[Note: to see the interviews in their entirety, go to the WhatGives!? Ustream channel.]
Kanter jumped right in with the excellent reminder that people don’t wr
ite checks to buildings or programs, they write checks to people. “It’s a long-term relationship. Your first interaction with someone is not to ask them for money or to help your cause or to pitch them,” said Kanter. “Get to know them and along the way there’ll be some opportunity for that.” Horvath agreed, adding, “Every moment is a VIP moment.” Then Kanter reminded the audience of something Peter Dietz once said – “Your donors are not ATM machines!”
Following up on her SXSW panel from the previous day, Horvath asked about crowd sourcing. Kanter advised people to keep it simple; to keep your expectations simple. Those who respond to crowd sourcing see it as a way to share information with more than just the individual who made the initial request. So put your crowd sourced info into a usable form and put it back out there.
Her final point was about the importance of time management because some people let social media take up their entire day. “Social media is unbounded kind of work,” she said. “There’s no boundaries to it. So, you have to time-box it.” She started old school with the Stephen Covey planner. Now, “I make the time to plan out the week. The calendar now has become my best friend.”
As it has during a
ll the interviews at SXSW, time ran out too quickly and Chris Noble moved into the hot seat. He described how Causemedia Group company StudioGood is creating campaigns that bring celebrities like Jennifer Garner or Jay Leno and brands such as Fridgidaire or Pepsi together to support a cause using social media. Plus, during SXSW, attendees could “Check in for Charity” on Foursquare to raise money for Save the Children’s Haiti relief fund. “All these projects have one common thread,” explained Noble, “which is, there’s a brand that wants to do good in the world, wants to get recognition for that, and wants to then engage consumers who care about particular causes. That’s what my company does. On the agency side, StudioGood builds campaigns, WhatGives!? talks about those campaigns.”
According to Noble, these high-end campaigns are easily scaled down to the local level. He suggested looking at a restaurant’s placemat, which will often tell you what that business is interested in, or what they support. Find a connection; talk to the owner; get a local “brand” to support your local cause. Noble said, “It really not that complicated. You just have to find opportunities that are to the same scale as where you’re at.
Noble pointed out, “About one and a half billion dollars a year are spent by brands in the world doing cause marketing.” He thinks nonprofits can get started in attracting money to their efforts with very simple tools. “It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a Twitter account, it doesn’t matter that you don’t have Facebook. You have a brochure already, you probably have a website already, you have a message already, and most importantly, you have a passion already. So go, grab that, find that, put it out online.”
One very practical tip he offered was to create a message calendar that identifies what message you want to send throughout each week, month, or year. “There are tools you can use like HootSuite to automate the outbound. So you spend a few hours… loading up what you want your messages to be. You can automate your outbound messages. And then all you have to do is watch, and you really do, because when somebody comes back and talks, you have to listen, you have to respond. But you don’t have to spend your time talking.”
Horvath concluded with something Guy Kawasaki told him: “Too pushy” is an oxymoron. He keeps asking till someone says no. Which brought all these interviews back to the same place – Don’t be scared. Take what you have now and go for it!
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Tags: Beacon, Beth Kanter, celebrities, check in for charity, Chris Noble, crowd sourcing, Mark Horvath, social media, South by Southwest, SxSW
