Stay organized

Information to Collect

Some charities only collect necessary information to send care packages – name and address. SKIP collected much more than that, to include things like, rank, branch of service, deployment date, redeployment date, gender, home of record, component (active duty, reserve, national guard), and an alternate contact person’s name and email address. We chose to collect that much information mostly for our own records, so we could keep track of how many service members had been supported for each piece of information. We collected other pieces so we had a better idea of what the service member would need during their deployment and when they would need it. You can collect as much information as you want, but here are a few pieces that I highly recommend to every charity.

1. Name – required to send packages.
2. Address – required to send packages.
3. Email – in case of address problems and other direct communication needs.
4. Deployment date – sometimes military members know their deployment address before deploying and request packages for deployment while stateside.
5. Redeployment date – sometimes packages are requested with too little time to send anything before redeployment (coming home). Many times, military members don’t think to tell the charities that they have redeployed and you might get returned packages, which is wasted money. A redeployment date lets you plan ahead.
6. Alternate point of contact – this can save a lot of headaches when contacting the military member falls through for whatever reason.

Never Abuse Trust

When you are given the military member’s information, it is your responsibility to safeguard that information. They trust that you will. Your privacy policy should state that you will. They also trust that you will not use their information for reasons other than what they signed up for. In other words, don’t add them to your email marketing list or any other list without their prior consent. Even more importantly, never, ever sell or rent their information. The CAN-SPAM Act is in place to prevent you from doing those things, but a lot of people still do it. Don’t abuse the trust you’ve been given.

How to Collect the Information

I recommend a web form as your primary method for collecting information. The web form I created is below. It doesn’t do anything today, so feel free to play with it.

Here are a few web form solutions that are worth checking out – from easiest (and fastest) to most features (and difficult).

1. Wufoo – For quick and easy forms, Wufoo seems to be okay.
2. PHP Forms – decent features, ideal for people with some HTML knowledge. I used an early version of PHP Forms to create the first few web forms for the SKIP website.
3. FormBoss – extremely feature rich, but expect a significant learning curve. Do not attempt without significant knowledge of HTML and some knowledge of PHP. This is the application used to create the form above.
4. Develop your own – developing your own forms can give you customized capabilities that form building software can’t. But, unless you have extensive knowledge of PHP and HTML I’d highly recommend using software; it’s quick and is guaranteed to work.

In addition to creating web forms I also suggest creating a paper version of the form that you can use at fundraising events. Chances are, at those events it will be family and friends completing the forms, so try to keep them as simple and quick to fill out as possible. For example, your paper form may only ask for name, address and email address of the military member, and the name and email address of an alternate contact. You can always get more information later, if you want.

Creating social buzz inspires support for your charity.

One of the best ways to inspire support for your charity is to create a widespread social frenzy about your charity. In marketing, that frenzy is called buzz. You create it by giving people a reason to want to talk about your charity. A well-designed plan of execution can make that happen.

It’s important to remember not everyone is going to be as excited about your charity as you are. In fact, being realistic, you should assume that most people won’t be, no matter how hard you work to prove that your charity is doing good things. That might be disheartening to you, or you could use it to your advantage.

While developing your marketing plan, think of the most economical ways you can raise awareness for your charity. Incorporate those as a top priority in your marketing plan. Raising money is always secondary to awareness and will often times fall hand-in-hand with raising awareness. The more awareness your charity has, the more money you’ll probably have. Therefore, raising awareness is the single most important thing you can do and you should never stop doing it. As a person who is very passionate about your charity, you already have all the right tools to make that happen.

SKIP occasionally struggled with understanding a small financial loss isn’t always a loss when it comes to marketing. For instance, if we were to pay $50 to participate at an event and only $40 was raised in small donations at that event, it’s easy to think the event was a a waste of time and money. On the other hand, if during the event we introduced 100 people to SKIP and they each took a brochure, we at least made a few friends that day. That’s not a loss. That’s called building relationships, which create buzz, which ultimately drive donations.

There are many different ways you can create buzz. Probably the most successful for SKIP has been the instructions for completing the US Customs Form. That article has been the most popular page on the SKIP website ever since it was published. When we changed the URL format a few weeks ago, the ShareThis stats were reset to 0 and already it’s back to being more than 200 shares and has over 80 comments. I also get a lot of email because of that article asking for help with specific addresses. The social buzz that article has created is astonishing and it didn’t cost anything but a few hours of my time. In fact, that article is the reason these articles are being written. People like having knowledgeable resources and we feel we have a lot to offer.

Maybe writing how-to articles isn’t your thing. That’s okay. There are other ways to build relationships and create buzz. For example, giveaways can be expensive, but don’t underestimate their power.

