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Turn Your
Fundraising Into a
Money-Making, Automated Sales Machine...
"Who
Else Wants To Find Out How To Get Their Community Fundraising Running
On Auto-Pilot - Even If It Looks Like Your Community Just Aren't
Interested?"
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Here are the sure-fire strategies that the professional
fundraisers wouldn't want you to get your hands on!
From:
Patrick Mc Erlean, Community
Fundraiser
Don't
you just get hopping
mad every time you work
your socks off promoting your fundraising activities
– only to be met with another
pitiful response from your
local community?
Do you feel paralyzed
when you advertise for volunteers and yet again, there are few, if any
takers? The thought of having to go back to the same over-worked volunteers
yet again is as stressful as it gets!
Why do you put yourself through it?
Simple – because deep-down you
realize how much benefit your organization brings to the local
community!
You probably suspect that the community appreciates your organization
at some level, so why the heck don't more of them step up to the mark
and support you?
What if I were to show you a deceptively
simple way
to build relationships with your community, which are so powerful that
people will be eager to support everything you do – what do
you
think that would do for your
fundraising success?
This is an incredible opportunity that is available to you –
but
only if you take the first step. Your first step is to read this
article in its entirety. Please don't just skim through it –
I
don't want you to miss a single word because when I
demystify
community fundraising for you, you simply cannot fail to
raise the level of funding you want for your organization.
In fact, I dare you to read
this entire article and not change your approach to
community fundraising.
Great Fundraising
Ideas Are Not The Magic Pill
There are literally hundreds of “great
fundraising ideas” doing the rounds today. In
fact there are so many you couldn't be faulted for wondering why it's
so hard to make them consistently successful.
Those who sell fundraising products make them sound as if people will
be falling over themselves to buy them and that your success is a
foregone conclusion! What they don't mention is that selling these
products is extremely
time-consuming and often requires lots of
promotional activity to achieve even moderate success.
What happens when you need to raise some serious cash to fund a major
development? You can bet that you aren't going to do it with the
fundraising merchandising products, you buy on the Internet.
Fundraising ideas are
only a small part of any successful
fundraising strategy. The truth is
that big ticket fundraising will never get off the ground unless you've
taken the time to build
a rock-solid relationship between your
organization and the local community.
You can promote your great fundraising ideas until you are blue in the
face but unless you're organization is at the forefront of
people's
minds you will always struggle to secure their attention. Without the unwavering support of your
community your major campaigns are dead in
the water.
The problem is that most fundraisers spend so much time looking for the
next killer idea that they neglect the one thing that practically
guarantees success; building a strong relationship with
their local
community. Strong
relationships have been at the heart of selling for
centuries and community fundraising is just another form of selling.
Some fundamental truths just never change. Take a look at our old
friend the crocodile. He hasn't changed for thousands of years. Why? --
because what he has, just works! Likewise, strong
relationships is what
works, for the type of selling required for successful community
fundraising. Take a leaf out of the old croc's book and
only do what
works.
Consider any of the world's major advancements over the ages
– do you think they would have been possible without people
co-operating with one and other? You guessed it – not a
chance!
Major progress is only
possible where strong relationships exist. Your
community organization is no different. Major progress can't be made
without the backing of a big portion of your community. Let's find out
how to build those relationships.
The Good News -
You've Only One Problem To Solve
Remember that your
organization's benefits are the key to building the
relationship with your local community. When people buy
into your
benefits you'll always be at the forefront
of their minds and their
support for your fundraising will be automatic. Believe me, when you're
at that stage its a
fantastic experience.
So it all boils down to this question -- How do you get your benefits
message across to the people of your community? I'll answer that
question in a moment.
In my experiences with community fundraisers, over 80% struggle because
they place their entire
focus on promoting their fundraising ideas.
That's like building a house without
foundations. The other 10% who
struggle are aware that they need to build community relations, but
they just can't seem to get through to the people (that's really
frustrating).
