Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

Last Sunday, I was a volunteer, along with several of my fellow Civitan members, at the annual “Empty Bowls” fundraiser for Project Share. Project Share has been feeding the working poor and hungry for over 20 years and is a terrific organization.

However, as I was unpacking box after box after box of bowls…all left over from last year’s fundraiser…my inner marketer got to pondering Project Share’s challenges.

1. The same event, the same format, the same people. I’ve seen nonprofits fall into this rut repeatedly. When I was chair of the development committee of one nonprofit I pushed to do something different, anything different. Our annual BIG fundraiser had plateaued (duh, after 19 years of doing the same thing) and we were seeing the usual suspects every year. No new faces, no new donors, no added funds. But, nope. My fellow board members wanted to stick to the tried and true…even as we watched the staff work themselves to the bone for a big ego event that netted less every year.

I like the idea of “Empty Bowls” but it’s been done more than a few times. The core loyalists come every year and keep buying bowls…but they can only buy so many, as evidenced by the hundreds left over from last year (all of which had to be packed up again for this year.) If they’re going to keep the idea, the marketing needs to be freshened up considerably.

2. Getting the word out - soon enough and often enough. Another challenge in nonprofit marketing is timing. A group will plan a great event and then do little to promote it until sometimes almost literally the last minute. People have to know about it (and remember it) if they’re going to show up.

3. Making it easy for people to participate. Sunday afternoon is not the best time to ask people to drive to a poor part of town they don’t normally frequent, on a road with very little traffic on the weekends. Nobody needs another ceramic bowl (and you can buy bowls all over the place), so impulse buyers were needed (see above re “usual suspects.”)

4. Good price or raise money? Granted, a lot of work went into the donated bowls - and some of them were quite lovely…but…a lot of them weren’t. Sorry, good people who so loving crafted those lop-sided mud brown things and the vase with the lumps, effort doesn’t equal customer (or donor) value. I would have put everything left over from last year in a special area and marked it down drastically. (The really ugly stuff? Put in a box and mark free.)

The “hook” was you buy any combination of bowls up to $25.00 and then you got to eat yummy soups donated by local chefs. Well, that’s great (and I hear the music was fun too)…but what if I simply wanted to buy a bowl for five bucks? Hey, I gotta run…sorry, maybe next year I’ll have time to buy $25 worth of stuff…

Sell the stuff, baby! It’s not going to do any good sitting in the storage shed for another year.

(It also bothered me to see a sign on the door, “No food service today because of fundraiser.” So, here I am, wanting to help the hungry…and you’re not feeding them today because I’m there??? Ouch. Not a good message.)

Update: I’m not the only one with these questions and observations. Some commenters over at Duke City Fix are bemoaning missing the event again this year. (Didn’t know about it. Couldn’t find it. etc.) I’ve suggested some of us band together and offer to be an “online sponsor” in the community and help with the marketing. So, we’ll see.

Tags: marketing, nonprofit marketing, marketing troubleshooting, fundraising