own first edition of A Christmas Carol. But he's never gifted me one, and I think I know why (and it's not because of my bad behavior). First editions of this slender book in excellent condition can cost up to $40,000! But who knows, maybe this year I'll finally get a first edition in my stocking. 🧦📕🤞
While I wait and hope, your nonprofit could benefit from A Christmas Carol this holiday season….
Newsletter: Why Social Media is Important to Corporate Partnerships 🥨 ; Lamborghini Wears Mustache for Movember 🥸 ; 100 Nonprofits That Raised the Most Money in 2020 💯
My first interaction with Auntie Anne's Pretzels was two years ago when I wrote a case study on their outstanding partnership with Alex's Lemonade Stand.
However, my most recent exposure to them was this past weekend when I listened to their social media manager, Bari Rosenstein, discuss how she manages Auntie Anne’s social media.
Interestingly, Bari is a recent hire AND is a social team of one.🤭 Nonetheless, she's done outstanding work, and had some great tips that are very applicable for time- and staff-strapped nonprofits….
Newsletter: Macy’s ‘Believe’ Campaign is a Masterclass in Cause Marketing📮; Legal Considerations When Working with Influencers ⚖️ ; Robert Reich Thinks CSR is Bullshit 🐂 💩
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….
Newsletter: 5 Ways to Turn Your Partners Into Promoters 📣 ; Cause Marketing from Around the World: Silly Socks 🌏 ; The Nonprofit That is Building an Audience on OnlyFans 🤭
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…
Newsletter: How to Grow Your Partnership Team 📈 ; Should Nonprofits Be Making More Merch? 🧢 ; What’s Behind Those Red Flag Emojis on Social Media? 🚩
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…
Newsletter: How to Get Prospects to Stop Ignoring You 😒 ; 20 Retailers That are Teetering on Ruin 😱 ; Science Nonprofit Newsjacks Squid Games to Talk About 🦑
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:
Newsletter: Your Partnership Program Needs a Keystone Content Asset 🔑 💎 ; Chess Nonprofit Makes ROOK-ie Sponsorship Mistake 🙄 ; 15 Eye-Opening CSR Statistics 👁
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?
Newsletter: Generate More Partnership Leads with LinkedIn 🤝 ; BAND-AID Launches Campaign to Support Black Nurses 🩹; The Link Between Great Thinking & Walking🚶🏻♂️
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…
Newsletter: Why are Round-Up Fundraisers So Successful? 🤔 ; The Most Underrated Sales Skill Is Follow-Up 📞 ; Copywriting Tips Inspired by Comedian Norm MacDonald 😢
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…
Newsletter: Nonprofit Puts Partnership Case Studies to Good Use ✅ ; Bad & Tasteless Cause Marketing on 9/11 🤮 ; Nonprofit Storytelling Advice from the Creators of South Park ✍️
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…
Newsletter: What's Your Partnership Strategy for Giving Tuesday? 🤔 ; Battle of the Bars Raises Money for Newark Charities 🍻; Guess Who’s Reading Their Email? 📬 🧒
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….
Newsletter: Round-up, Fixed Request, Open-Ended Request: Which is Best in POS? 🤔 ; 4 Questions Prospects Want You to Answer 🙋♂️ ; What is Fair Use in Content Curation? ⚖️
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.…
Newsletter: Nonprofit Uses Original Research to Close Partnerships 🧪; Should You Require a Corporate Email Address? 📬 ; How to Rock Virtual Engagement & Impress Event Sponsors 🤩
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….
Newsletter: Why You Need a Referral Selling Workflow⏳; The One Quality All Great Sales People Share 💪🏽 ; No One Told Me Cameo Partnerships are Commercial Co-Ventures 🤩 ⚖️
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….
Newsletter: Where Businesses Go First for Partnership Answers🥇; Book a Trip, Donate a Covid Shot 💉; Don’t Try to Raise Money on Social Media - Do This Instead 🤑
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.)…
Newsletter: 5 Ways Sponsorship Has Changed for Nonprofits 🖐 ; Credit Union Causejacks Olympics for Special Olympics🥇; Bullshitting Experts Teach You How to Sound Smarter🤘
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…
Newsletter: Firehouse Subs Sounds Alarm for Bottled Water🚨; Dunkin Makes Case for Adding Dogs to Every Cause Marketing Program 🐶 ; The Powerful One-Two Punch of Direct Mail + Email 👊
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….
Newsletter: Sales Email vs Phone Call: Which One is Better ⚖️ ; Calm App is Paying Tennis Players’ Fines, Donating to Charity 🎾 ; It’s Taking Longer to Close Partnership Deals 👎
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…