The problem with getting through to people today is that we all suffer
from what's known as advertising
blindness. Depending you who you
believe, the average person is exposed to anywhere between 1,500 (Media
Literacy Report published by UNICEF) and 5,000 (Charles Pappas, Yahoo!
Internet Life columnist) advertising messages per day, from TV,
billboards, radio, the Internet, practically
everywhere we turn.
What that really means is that we tend to filter out all forms
of sales
messaging. Unfortunately that includes those messages we
may be open
to, such as the benefits of our local community organization. Guess
what that means for your fundraising efforts? Yes, it's not good news.
So what is the key to getting
your message through? I discovered the
answer to that question around the year 2000, purely by chance. The
answer starts with the powers
of persuasion. By
mastering the art of
persuasion you will be able to get your message across effortlessly.
From then on, wonderful
things will begin to happen in relation to your
fundraising.
Just Imagine How Good Things Could Be
Just picture it – you've easily created a terrific
relationship with the local community. Now, every time you run an event
or campaign, all you have to do is make people aware of it and their
support is automatic. A few posters placed around the
community and they come
out in their droves to your events.
Imagine your campaigns, where your volunteers arrive on doorsteps and people
are only too glad to whip out their wallets and hand over their
hard-earned cash.
Its a fantastic feeling when you've
created such a buzz, that people
lining up to volunteer for your organization! Volunteer
stress is
consigned to the dustbin of history because the fear of selling is all
but gone. How hard is it to sell water to someone who is
already
thirsty? No more spending hours upon hours promoting your events and
campaigns.
What will you do with the time you are able to re-claim? Here is one
idea...
Where It All Started
I've been fundraising for my local sports club since 1995. The first
five years were horrible. Well, that's not quite accurate!
The first
two years weren't too bad, but they were masked by the cloak of
enthusiasm. Then I hit
the wall. Pretty much every fundraiser does when
the enthusiasm well dries up.
Towards the end of the millennium the stress was beginning to tell. I
got married in 1998 and the first child came along just over a year
later. Something had to
give. I was contemplating giving up the
fundraising, but at the same time I was feeling really bad about the
prospect of leaving the club in the lurch. However, I just couldn't see
any alternative.
The fundraising was just taking too much time and anyway the people of
our community just
didn't seem to care that much about the club so why
should I? A poor excuse on my part but as you can appreciate, my mind
was doing flip-flops! Then
suddenly within the space of two weeks
everything changed forever.
So what exactly, did change? It all started when I happened to be
talking to a friend and he noticed my anxiety. It was probably fairly
easy to spot! I told him how I was considering giving up fundraising
for the club, and how the people of our community just didn't seem to
care any more. I told him how we advertised our functions, advertised
for volunteers, and how the
response was poor on both counts.
What he said next both angered and intrigued me. He reckoned that, from
the sounds of things the relationship between our club and the local
community was pretty-much
non-existent. I couldn't believe what I was
hearing. Our club had been one of the main focal points of the
community for 60 years! Almost 80% of the kids had been members at
sometime during their lives (many from the ages of 8-18).
Then he clarified what he meant. He said, “Look, it's like
this -- I know that somewhere close to 90% of the people in this
community appreciate the club but the fact is that very few of them
actually ever give any
thought to it, for the simple reason that you
haven't spent any time building a relationship with them. Putting up
posters doesn't build a relationship”. This
guy is a
top-class salesman so rather than getting offended I decided to listen
to what he had to say.
He explained to me how community fundraising was just another form of
selling and how that type of selling, in order to be
successful, requires a
strong relationship with the customer. He also explained
to
me the role of persuasion
techniques in getting your message across to
people, which is key to relationship building. I wasn't convinced at
all! Customers, selling, persuasion – we're a community
organization, not a multi-national. It all sounded a little too weird
for me, but my curiosity
was aroused!
I Thought - Maybe
This Could
Work - Even For Me!
Anyway, I decided to read a couple of books he gave me. After that, his
arguments started to sound vaguely plausible. All of this came at a
time when we had just canceled our AGM because of the fact that only 15
people bothered to turn up. Our maximum turnout was only around 25
anyway, but we were fed up with the same people being forced into the same jobs, year after year.
