Difference between revisions of "Public Relations"
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===Media Coverage=== | ===Media Coverage=== | ||
| − | + | Trevor has a working relationship with contacts that can get us free advertising in local newspapers, radio ads, and the like. Just last night he gave me names for people at the Huntsville Times and NPR. NPR has been good to us in the past, we had a lot of people visit after that one radio ad. But since then it's my understanding we haven't been able to get a second ad. If we get a standardized process to have press releases, we could have a list of contacts to whom issue the press release for every event at the shop. The press release has a somewhat standardized format (more on that soon) but it's basically a mailing list with a abstract for whatever it is we're promoting. | |
*NPR | *NPR | ||
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Pres releases are easy and cheap to issue (fax is preferred? No idea why) so we should start doing this immediately for any and every event that's of public interest. Not every venue will cover every event, some might never offer any coverage, but the asking is free and if they do any kind of story about us it's free and can only bring people in to walk past our donation jar. The more we increase coverage the more people walk past the jar. And that's only a small, short-term goal. Further down the line this increases public awareness; we already have great word-of-mouth but the more we act on it and spread it out in media the more likely large donators will have heard about us. If they've heard of us before, they're much more likely to donate larger sums of cash or materials or approve us for grants. | Pres releases are easy and cheap to issue (fax is preferred? No idea why) so we should start doing this immediately for any and every event that's of public interest. Not every venue will cover every event, some might never offer any coverage, but the asking is free and if they do any kind of story about us it's free and can only bring people in to walk past our donation jar. The more we increase coverage the more people walk past the jar. And that's only a small, short-term goal. Further down the line this increases public awareness; we already have great word-of-mouth but the more we act on it and spread it out in media the more likely large donators will have heard about us. If they've heard of us before, they're much more likely to donate larger sums of cash or materials or approve us for grants. | ||
| − | Sort of like having Make Magazine follow us and announce the events on our calendar, the Huntsville Times has an insert every weekend on events happening in Huntsville, and they ought to be covering us just like the Flying Monkey. We're a community center, and we should be on the calendar of local events. As explore Trevor's database for foundations and companies to solicit, we can start issuing press releases to them as well. | + | Sort of like having Make Magazine follow us and announce the events on our calendar, the Huntsville Times has an insert every weekend on events happening in Huntsville, and they ought to be covering us just like the Flying Monkey. We're a community center, and we should be on the calendar of local events. As explore Trevor's database for foundations and companies to solicit, we can start issuing press releases to them as well. |
===Grant Applications=== | ===Grant Applications=== | ||
Lots of charities, foundations, and large corporations have a system for giving organizations like Makers Local money. We could try to find them and fill out applications for their grant programs. Trevor is conducting research on this now, hopefully more updates soon. | Lots of charities, foundations, and large corporations have a system for giving organizations like Makers Local money. We could try to find them and fill out applications for their grant programs. Trevor is conducting research on this now, hopefully more updates soon. | ||
Revision as of 13:13, 16 June 2010
Overview
To help finance the shop and to earn money to support projects and hardware acquisitions, I'm trying to set up a system of public relations for the shop. Trevor Daniels is helping immensely on this, since he has years of experience working as a promotor for political campaigns. He wanted to volunteer to do some market research and advertising for us. Obviously I don't want to allow any company or outsiders to have creative control or tell us what to do, but this could bring in new members and pay for a lot of hardware, like the laser cutter or parts for a big C&C machine. There's basically two ideas here that we started brainstorming.
Sponsorship Solicitation
We could put together a package, a proposal document to ask for sponsorship from some of the companies here in Research Park. Imagine if we could get Mark Spencer to donate some money to the shop on a regular basis? Or maybe Boeing wants to hang a banner up in the shop when we do an Open House, but they give us a few hundred dollars to have it up there? A marketing package, sort of a big brochure, would be our pitch to ask companies and organizations if they could help with the shop. The cost to mail these out would be surprisingly cheap. This is how the political campaigns get their fund raising done, and the follow up rate is about 10%. For every hundred of these they mail out, they get about 10 responses and they start talking about money.
- Increase public awareness with untargeted media coverage - basic fluff pieces from general news, helps to ensure that people in charge of donations from these groups have heard of us before we send them a solicitation
- Solicitation package should contain
- mission statement,
- verification of our 501c3
- brochure content
- About Us
- completed projects
- group history
Media Coverage
Trevor has a working relationship with contacts that can get us free advertising in local newspapers, radio ads, and the like. Just last night he gave me names for people at the Huntsville Times and NPR. NPR has been good to us in the past, we had a lot of people visit after that one radio ad. But since then it's my understanding we haven't been able to get a second ad. If we get a standardized process to have press releases, we could have a list of contacts to whom issue the press release for every event at the shop. The press release has a somewhat standardized format (more on that soon) but it's basically a mailing list with a abstract for whatever it is we're promoting.
- NPR
- Local Network Affiliates
- Network news is always desparate for stories to cover with fluff pieces. It wouldn't be the most in-depth coverage, but it raises awareness for the solicitation package above.
- Huntsville Times
- Valley Planet
- Any other publication relevant to our interests
- Make Magazine
- Wired
- 2600?
- IEEE?
Pres releases are easy and cheap to issue (fax is preferred? No idea why) so we should start doing this immediately for any and every event that's of public interest. Not every venue will cover every event, some might never offer any coverage, but the asking is free and if they do any kind of story about us it's free and can only bring people in to walk past our donation jar. The more we increase coverage the more people walk past the jar. And that's only a small, short-term goal. Further down the line this increases public awareness; we already have great word-of-mouth but the more we act on it and spread it out in media the more likely large donators will have heard about us. If they've heard of us before, they're much more likely to donate larger sums of cash or materials or approve us for grants.
Sort of like having Make Magazine follow us and announce the events on our calendar, the Huntsville Times has an insert every weekend on events happening in Huntsville, and they ought to be covering us just like the Flying Monkey. We're a community center, and we should be on the calendar of local events. As explore Trevor's database for foundations and companies to solicit, we can start issuing press releases to them as well.
Grant Applications
Lots of charities, foundations, and large corporations have a system for giving organizations like Makers Local money. We could try to find them and fill out applications for their grant programs. Trevor is conducting research on this now, hopefully more updates soon.