About a year ago I was working on a project dedicated to promoting the charities that support our troops. Traffic to the website and on Facebook was stagnant and despite several attempts to really get things moving it wasn’t until I decided to pull money from my own pocket to encourage people to visit that things took off. What I decided to do was quite simple. Already very successful on Twitter I wanted to boost the project’s Facebook page. I would donate $1 for each new Facebook like to a charity of the people’s choice, setting a limit of $100. I took charity nominations on Facebook for 24 hours from people who already liked the page. Then, told all of the Twitter followers about the plan and monitored Facebook for 6 hours, keeping track of new likes. The end result was amazing. I was able to quadruple the number of Facebook likes in 6 hours and the winning charity was picked at random from those nominated. Building those relationships also helped push website traffic upward.

To do something similar for your charity, instead of donating to a random charity you could select a winner from the new likes on Facebook and give them a t-shirt or another mid-priced item from your fundraising inventory. Or you could push for a specific number of new likes by giving away multiple items to the first X-number of people who like your page.

Six Tips For Utilizing Social Media

1. Set aside four 15-minute blocks throughout the day for each social networking platform you’re on.
2. Share news related to your charity’s mission, not just about your charity.
3. Ask questions that will help your charity learn and grow.
4. Accurately answer questions as quickly as possible.
5. Form relationships with the people who like, follow or otherwise befriend your charity.
6. Be transparent. It’s what you try to hide that will turn people away.

Notice, those six tips didn’t mention advertising. That’s because advertising is a major downfall for a lot of charities and businesses alike. Social media should not be used solely as an advertising medium for you. While yes, you can use it occasionally to promote fundraising activity, you should never only use it for that purpose. The truest purpose of social media is to form relationships. Relationships will help you grow; all-the-time advertising will not.

Creating social buzz takes time, patience and a fair amount of work. It’s not easy to find the niche that best suits you and your charity. It’s not always easy to maintain relationships once they’re formed. But if you take the time to do it right, your charity will continue growing. Most importantly though, it can be a lot of fun if you give it a chance.

The use of profanity on your website looks unprofessional, is unprofessional and can cause readers to abandon your website all together. What I’m saying is that if you want to market yourself, your charity and your mission in the best light (you always should), then you need to eliminate the use of profanity by you and website visitors. I know what you’re thinking, “I can’t control what website visitors post as comments.” Yes, you can.

Every Website Content Management System (CMS) that I’ve ever played with, such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla offer ways to filter offensive words. And I recommend using a CMS if you’re not 100% confident in knowledge and implementation of various coding languages. Choosing the words to filter however, can be a very hit or miss operation. Using a search engine you can find numerous lists of words to censor and various CMS plugins to help you make sure those words don’t appear on your website.

Professionalism starts with the words you choose.

One list that I really like is Google’s censored word list containing more than 400 words. I use modified versions of this list on a few websites that I’ve designed CMS themes for, including the SKIP website. On these websites I use plugins such as the WP Content Filter (for WordPress) to disguise profanity used by website visitors and article authors. Download the comma-separated list: Censored.txt or Censored.csv

Here’s what the plugin does for a few swear words from the list.

• s***
• f***
• a******
• b****

No matter how great you think your list is, it’s important to read each and every comment a user posts to your website as soon as possible. If you find a word that was missed by your filter, add it to the list and if necessary, edit the comment to remove or disguise the word. That’s one easy way to keep your website looking professional and inviting for visitors of all ages.

We send out a huge THANK YOU to every military veteran.

Sharing your personal connection with other people may inspire personal connections for them, too.

I have a magical solution to keep you from working hard while still raising tons of money for your charity. My magical solution is called advertising.

How many infomercials have you seen that pretty much said that same thing? I have the perfect solution to your problem. It works like magic. Yeah, right… but, then the product is demonstrated and you see how it works like magic right before your own eyes. This makes a lot of people interested in the product. Then they throw in a crappy FREE gift if you order within the next 500 years and suddenly some of those people who were interested are now customers.

In the world of charities especially, life is rarely that easy. You probably can’t host an infomercial and expect people to suddenly want to donate, even by offering a free gift. PBS and the MDA telethon have some of the most charitable success on TV and it will most likely stay that way for a while. But, look at the huge productions they need just to maintain that level of success. Your small, in comparison, charity cannot compete with the giants, so don’t waste time, money and energy trying. Instead, here’s what you should do.

Step One: Believe in Your Cause

It sounds simple enough, like a no-brainer, but many times charity leaders don’t believe that what their charity offers is in high demand or impacts enough people that the general population should care. That type of thinking will get you nowhere. You have to believe in your cause. You have to believe that your cause is worthy enough that everyone should want to donate. If you can’t believe that, maybe you should find someone else to handle your charity’s marketing efforts. Learning to believe in your cause is easy to do.

