In the Spirit of the Season: How to Promote A Charity Drive?

From: Efrem Habteselassie <efrem_at_acisconsulting.com>
Date: Mon 18 Dec 2000 14:42:32 -0500

Greetings!

I work for an Internet Consulting Company primarily
focusing on html and application design aspects.
Although I am a long time silent listener of this
forum, we are not experts in the art of advertising and
promotion.

During this holiday season, our group volunteered to
design (free service of course) a donation pledge
collection system for a charitable organization here
in Toronto called EriTree. http://www.eritree.com

EriTree is trying to raise awareness and collect
donations on behalf of 250,000 children affected by war
in Africa. These kids are living under unbelievable
situations in makeshift camps for the displaced.

We believe we have designed a well thought out system.
Rather than asking for donations only, we devised a
method whereby a donor would be entitled to send one
Gift Certificate along with personal holiday greeting
to friends and family members for every ten dollar
donation. If interested to see how this works, visit
http://www.eritree.com/rsp/press_release.html

To minimize costs, we designed the system using Free
MySql as back end database and PHP for forms design and
linkage to the database backend. This is working great!
(Will be happy to share step by step tutorial on how to
implement such a robust system if anyone is interested)

Now the hard part is, HOW TO PROMOTE IT? We only have
eight days left and we need 100,000 visitors! A
daunting task for sure.

As a charitable organization, they are not able to
spend tons of money on "experimental ads".

Also, don't even know where to begin to reach a target
group?

In the spirit of the season, would be great if you
could share some thoughts....

We are promoting the site "as a great way to send
holiday greeting while supporting a good cause"

Thanks for your time, and happy holidays.

Efrem Habteselassie
Senior Consultant
ACIS Consulting





Received on Mon Dec 18 2000 - 13:42:32 CST