I knew that it was my last throw of the
dice anyway, so I decided to experiement with a couple of the
persuasion techniques I'd read about. I created a
flyer using persuasive writing techniques and we handed those out
around the community. To
my astonishment, 42 people turned up to the
re-scheduled AGM.
It didn't end there. I had also prepared a questionnaire and I handed
that out to the delegates on the day. To say I was amazed when 40 out
of 42 people left that AGM having volunteered to help out,
was an
understatement! Suddenly
I felt a new wave of enthusiasm wash over me!
To cut a long story short, over the next few years I devoured as much
information on selling and persuasion, as I could lay my hands on.
Books, seminars, even chatting to the experts. Through a process of
trial and error I created
a system that has changed
the face of our
community fundraising forever.
I live in a community of about 1500 people and for the first five years
of my involvement in fundraising, we raised an average of $30k per
year. Over this past five years we've raised over $400k ($80k per year),
with about
half the effort. It's hard to describe how good that feels. The
upshot
is that I've been able to continue my fundraising, while making loads
of time for my family and my other interests. That's
priceless!
Persuasion Is Key To Getting Your Message Heard
We've already talked about advertising blindness. As this became more
prevalent, it began to affect the revenues of some of the
world's
largest commercial organizations. As you can imagine, they were none
too happy!
However these guys are not at the top
of their game for no reason. They
soon figured out how to cut through the layers of advertising blindness
we cloak ourselves in. You guessed it – they use
the powers
of persuasion.
Just think for a moment how much information our brains process over
the course of a normal day – and that's not even counting the
fact that we are constantly
bombarded with advertising messages.
Our eyes don't actually see! They simply collect light and focus it on
the back of our eyes (retina). It's the brain that processes this vast
amount of information and translates it into mental
images. This all
takes place in our conscious mind. Likewise our ears are just a way of
getting sound vibrations into our head so that the brain can interpret
them and build up a mental picture of their source.
Many Of Our
Decisions Are Made By Default
The conscious mind is a wonderful thing but the fact is that it simply
cannot process all of the information that is constantly being
presented to us. That's where our
secret mind (the sub-conscious) comes
in.
It
provides
us with “short-cuts” so that we don't have to
consciously make decisions about all of the information we are
receiving. It intervenes when the conscious mind, hasn't
time to think,
or it doesn't want to think, or has wandered off or when it's under too
much stress. These are known as decisions
by default.
Do you think the classical pianist has time to consider every key they
are pressing? Of course not, there simply isn't time. When time is
short, the sub-conscious mind steps
up to the mark.
Now, the sub-conscious doesn't think per say. It just reacts. It's
reactions are based on it's “learned
behavior”.
This “learned behavior” is imprinted on the
sub-conscious through continual repetition. The imprinting process is
accelerated greatly when the repetition is accompanied by emotion (good
or bad).
Just think about the situation where you are attracted to a particular
person. You'd think that the potential
reward of a date with them would
be motivation enough
to go ahead and ask. But, oh no, the old
sub-conscious interjects and reminds you of the possibility of
rejection. It has learned that rejection
is not a good feeling.
Despite the above example the
sub-conscious plays a very important role
on our lives. It is essentially a survival mechanism. It
doesn't like
change – it prefers the safety of the status quo. That's why
it's so tough to change your habits. To change a habit
your conscious
mind has to effectively re-programme the sub-conscious and that usually
takes time and a lot of time and conscious effort.
It's important that things are this way though. Have you ever went out
for a drive in the car and realized that you couldn't remember part of
the journey? Sometimes your
mind wanders off to think about other
things? It was thanks to the good old sub-conscious that you stayed on
the road! It intervened to make sure you took the required actions to
maintain your status in the land of the living.
When we make decisions based on the sub-conscious, we are often not
sure as to why we made them and sometimes we're not even aware
that we
have made a decision at all. The powers of persuasion is all about triggering sub-conscious decisions
based of the knowledge of how most
people will react to certain stimulus.