Before you can believe in any cause, you first have to feel personally connected to it. Your personal connection must reach beyond statements like, it helps my friends, or I never turn my back on family. Those are great reasons to donate to a cause one time, but are not reasons to stick with a cause. Your personal connection to the cause must be about you, nobody else. What about this cause makes you feel good? That good feeling is your personal connection. Relish that every chance you get and you will ultimately strengthen your personal connection to the cause.

As your personal connection grows stronger, so will your belief that this cause is worthy of another person’s time, money and energy. Sharing your personal connection with other people may inspire personal connections for them, too. Knowing what makes this cause personal to you might even make some of the boringly repetitive work a little happier. Bit by bit, piece by piece you will learn to fully believe in your cause – and not just a little.

Step Two: Create Positive Experiences

The truth is, when people are happy, they are more willing to spread happiness to others. By creating positive experiences for yourself and other people supporting the cause, the need for barking orders vanishes. Here’s an example of creating a positive experience.

In 2008, SKIP was holding its first and last benefit concert. We had four volunteers who did all of the planning and execution for the event. These volunteers had an established leader, but when it came time for planning the next stage, all four volunteers volunteered to get it done because it was fun. The goal was to raise at least $1,000 in one night for SKIP.

On the night of the event, guests who didn’t know anything about SKIP until they walked through the doors were highly impressed with the cause. Guests who did know something about SKIP were completely blown away. We exceeded our goal of $1,000 significantly for SKIP that night, and just a few months ago I was asked by someone who attended the benefit concert if we were going to plan another one. That event was more than three years ago!

From the example above, it’s clear to see that one positive experience can have a lasting affect on everyone involved. Deciding what that positive experience might be is not in your control, so don’t let everything ride on one big plan. Create as many positive experiences every day as you possibly can. Even the little ones count. Here’s an example from SKIP’s Twitter experience.

We didn’t utilize Twitter until 2009. By then a lot of other charities had already gained a significant amount of followers, so we had to play hard and we had to play well just to catch up.

It was decided early one morning to post care package ideas every minute for an hour. As the minutes passed, the number of followers increased by a couple. Then, about 30 minutes into it new followers were coming in by the truckload. Within one hour we had increased the number of followers we had by about 400. Ah-hah! There’s an idea.

The next several days were spent compiling all kinds of interesting military quotes, facts and stories that we could share with our Twitter followers. Every 23 minutes past the hour another quote, fact or story was shared (with the help of 3rd party software to delay tweets). Our followers grew consistently for weeks at this pace. Then, we changed it up by asking for questions about sending care packages. Our followers responded and the number continued growing. SKIP had earned its way into the hearts and minds of thousands of people all around the world.

SKIP’s positive experience on Twitter, breaking the trend of advertising by numerous other charities, made a difference to a lot of military supporters. Yeah, there were some people who didn’t agree with supporting the troops and felt it necessary to tell us that, but most of the people who followed SKIP did so because we were giving them something fresh to look forward to every hour of every day. We were sharing useful knowledge. It was a very positive experience for SKIP and everyone who followed SKIP.

Step Three: Determine Your Niche

In step two I told you about two things SKIP did that turned out to be positive experiences. Let’s take a closer look at SKIP’s Twitter account.

Eventually, the Twitter account was abandoned. It was abandoned for all the wrong reasons; nobody had time to keep it going. SKIP missed a great opportunity to utilize this perfectly primed niche to continue expanding its support-base and ultimately garner more support for the future. Sad, but true. Don’t make the same mistake.

When you find something that helps you build relationships with other people, don’t lose sight of its greater purpose – to help your cause continue growing. An advertising niche doesn’t have to be traditional paid advertising. In fact, for charities, paid advertising can actually harm your reputation if used too often or for the wrong things. So, let’s not even discuss paid advertising here. Instead, we’ll talk about finding an advertising niche that’s not traditional. We’ll call it free advertising, even though sometimes it isn’t 100% free.

While trying to find your advertising niche, try as many different avenues as possible (including paid advertising). You’ll want to follow the social networking trends. You’ll want to try posters, brochures and business cards. You’ll want to try planning events and participating with other charities’ events. You’ll want to try sending press releases to local newspapers, and television and radio stations. You’ll want to try electronic newsletters. You’ll want to look for that one thing that makes your charity something refreshing and fun for other people.

Once you’ve narrowed down the massive field to the top three for your charity, you’re ready to move to step four.

Step Four: Create a Marketing Plan

Creating a marketing plan is hard work. I won’t get into much detail here about the process. There are plenty of resources online to get you started and I might write another article later using my personal experience as examples. What I will cover today, however, are the reasons for creating a marketing plan.

