Making it in the News With a Charity Donation
July 22, 2009 by Fundraising and Fundraiser Ideas
Filed under Charities, Donations & Sponsorships
Go onto Google or any other search engine. Then go to the news search section, and type in any of the following keywords: charity donation, charity, donation, donor, donate to charity, charity organization, online donation, donation or any other word related to a charity donation. While you see the search results from the search engine you choose, you will see the majority of the top 10 results, businesses donating a substantial amount of money to charities. These charities could be anything from the Boys and Girls Club to a community outreach center. These businesses are getting so called free advertising because they are donating to charities.
My latest search on Google with the keyword charity donation provided me with 9 out of the 10 search results with a business or a person who makes money through entertainment (Kyle Petty) with a donation to a charity. The only search result that was not related to business had to do with a man nightmare of donating his car (moral of the story, turn in car plates if you live in New York and donate a car to charity).
I am stating the above search engine news results to show that making a donation to a charity and letting the news know about it, can get a company or person exposure. These are not just search engine results; these are actual news results! Not only does the companies or person donating to charities get news results, they get listed on the mother of all search engines, Google and other search engines such as Yahoo.
Now, a person may ask, that is great, these companies are huge, and are getting nationally attention from news papers from their donations. How can I get myself recognized for donating?
The first thing to do to get recognized by the news is to first, just start donating! It is a good common practice to donate to a charity a person has passion for. The charity that is chosen could be anywhere that helps people get into college or to kids who do not have enough money to play sports. A good place to look for charities, is http://kajoobles.com , the Donate 2.0 of the Internet.
It all depends on the company how it wants to get news. If a company is a local company it may just want to get news coverage from its city’s, metropolitan’s or state’s paper. If you are a large company and want national news that is what your company should go for. The best bet is to get local and state coverage and then go from there. It is all depends how a company wants to set it up.
Let’s say, you have a small company and make a donation to any charity on a weekly basis. To get more business, advertise in the store or any small cost-effective way, that every time this product sells, or every part of a sale, this amount of money will go to this charity. Next, have you, a favorite customer, or a friend notify the local newspaper. There is a good change the newspaper will write about the promotion of giving money to charity especially if it is a local charity. If the newspaper writes about your company, you just chalked up some more business plus helped out a charity.
Now, you and your company want more exposure. Do something odd that will get more money to charity, such as for every sale that this amount of money will go to charities, and your coworkers will wear their clothing backwards if this amount of money is reached for a desired charity. First, people will start talking about it, and then newspapers will pick up something like that, especially if you have a PR person on staff, and then and most importantly, more money will be giving to charities! This is what is most important.
A few other ways to get exposure is to head a charity donation or fundraising event. It could be anything from a dinner that the public can attend for a donation or for a local park that would make the community a better place. Have some kind of race or an employee pledge. Newspapers will write about this stuff, especially if you and your business tell the newspapers about it.
Now start making charity donations, setup ways customers can make donations to charities and/or have part of sales go to charities. Companies’ sales will start to increase from the news exposure it will start getting while benefiting charities.
Thanks to David Olmstead for contributing this article to our Fundraising blog:
My latest search on Google with the keyword charity donation provided me with 9 out of the 10 search results with a business or a person who makes money through entertainment (Kyle Petty) with a donation to a charity. The only search result that was not related to business had to do with a man nightmare of donating his car (moral of the story, turn in car plates if you live in New York and donate a car to charity).
I am stating the above search engine news results to show that making a donation to a charity and letting the news know about it, can get a company or person exposure. These are not just search engine results; these are actual news results! Not only does the companies or person donating to charities get news results, they get listed on the mother of all search engines, Google and other search engines such as Yahoo.
Now, a person may ask, that is great, these companies are huge, and are getting nationally attention from news papers from their donations. How can I get myself recognized for donating?
The first thing to do to get recognized by the news is to first, just start donating! It is a good common practice to donate to a charity a person has passion for. The charity that is chosen could be anywhere that helps people get into college or to kids who do not have enough money to play sports. A good place to look for charities, is http://kajoobles.com , the Donate 2.0 of the Internet.
It all depends on the company how it wants to get news. If a company is a local company it may just want to get news coverage from its city’s, metropolitan’s or state’s paper. If you are a large company and want national news that is what your company should go for. The best bet is to get local and state coverage and then go from there. It is all depends how a company wants to set it up.
Let’s say, you have a small company and make a donation to any charity on a weekly basis. To get more business, advertise in the store or any small cost-effective way, that every time this product sells, or every part of a sale, this amount of money will go to this charity. Next, have you, a favorite customer, or a friend notify the local newspaper. There is a good change the newspaper will write about the promotion of giving money to charity especially if it is a local charity. If the newspaper writes about your company, you just chalked up some more business plus helped out a charity.
Now, you and your company want more exposure. Do something odd that will get more money to charity, such as for every sale that this amount of money will go to charities, and your coworkers will wear their clothing backwards if this amount of money is reached for a desired charity. First, people will start talking about it, and then newspapers will pick up something like that, especially if you have a PR person on staff, and then and most importantly, more money will be giving to charities! This is what is most important.
A few other ways to get exposure is to head a charity donation or fundraising event. It could be anything from a dinner that the public can attend for a donation or for a local park that would make the community a better place. Have some kind of race or an employee pledge. Newspapers will write about this stuff, especially if you and your business tell the newspapers about it.
Now start making charity donations, setup ways customers can make donations to charities and/or have part of sales go to charities. Companies’ sales will start to increase from the news exposure it will start getting while benefiting charities.
Thanks to David Olmstead for contributing this article to our Fundraising blog:
David Olmstead writes about Charity Donations. His main focus is how donating to a charity organization can be a useful tool to advertise. He runs the website on donation where people and businesses get recognized by donating to 100+ charities. Businesses get recognized with search engine traffic and being on the World’s Largest Donor list. People get recognized at the donating social networking site.
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