Much of our sub-conscious programming has come from outside influences
such as our parents, our teachers, the media, the government and other
apparently knowledgeable people. As a result much of this programming
is faulty.
There are lots of examples of faulty programming. One particular
example is our tendency to believe authority figures without question.
There are lots of documented incidents of this in the medical
professional where staff did exactly what the doctor asked them to do,
even when they thought it sounded wrong (some more serious than others).
In one such incident an unsuspecting patient with an ear infection got
more than he bargained for, from the nurse that was “looking
after” him. Now this nurse knew he had an ear
infection but
when she picked up the doctor's instructions for the administration of
the drops he had prescribed, and it said, “insert in
rear”, she blindly obeyed – she went right ahead
and ... well, you know!
We Don't Like Being
Told What To Think
It's human nature to want to be in control of our own thoughts. We like
to come to your own
conclusions and as a result we feel lots of
internal resistance when other people try to tell us what to think or
do. This is at the heart of advertising blindness. If you want to
persuade someone your message
must fly
underneath their radar. People
want to be finessed – not bombarded with blatant advertising.
The
powers of persuasion is all about triggering the sub-conscious
decision making process so that our point of view is more readily
accepted. It's an extremely powerful tool in your
relationship
building. Some people ask me if using the powers of persuasion in
relationship building is unethical.
Look, we're not brainwashing people here, we're just using simple (but
powerful) techniques to vastly
increase the chances of getting your
benefits messages through to them. After that, those people will decide
for themselves whether or not your organization is worth
supporting.
The fact is that they won't even consider your benefits, if you can't
find a way through their
protective barriers.
I'm now at the stage where my community fundraising education is almost
complete (it'll never be totally complete). As a result, I have come to
know exactly what works
and what doesn't work, when it comes to gaining
the support of the local community. I've
developed my own unique model
of relationship building for successful community fundraising, which
has been proven to work for a wide variety of community organizations.
I've now condensed all of my knowledge of relationship building, that
have taken me years to
acquire, into my new eBook, Community Fundraising
: The Persuasive Way. This book leads you by the hand in true,
step-by-step fashion, through a fail-safe
process for building
community relationships, that endure
through thick and
thin.
Community Fundraising : The Persuasive Way consists of a giant
vault of fundraising secrets – most of which you will not
find in any other fundraising book.
Look What This Will
Do For You
I've spilled my guts in this eBook and held nothing back.
Here are just
a few of the benefits you'll enjoy and some of the juiciest secrets I
have revealed:
How our minds work and why
we are susceptible to the powers of persuasion. Remember, this is not
about tricking people. It's about giving them the opportunity to make
an informed choice about your community organization.
A step-by-step guide to
building lifelong relations with your community, using the powers of
persuasion to get your benefits across (under the radar).
This
step-by-step program has been tried and tested and been proven to work.
It removes all of the guesswork from community fundraising.
Find out how to get unwavering
commitment
from the public to the point where their support
for your fundraising will be virtually
automatic. The public will soon
feel good about supporting your organization.
How
to use those incredible
relationships to make your fundraising practically run on auto-pilot.
That allows your volunteers to spend
more time with their families, as
opposed to worrying about how to keep the organization moving forward.
Best of all it takes the
stress out of fundraising.
Discover how to attract
and
motivate volunteers. They'll be lining up to help out,
which ensures
that the workload is better distributed and makes everyone feel good
about the organization.
Find
out how to give your
volunteers the sort of state-of-the-art training that will almost
completely remove the fear of selling and asking for money.
That's even
discounting the fact that selling to an energized community makes it
much easier anyway.
I reveal many leading-edge
fundraising ideas, which when coupled with strong
volunteer training,
enables volunteers to feel good about what they are doing. They will be
seen as the experts
by their peers from other organizations. As a
result volunteers will be successful. They'll feel good about their
work because they can see tangible
results.
Be
the envy of your peers.