Your marketing plan should outline what you plan to do, how you plan to do it, who will be doing it, what it should cost, how long it will take, and what results you expect to see from doing it. Using your three advertising niches, you need to pay special attention to ensure each of them receives equal playing time and are as consistent as possible. Without a marketing plan, you’ll never be able to stay on track and you won’t be giving each niche a fair chance to be successful.

It’s important to note that marketing plans are subject to change any given day. They should never be etched in stone and you should never expect one marketing plan to solve every problem. But, what they can do for you is make life a whole lot easier, realistic and more streamlined. Here are a few tips to help you.

• Consistency is key to any element in marketing. In other words, be very decisive and extremely predictable.
• If something’s not working as expected, try revamping on the fly or eliminate it all together. In other words, always be willing to modify your plan.
• When uncertain of marketing costs, aim higher rather than lower. In other words, financially plan on the high side and try to stay on the low side.
• Look at your marketing plan every day to make sure you’re on the right track. In other words, don’t miss being predictable because you forgot to be predictable.
• When all else fails, start over. In other words, if your plan is falling apart don’t be afraid to trash it and start fresh.

One of my pet peeves when it comes to drafting a marketing plan is having someone shoot it down before it even gets off the ground. No matter how many times I say, this isn’t set in stone; let’s just try it for a month and see what’s working before trashing the whole thing, occasionally I run into people who absolutely refuse to try anything new. I call them “last place people.” If you are a last place person, I apologize in advance for this next statement.

Last place people are usually among the last to do anything because they need a guarantee that it will work and if you’re surrounded by them today, do your best to go around them and team up with people who aren’t afraid of new experiences. You have to be willing to try new things, even if those things are not free and will require some work. Don’t let last place people hold you or the charity back any longer.

Before you get too excited about new experiences, I’ll remind you that you have to remain predictable. Don’t take risks that leave you stuck at a dead end if they don’t work out. Always carefully calculate the risk and plan the quickest route back to the starting point in case the risk quickly outgrows the potential. That’s hard to do sometimes, but worth the trouble every time.

Step Five: Form Relationships

With your marketing plan ready for action and you eager to try it out, it’s time to build relationships with people so you can measure the success and seamlessly adjust each marketing element as necessary. I’ll put it like this, if the board of directors agrees that the latest newsletter is the best newsletter they’ve ever read, gaining permission to send it is easy. But, if you send it out and only the board of directors are signed up for the newsletter… well, I’ll stop there to save myself the embarrassment. Instead I’ll just say that you need more people to hear you than those who always hear you. Forming relationships with other people is how you do that.

I’ll use social networking as an example for how you might form relationships with other people. SKIP has a Facebook page. We were using it similar to how we used Twitter. What I didn’t tell you earlier is that mixed in with all of the wonderful facts, questions, answers to questions, quotes, stories and other interesting tidbits of information, we also used both of them for blatant advertising. Yep, that’s right, we were always trying to raise money and support for the cause and sometimes that meant sharing something that looked, smelled and tasted exactly like a paid advertisement without the price tag. One advertisement was entirely about signing up for the free monthly newsletter, where we always provided a care package tip, and also tried to raise money and support for the cause. The newsletter reached more than 400 subscribers at its peak, growing from only 100 or so a year before.

Using social networking to build relationships with people all over the world also helped ensure that they found out all of the great things happening with the organization the same day. In very simple language, we were using our 100% free advertising niche to keep SKIP very much alive. We weren’t the first to use social networking in this manner by any means, but it was working for us all the way up until we quit using it as much. That goes back to consistency. When we were consistently trying to improve, just about everything was good. When we stopped being consistent, more and more fell apart.

Step Six: Realize When Enough Is Enough

I’ve harped about being consistent for just about the entire article. Sometimes though, being consistent still doesn’t help you achieve your marketing goal. That’s when you need to realize that maybe it’s not inconsistency that’s killing your motivation. Maybe it’s that you’re doing something that you’re out of ideas for or otherwise just isn’t working. Again, I’ll return to social networking as the example.

SKIP has a YouTube account. A few videos were uploaded, but not one received a significant number of views. None of them went viral, which sucks knowing how much work went into each one. But, rather than quit wasting time with YouTube when we noticed it wasn’t making the slightest impact, we (well okay, I) continued editing and uploading videos until one day I just got bored doing that. Probably not the most useful way I could have spent my time, but I didn’t see that until much later.

You need to know when to say, enough is enough. Saying it too late may result in backtracking for a very long time. Saying it too early may result in many missed opportunities. The best time to say it is when you feel that there really is no reason to continue despite your efforts thus far, whether that’s because of no ideas, poor results, risk outweighing potential, time constraints or financial limitations. After the YouTube swing and miss, swing and miss, swing and miss I finally realized that I really should have moved on after the third video. But, I hoped things would get better. Sometimes you just have to accept that maybe this particular direction isn’t the best fit for you. Luckily for SKIP, my multiple YouTube strikeouts didn’t cost any money.

