Donating money to charity

I received a phone call from a person who works for a large charity and wanted some help with their tele-marketing script.

Personally, I have trouble with giving money to a charity where a significant portion is used to pay the collector.

For instance, If I donate $20 based on a phone call, and the telemarketer is paid $17 per hour, and only makes 1 sale an hour, then the charity isn't getting much out of it. By the time other overheads are taken into account, the charity is making even less.

I would've thought that there would be enough goodwill to do some smarter marketing, especially through corporate sponsors.

Imagine a corporate that offers some of their telemarketing capability to get donations for a charity, & then donates all of that money to the charity.

Make money and feel good!

Last year I was collecting for the local stroke foundation, giving away stickers for each donation.

I ran out of stickers and attracted the most donations for a single collector.

How?

By "selling" good feelings.

Like a street seller, I was calling for people to donate and in return feel good for the whole day!

Companies that understand how to tap into these "good feelings", can do well financially by selling more product/ service and charging more for their product/ service.

For instance, if I was given the choice of 2 chocolate bars and 1 was 10% dearer however, it stated that it supported fair trade, I would buy that brand every time.

So you can save the world profitably and ethically!

Sponsor and grow

An effective way to get your product in front of new potential customers is to support a charitable cause.

By co-branding your product with a charity, you can ask for a donation that will cover your manufacture cost and also allow the charity to make money.

An example might be a golf ball. Your charity might be the Prostate Awareness Society (target audience = golfers). You sell the ball for $5, with $2 from every sale going to the charity & $3 covering the cost of the ball.

Daughters & wives buy the ball (to encourage their Dad or husband to check their bits), the target audience tries it, likes it & buys more!

It feels good not just making money, but supporting a worthwhile cause!