Be viewed as an expert. The program leads to immensely
successful fund
raising and the fund raising leaders will be seen as the standard
setters within their field.
How to use the secrets
of
the written word to drive your message through peoples'
natural
resistance barriers.
Your new found wealth will
become the spring board to incredible
organizational development.
People will take pride in your organization and its success and the
your long-term future will be secured.
You'll
be delighted with the
surprising added bonus of being able to use lots of this material to
enhance your everyday life, as well as your fundraising.
How Much Is All Of
This Worth To You?
Back in 1997 if someone had offered me this eBook, I would have been
willing to pay $200, $300 – even $500 to find out the
techniques that would have enabled me to more than double my
fundraising success whilst allowing me to re-claim a
substantial
portion of my free time.
It would have been worth it not to have to go
through those three years of stress, followed by a few years of trial
and error.
How about you? How much is all this worth to you? What is the value in
learning a system that allows you to development your organization to
levels you've never dare
dream of, whilst allowing you to spend much
more time with your family?
I've spent somewhere in the region of about $1000 on books and
seminars, acquiring this
knowledge – not to mention the years
of trial and error.
The good news is that I won't ask you to pay $200,
$100 or even $50. Your price is only $37. But
hurry because this is a
special introductory offer and I may raise the price in the
near future. You can download it today and be reading it within minutes.
Think about it – for
the price of a football you'll get
access to some of the most innovative
techniques that have ever been
applied to the unique challenges of community fundraising.
Get the eBook today.
Order securely using
the link below.
You Risk Absolutely Nothing
The book, Community
Fundraising : The Persuasive Way, is 100% guaranteed to
transform your
community fundraising – or your money back. The guarantee is
simple – you
assume zero risk.
Here's the deal: Go ahead and preview
the eBook for 30 days without
risking a single penny. During
that time I will give you free email
consultation to help you with any questions you might have.
If for any
reason, you are not completely satisfied – I will be happy to
refund every penny of your buying price.
The methods detailed in this eBook have already brought fantastic
successes to those community organizations using them
today. Everything
is laid out in true step-by-step fashion so you can't go wrong.
Take a
look. You've absolutely nothing to loose and everthing to gain. If you
don't like it -- I'll give you your money back and there'll be no hard
feelings. I can't say
fairer than that?
I'm Removing All Of
The Risk For You.
Order Now And Get
Started Within Minutes.
The Results Will
Come Suprisingly Quickly
As you read the eBook, you'll
be surprised how quickly you can put some
of the techniques into action and see
immediate results. Remember I had
my first real breakthrough in relation to our AGM, after only two
weeks. I really hadn't a clue how this stuff worked then, but I didn't
care so long as it
produced the goods!
I know how it works now and I can tell you its
still an amazing thrill
for me every-time I see the results and the ease with which they come.
My wife likes it too because I think she takes special delight in using
up my free time to do some domestic duties!
The fundraising success experienced by my organization has been beyond
my wildest dreams. It can happen to you as well. It really
is as simple
as I have described. Grab your copy of Community Fundraising : The
Persuasive Way today and get
started right away. Success is just around
the corner if you take
action.
Your First Step Is
To Take Action Today.
Try It Totally
Risk-Free For 30 Days.
Here's wishing you every success in your fundraising,
Patrick Mc Erlean
Community Fundraiser
P.S.
Last year, several community organizations, who started using these
techniques, experienced huge
percentage increases in their level of
fundraising success. How could you possibly go wrong investing $37 on
something that will
have such a dramatic affect on the development of
your organization. Give it a go now, Risk-free. If its not
for you, let
me know and I'll refund you, no hard feelings.
P.P.S. The right
community relationships
can have
people whipping out their wallets to support
your organization... the question is, do you have the know-how to build
those relationships? For most
people the answer is "no". Why not get my sure-fire methods
today? It's easy to order using the PayPal link above, and you'll
have the book in just a few minutes from now.
P.P.P.S.
These strategies are already changing
the face of community fundraising for the better. Don't
miss your chance to make a major
impact on your organization's
fortunes.
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