With that, enough is enough. Feel free to use the comment section below to ask any questions or say something nice.

*Sgt Joe Smoe
535^th hmc 3bct
Fob Mickey
APO, AE 09300

The first thing that comes to your attention is that it looks to be of foreign origin as there is no city or state listed. Instead you see the letters APO or FPO followed by either AE or AP. The normal reaction is to question what this means and wonder how the person will ever receive anything sent to them.

   What Do These Acronyms Stand For?

Mail addresses that contain APO or FPO are sent to military installations outside the United States.

APO stands for Army Post Office it goes to Army or Air Force installations.

FPO stands for Fleet Post Office and this mail goes to Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard installations and ships.

(Occasionally a single installation will receive both APO and FPO mail. It depends on whether or not that installation has been segregated by branch of service – a section for Army, a section for Marine Corps, etc.)

The acronyms that follow these tell which state they will be sent to from your home or post office. There are three locations (Military Gateways) that handle mail of this type:

AA is sent to Miami, FL. AA stands for Armed Forces (the) Americas

AE is sent to New York, NY. AE stands for Armed Forces Europe

AP is sent to San Francisco, CA. AP stands for Armed Forces Pacific

At these facility locations the mail is sorted further by zip code and then all responsibility is handed to the military to transport overseas.

Each postcode has its own destination. The codes are corresponded closely to the Gateway’s city zip code:

The first two numbers indicate the routing center.

The next number indicates the APO/FPO country or region.

The last two numbers help isolate the exact destination for the package.

The rules of the USPS are still followed, along with all federal and appropriate international laws.

As the mail arrives in the correct country it is transported to the correct camp by the Post Office there. It is then sorted into units or placed in the correct military member’s mail slot, depending on which country they are stationed at.

This is the process taken to deliver military mail to over 85 countries.

* For safety reasons, do not place the deployed military member’s rank on the address label or custom sheet. Also, do not place the country of its destination even if they state Iraq or Afghanistan in the address when they send it to you, again for safety reasons. The Post Office knows where to send it even if the country is not listed by looking at the remainder of the address.

How do I send a card to a wounded service member?

Many people want to show support to our military members or veterans that are wounded or ill, especially during the holiday season to offer some cheer and thanks.

Why does the post office not allow the delivery of mail addressed to “Any Service Member”, “A Recovering American Soldier” or “Any Wounded Soldier”?

Due to the attacks on our country on 9-11-01 things need to be screened for hazardous materials, due to this fact the U.S. Postal Service stopped delivering mail that is not addressed to a specific person.

A Simple Solution:

You can deliver well wishes all year long to patients at your local VA Hospital and bring a smile to a patient’s face. We should never forget those that have served, no matter when they served.

American Red Cross Holiday Mail for Heroes

From October until 10th of December you can send cards to the American Red Cross Holiday Mail for Heroes. The American Red Cross partners up with Pitney Bowes, a mail stream technology company, to allow you the opportunity to send a message to members of our U.S. military, veterans and their families.

The cards must be received by December 10th. After they are received they are sorted and distribute before the holidays, cards arriving after the 10th will be returned to the sender.

Their Guidelines, these guidlines also apply for the VA Hospitals:

• sign all cards and include a message for whoever receives it
• do not address for specific individuals, keep them generic such as “Dear Service Member.”
• send cards only, no letters
• this is not a pen pal program, do not send contact information
• no inserts allowed, no glitter allowed
• each card does not need its own envelope, mail in groups up to 25 in large mailing envelopes. Envelopes, even for individual cards, will be removed before distribution.

*The 2011 address is as follows:

Holiday Mail For Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456

Many service members and veterans will be spending the holidays in the hospital. Send a card to thank those who have made sacrifices for their country.

* This address is only for 2011, we encourage you to check the Red Cross website each October to see if the program is continued and also the address for that year will be on the site.

Write like a trusted friend with answers

Promotional copy could be anything from describing merchandise to explaining what you do. The word copy means nothing more than words or writing. The keyword is promotional.

pro•mo•tion•al |prəˈmōSHənl|
adjective
of or relating to the publicizing of a product, organization, or venture so as to increase sales or public awareness: she was on a promotional tour for her books.

Examples of Promotional Copy

• This is a hot rod, a wonderfully civilized one. What makes it really tick, of course, is the engine tucked between the front fenders — an all-new 3.7-liter, four-valves-per-cylinder V6 that includes considerable high-tech hardware. ~ automedia.com
• Kindle Touch is ready to use right out of the box – no setup, no software to install, no computer required to download content. ~ amazon.com
• Each year, in communities large and small, victims of some 70,000 disasters turn to neighbors familiar and new — the more than half a million volunteers and 35,000 employees of the Red Cross. ~ redcross.org

The examples above contain some very important similarities. I’ll explain those now.

