Fast Company magazine suggests enlisting a celebrity spokesperson for your charitable cause. The article offers valuable and interesting advice…if you have a multi-million dollar budget and friends in high places. That isn’t to say small non-profits don’t have friends in high places, but if you’re feeling awfully far from Hollywood, consider local celebrities.
We can all read about how charitable giving and spending is down in this recession and not many non-profits are able to hit their fundraising goals. I have a few suggestions to make.
Yes, continue to send out your annual appeal or sell your wares. But consider shifting your organizational focus to two places until all your donors return to the fold: providing services and growing and loving your staff, customer, volunteer pool.
Just as I was getting sick and tired of the elliptical machine, I found out about the Concept2 Holiday Challenge! (Talk about good marketing – their message showed up in just the right physical, mental, and emotional space for me to hear it loud and clear.)
Between November 26th and December 24th, I’m going to attempt to row 100,000 meters on a Concept2 machine at First in Fitness in Montpelier. Every day that I row, I’ll log onto my free personal log book and try to rack up the meters. With my normal workout schedule, I’ll have to row about 5000 meters per session (I go to the gym 4-5 days per week). I’m definitely shooting for this goal and envisioning myself rowing, rowing, rowing, but those 100,000 meters are going to be quite a stretch for me!
But that’s the best part of a challenge, right?
Local radio stations started playing Christmas music today. It inspired me to blog about how to simplify the holidays.
The Center for a New American Dream releases an annual brochure on celebrating the holidays with “more joy, less stuff.” You can download the brochure or visit the website for more helpful tips. I’m a fan of the edible decorations and I also plan to make a photo album of pictures for my grandmother – shh, don’t tell her!
About.com has a whole entry on a Holiday Survival Guide. It’s filed under the stress management section, which makes me wonder about the trade-offs between health and the holiday hoopla.
On Facebook, check out the Simplify the Holidays discussion from the Kokua Hawaii Foundation. Their website is pretty cool and I’m jazzed about their Facebook widget.
When it comes to gifts, I have three options I always choose from. I either shop local, shop handmade at Etsy, or go the really altruistic route and shop at Alternative Gifts International or Oxfam International. Instead of heading out to the mall, I like supporting my local shops, galleries, and any store that will sell a gift certificate or Capitol Cash. Etsy is a marketplace for all things handmade and just blows my mind at the amount of amazingly unique, well-crafted, individualized gifts I could give myself…er, I mean, friends and family!
AGI supports humanitarian and environmental causes with the donation(s) you make in the name of relatives, colleagues, family, etc. Oxfam America is a large relief organization and it’s Unwrapped program has a wide array of charitable gifts. I love these services because there’s nothing that says Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, or Happy Hanukkah like giving a solar water boiler or manure or a flock of ducks. It’s serious fun to give these gifts to loved ones and it makes a huge impact on the communities the gifts go to.
When it comes to Thanksgiving celebration, I usually try to fast if I don’t have plans with friends. This year I’ll likely be observing a day of fasting and reflection. The Boston Globe ran an article on how these actions might more closely reflect the original Thanksgiving celebrations. Fasting is not something to take lightly, so talk to your doctor before attempting this, and research articles on how to enter and break a fast.
For me, fasting and reflecting definitely simplify the holidays and make me more, well, thankful. And isn’t that the point of this week?
Photo credit: Horla Varlan
I’m still totally enjoying the STAMATS SIMTech Conference. Day Two was jam packed with excellent speakers and valuable information.
First thing this morning, I had a one-on-one consultation with Julie Staggs, a STAMATS Senior Client Consultant. I was relieved to hear that my Goddard College colleagues and I are on the right track with our Communications Plan. We even included some components of communications that most colleges forget, so that was encouraging! Julie then helped me identify our next steps.
I’m at the STAMATS SIM Tech Conference in Boston this week. So far, I’m impressed – the information offered is exceptionally dense and clear.
The first workshop I attended was “Building a Brand Strategy When Dollars Are Tight, Audiences Are Distracted, and You’re Not Sure of the Role Digital Media Should Play.” Sound useful? It certainly sounds like every non-profit and college I’ve ever worked with! The gist is that building a brand is about clearly and creatively communicating your brand everywhere and every way possible. The presenter, Dr. Robert Sevier, gave us these tidbits:
Day Two of the Vermont Women in Higher Education Conference. I could definitely extend this experience into three or four days – the setting, the Lake Morey Resort, is wonderful!
I could write plenty about each workshop, presenter, meal, and conversation, but I would do better by diving deeper into one thread of a speech that is sticking in my craw.
A prominent speaker at the event – I won’t identify her because I don’t want to make this personal – said that we (“we” being women) need to always be aware of our appearance. I wondered: do the clothes make the woman?
