We spend all our time trying to raise money. Please oh please, won’t you donate. Look at this face. Read this story. Every donation helps. Every dollar gets us closer to our goal. We love all the dollars the same. Why won’t you give us your 401k?????
Seems like for all that begging, we should be super grateful when someone comes to us and says:
- I would LOVE To support you by hosting a Tupperware party for you on line. I would donate 10% of everything sold back to you. All you have to do is promote me and my tupperware company on line!
- We have a new company and we are ALL ABOUT giving back to YOU and would love to donate $2 of every widget sold back to you. All you have to do is promote our new amazing business on line!
- We would LOVE to partner with you to do a t-shirt drive and you get the proceeds from the sale of the shirts. It is SUPER SIMPLE! All you have to do is promote us on line daily for 30 days to drum up donations!
- Our company has an affiliate program that we donate back $x for each item sold/booked/hosted through your website. It is super simple! All you have to do is add it to your website!
These all sound great, right? What kind of bat shit crazy fundrazr would turn away free money? Theses people want to help! Why would you not take them up on it?
Here’s what happens for us on the back end of your offer to help….
“All you have to do is promote us on line!” What could be easier? Many things. Many things could be easier. Here are the 7 simple steps of how to promote something on line….
- Find your website/page/blog/Faceook Page/ IG feed and find a logo/image/video that we can use.
- Read through your website/page/blog/Facebook Page/IG Feed to get a sense of your messaging, mission, or product so we know what the hell we are talking about and make sure we have our facts straight when we promote you.
- Understand the offer you have made us and find a way to spin it, with your logo, photos, you-tube, including your messaging, mission, or product to draft copy to sell the offer. (Don’t forget that when searching YOUR Online presence to select media to promote YOU that we need to be mindful of size, scale, colors, words, etc to ensure that the media we have selected will work across all our platforms for scale and algorithms.
- Are we to the “super easy” part of this yet?
- Once we have selected media, saved it, drafted copy to sell your mission, we now get to post it to Facebook and IG. Don’t forget to Tag the people who made the offer (don’t want to offend them!), and make sure you have the right code to go along with it!
- Now onto the website – Where shall we put this amazing offer with the images we have researched, selected, saved and copy we have written? Let’s get it integrated into our existing page, published, and then go back and check it to make sure all the links work
- Phew – everything is out. We have promoted, right???? We have checked our box and put in our effort to fulfill our end of the bargain, right??? Not even close.
Now comes the follow up…..it is super easy – all you have to do is monitor and respond to emails, comments on Facebook, Comments on Instagram, DM’s on Facebook, and DM’s on Instagram.
- Respond to every comment made to help promote the offer….“Thank you for your purchase” “So Glad you have had a great experience with the Widget!” (Gotta make those algorithms happy and seem grateful for the offer to those helping you!)
- Answer all the questions that come down the line via all of the avenues
- “I am having trouble with the link/their website/my ability to utilize technology”
- “Do they have that tupperware jello mold that my Mom had in the 70’s?”
- “That product looks small/bad/uncomfortable/not right for me” so instead of saying nothing, I am going to trash talk it which looks very bad if we do not respond to clarify/explain/set the record straight.
- Don’t forget that while all this is going on, if the “Company” is promoting everything as well, you have to be there to try and catch every post made throughout the day to say thank you, re-share every story, like every post mentioning you, and monitor THEIR feeds as well to be sure to be able to say “thank you” to customers who make purchases because you don’t want to seem ungrateful.
Super simple, right? This is SO MUCH WORK for not very much money and if we say no, we are horrible, wretched, ungrateful people who are turning away a generous offer of someone who wants to help.
In the end, all of this shakes out to one thing and one thing only……people are checking their “feel good box” to make money for themselves on our back, off the community we have worked for a decade to build.
We applaud you for wanting to help, and maybe you don’t understand how much work your offer makes for us or how accepting it can actually end up costing us money as other things go un-done in the process and take more time for us as your generous offer is on top of everything we do daily for rescue.
We need help. We need funding. We don’t need more work.
We have no problem shouting your business from the rafters, tagging the bejezus out of it on every social media platform we have, and swearing to anyone who will listen that you walk on water and are the Mother Theresa of the business world. We are all about a win-win!
Here’s how to make that happen…
DON’T:
- Scold us for not “participating enough” in the promotion
- Reach out to us with the same message through every platform we have so we end up answering you 5 different times.
- Respond to other posts we make asking us why we haven’t promoted you when we are fundraising for other dogs
- Nudge us that you are “featuring us” on your website and why are we not sharing it.
- Try and sell us on the fact that “the more money we make, the more money you make!” when you are donating 10% of profits and keeping 90%.
DO:
- Provide pre-selected media
- Provide copy optimized for each platform so all we have to do us cut and paste
- Monitor our posts/feed to jump in and answer questions
- Run a promotion for us, not needing to involve us at all, and make a donation! You had better believe we will shout that from the rafters!
- Understand that we are volunteers trying desperately to have some sort of personal life outside rescue and that our work in rescue is not to promote your business.
If you are guilty of any of the above – no shame. How can we expect you to know our world if we don’t share it? BUT, if you claim that you are “giving back”, have you taken a moment to stop and think about how much you are giving vs. how much you are looking to get in return?