1. You can read and understand every word

   Your readers will come from many social and educational backgrounds. Using words like transcend, commendatory, or destitute may leave your reader feeling like you are trying to impress them. Here’s a tip: it doesn’t work that way. Instead, use words that you might use in a normal conversation like exceed, favorable, or poor. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to impress them.

2. Descriptive phrases paint a picture

   In the first example, you want to see that civilized hot rod. In the second, it sounds easy enough for the most non-technical person to use. In the third, 70,000 victims each year makes visualizing the need for the American Red Cross almost too easy. These are the descriptions that you need to create in your promotional copy.

3. It’s easy to fall into a pattern

   Readers like patterns. Always try to setup a pattern for them to follow. Then, break the pattern when you need to for effect. Patterns keep your copy entertaining, stimulating and most importantly, legible.

4. The words “we are the best” are nowhere to be found

   Despite the knowledge that your readers will come from many social and educational backgrounds, your readers aren’t dumb. They won’t buy into your pick-up lines. So, it’s always best practice to let the reader decide for himself if you are the best or not. If you write great copy, how could they not think you’re the best?

A Friend With Answers

When you read your “About Us” webpage does it feel like your personal bragging station, like an encyclopedia or more like a conversation between a couple of friends? When you read the description of merchandise that you carry, does it feel like you’re pressuring the sale, highlighting the best features or avoiding everything negative?

What you say in your promotional copy is completely up to you. But, if I don’t like it, don’t expect me to stick around reading it. I’ll simply go somewhere else to get the information I need. So will most readers. My advice, be as transparent as possible.

Share your story like a conversation between friends. Highlight the best features of your merchandise, but you can also point out the flaws. Be daring. Be bold. Be a friend to your supporters.

Say we’ve known each other for years, I’ve owned a Mac for 4 years and you’re interested in buying one. Would you only ask me, “how much is a Mac and can I get it in black?” Probably not. You would most likely have a laundry list of questions and I would be expected to give you the answers, as your trusted friend. That’s what you should do for everyone. Be a trusted friend who has the answers. Your promotional copy should spark that friendship.

Limited Space

Of all the problems you might have when it comes to promotional copy, the amount of allowed space is probably the biggest hurdle you’ll ever face. On a website you can usually get around space constraints, but on paper you really can’t. It either fits or it doesn’t.

What I suggest in limited spaces is that you forget about writing a descriptive story and just focus on the facts. A sentence may be reduced to a fragment, the font may be smaller, you may not want any graphics. All of that is okay. Just stick to the facts. Here’s an example of a very popular newspaper advertisement.

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.

Becoming Transparent

A few paragraphs ago I said, “be as transparent as possible.” I meant it. The days of hiding behind a large rock and making as much noise as possible to scare your enemies away are long over. Everyone has seen that tactic. It doesn’t work anymore. So, saying that your charity is the best or your merchandise is the best is only impressing you. Nobody else believes it until they say it, too. They’ll only say it if they actually believe it. Your job is to give them a reason to believe it.

When you sit down to write for your charity, think about what you want to accomplish. Think about who you want to accomplish it for. Think about how you are going to accomplish that. Don’t think of some creative ploy to use. Don’t think of how great your charity is. Only think of what, who and how.

Transparency is about a lot of things. Most important to your charity though, it means allowing your supporters to decide for themselves that your charity is the best. You should help them along the path but never, ever tell them that they have to think that way.

Practice Writing

Writing good promotional copy isn’t that difficult, but if you don’t practice you won’t get better. Reading what you’ve written aloud sometimes helps pick out the obvious mistakes. Letting someone else read what you’ve written will definitely pick out those mistakes.

Check your spelling. Use your dictionary and thesaurus. Tell stories. Just write. Before long, you’ll be good at promotional copy. Then, you’ll be great. Just keep practicing and remember to be transparent.

Writing the perfect headline is easier than you might think.

You have a good idea what you want to say, but no idea how to get the reader’s attention. A solid headline can really help.

Writing a powerful headline is a lot like choosing the right photo. You need it to do more than grab the reader’s attention. You need it to help you setup the story you’re about to share. Let’s get started.

Headline Myths

• A headline’s only job is to get the reader’s attention
• A headline shouldn’t be a sentence
• A question isn’t a headline
• A headline shouldn’t be longer than 5 words
• A headline doesn’t matter
• A headline should be in ALL CAPS

The truth is, a headline should be the start to your story, can be a sentence, a question and longer than 5 words, it does matter (a lot actually), and it should never be in all capital letters. Myths busted.

First, A Few Tips

• Don’t think too hard, just write
• You don’t have to write your headline first
• Some of the best headlines are several words long
• Remember, don’t type headlines in all capital letters
• Your headline doesn’t have to shock the reader
• Words like free, cheap and best often have a lot of pull

Let’s create a headline for a charity that sends care packages overseas. The story this headline leads is about personalizing each care package to the individual military member.

From Rough to Final Draft

Creating a rough draft is a necessity. Don’t expect the first headline you write to be the final copy that you publish to the world. Instead, use it as a base from which you’ll create the perfect headline. Here’s our rough draft for this exercise.

Personalizing Care Packages for Every Deployed Service Member

No, it’s not very compelling. It also lacks several other qualities that make up a great headline.

First, it doesn’t really say anything. In fact, all it says to me is, “dribble, dribble, blah, blah.” Let’s start fixing it by removing any words that are completely unnecessary.

Personalizing Care Packages for Every Deployed Service Member
New: Personalizing Care Packages for Every Service Member

I completely removed one word. Not bad, but the headline still doesn’t really grab my attention, nor does it make me want to read the first sentence that follows. So, let’s change a couple of words.

Personalizing Personalized Care Packages for Every Service Member the Troops
New: Personalized Care Packages for the Troops

That’s better and it could work, but is it the best we can come up with? We can’t know until we try. So, let’s start again.

Free Personalized Care Packages for our Military

The weak points are not in the words being used. Instead, the weak points are in the order of the words. We’ll move one word.

Free Personalized Care Packages, Personalized for our Military
Free Care Packages, Personalized for our Military

Now that seems like a good headline to me. And yes, I would read the first sentence. But, do we leave it as “our military,” or change it to “the troops?” Let’s try them both.

Free Care Packages, Personalized for our Military
Free Care Packages, Personalized for the Troops

What about this? Free Care Packages, Personalized for our Troops

Yeah, I like it too. That’s a strong headline and it pretty much disregards every myth mentioned above. Ready to try your own? Here’s one for you to practice with.

Your Mission

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to write a headline for a story about a care package that got returned to the sender two years after shipping. As far as I know, it’s fiction, but what a great story it could be. Share your headline as a comment if you want. I’d love to see what you come up with.

I hope this article helps you write the perfect headline. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to use the comment form below.

Special Kindness In Packages learned this the hard way. We tried not having photos. Then we tried having too many photos. Then we tried randomly placing photos. Then we tried sharing the newest photos on the homepage without any rhyme or reason. The list of attempts could go on for days. It was by chance that we found a strong balance. When we did, everything picked up speed – care package requests, donations, merchandise sales, everything.

I’ll save you the trial and error. This article is about images. I’ll write another article about writing copy. Maybe even two articles.

Choosing the Right Image

Choosing what photo or graphic you want to use is a personal decision. However, it should match what you want people to believe about your charity.

Say, for example, you’re torn between featuring a photo of a military member with a care package from you and a photo of several military members with multiple care packages. What do you want people to believe about your charity? What story does each photo help you tell? I’ll show you a couple examples.

Every care package we send is as unique as the military member we send it to.

Headline:
We Personalize Every Care Package

Care packages are still being requested every day by our troops serving overseas. Our care packages are carefully personalized and packed for each military member we send to. We believe it’s important to care for each military member individually, just like we did for John in the photo to the right. Here’s how you can help extend this personalized care to more deployed troops.

(List of ways people can help)

One care package request is all it takes to get packages for the entire squad.

Headline:
Care Packages for All of Our Troops

Care packages are still being requested every day by our troops serving overseas. We’re eager to send care packages to as many of them as humanly possible each month. When requesting care packages from us, military members are asked to provide us with the number of personnel in their squad. We send every member of that squad his own care package the following month, just like we did for 3rd Squad, B Company in the photo to the right. Here’s how you can help send more care packages.

(List of ways people can help)

As you can see from the examples above, two photos were used to convey two similar, but different, ideas. Using the photo in each idea to help tell the story, makes it believable and visually entertaining for your readers. If they can see it, they’re more likely to believe it; whatever “it” may be.

Placement of Your Image

You can place an image wherever you want, but there are a few things you might want to keep in mind.

Your image should not change the natural reading flow. Readers follow patterns. If your image disrupts that pattern, your reader may walk (or run) away and never look back. So, write your copy first, then only use images where they make absolute sense. Your goal should be to make the image a part of the natural reading flow. If you can do that, you’ve selected the right image and placed it in the right spot.

I generally recommend against centering an image unless you absolutely have to. If you can, try to resize the image so it fits next to some text. If you can’t successfully resize it and really want or need it to be on that promotional material, center it. However, remember that if you break up the natural reading pattern you may lose readers. Centering an image often times breaks the pattern. The only time I like to center an image is when I want the natural reading pattern to break (i.e. before a new heading).

A centered image positioned before a new headline

Permission to Use an Image

When you take a photo or design a graphic, you own the rights to that image. You can usually use it however you like.

When you do not take the photo or design the graphic, you do not own the rights to that image. You cannot use it however you like.

Stock photography is a great resource for charities and individuals. You can legally use most stock photography in your personal or charitable promotional materials. However, I don’t advise making a habit out of relying on stock images.

Stock images are just as their name suggests, stock. That means anyone can use them and a lot of people do use them. They won’t make a compelling argument for what makes you stand out from the crowd. That being said, using them occasionally is perfectly fine – especially if you plan to replace them with another image soon.

Model releases are another hot topic for charities. Do you need one for each and every photo? Simply stated, no because most nonprofit material is considered informational/educational not commercial. Before taking that to the bank though, here’s what you should know.

1. If the photo is used to advertise a product or service, you do need permission from the model (person in the photo).
2. If the photo was given to you by someone and there is another person in the photo, it’s best to get permission from the other model.
3. If the photo was taken by you at a fundraising event and will not be used to advertise, you do not need permission from the model.
4. If the photo was taken by someone other than you at a fundraising event and will not be used to advertise, you do not need permission from the model.
5. If the photo is stock photography (you cannot legally use it for advertising), you already have permission from the model.
6. If the photo shows a minor (under 18 years of age), parental consent is required before using that photo.

My recommendation for photos with people in them is to always ask before using. You can do that in the form of an email, a model release form, or as a notice on your website that lets everyone know that by uploading photos they are granting you permission to use the photos in your marketing materials. Just make sure everyone knows what you have planned for the photo(s) of them.

Out With the Old

Your marketing materials should never become stale. That especially applies to your photos. It’s recommended that you replace old photos with new ones at least once a year. That goes for all of your marketing materials, not just your website. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) Wise Giving Alliance says that photos more than 3 years old are no longer current. Taking the time to keep your marketing materials fresh helps keep your supporters interested and your charity in good standing with the BBB. It’s a win-win.

Editing and More Editing

It doesn’t matter what image editing software you like to use. All that matters is that you use it.

Niagara Falls. Click the photo to see it larger.

When you get a photo that looks like it was taken through a pair of sunglasses, the best thing you can do is clean it up. Again, what do you want people to believe about your charity? A nice looking photo says, “Hey there reader, we have pride in everything we do.” I don’t need to say what a not-so-nice looking photo says. The photos of Niagara Falls to the right show what the original looked like versus the edited. The edited version is lighter, brighter and better. And, it only took me a few seconds to edit by adjusting the color, levels and contrast in Photoshop. Click on the photo to view it a little larger.

Editing a photo can take a while. I got lucky with the Niagara Falls photo. And if you want it to look its best, taking your time is the best advice I can offer. I’ve spent countless hours editing photos, sometimes multiple hours on one photo, so I know what works for me and what doesn’t. If you don’t know what works for you, keep practicing and soon you will.

Captions, Alternate Text and Titles

Best Internet practice is to include all three, a caption, alternate text and a title for each image. For your printed materials all you need is the caption. Let’s start with the two specifically for the Internet – alternate text and title.

Alternate text: In some web browsers like Internet Explorer, when you hover your cursor over an image that has alternate text you can read it. That’s the purpose of alternate text, so keep it brief but descriptive of the photo. For instance, if you have a photo of John with a care package, your alternate text could be, “John with his care package.” To define the alternate text the HTML would something look like this: <img src="route-to-your-image" height="150" width="100" alt="John with his care package" /> (height and width are in pixels)

Title: Search engines and other web browsers like Firefox don’t use the alternate text. Instead, they use the title text. More often than not, I use the same text for the title as I do with the alternate text. That way, regardless of what browser the reader is using, they see the same thing when hovering over the image. For the best search engine optimization however, make sure each image is titled something different. To define the title the HTML would look something like this: <img src="route-to-your-image" height="150" width="100" alt="John with his care package" title="John with his care package" /> (height and width are in pixels)

Let’s look at the caption.

The caption is singlehandedly the most important text you include with your image. It provides information to the reader that the photo itself may leave to imagination. Basically, it helps the photo with its role in your story. A good example is the caption I used under the Niagara Falls photos. Without me telling you that it was Niagara Falls, you may not have known what waterfall you were looking at.

To use a caption on your website, you’ll need to establish specific CSS rules for the caption. WordPress handles captions very nicely, but you can create rules for non-Wordpress sites, too.

I recommend using captions everywhere you possibly can. Think of a newspaper or magazine. Without captions I wouldn’t know what half the photos are.

Photos Are Your Friend

In the nonprofit world photos are one of the best marketing tools at your disposal. They can help tell the story you want to share. They can help keep your marketing content fresh. They can increase your chances of gaining dedicated support. So use them often and use them well.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please use the comment form below. Thanks for reading!