‘Tis the season to grant wishes, and the team at ProspectMX has the spirit in 2008.
In order to do something special for those that spend all year working for the needs of others, we are proud to announce the ProspectMX Christmas Wish.
If your non-profit organization would like to receive $10,000 in internet marketing services from our company, we invite you to answer the following question on your blog or website between today (12/11) and the end of the year (12/31):
“How can internet marketing benefit your organization?”
Runner-up prizes are also available, including a year-long subscription to the SEO 101 Tools (launching this January), a three-month subscription to SEOmoz PRO (which includes Linkscape), and a three-month subscription to trackur – a social media monitoring service.
In order for an organization to be considered, it must have 501 3(c) status. Here’s what any interested non-profit needs to do:
- Compose a blog post or web essay that answers the question “how can internet marketing benefit your organization?”
- Drop a note in the comments of this blog post that includes a link to your entry (just so we can be 100% sure we got your entry).
Official rules are listed here. For more information on the ProspectMX Christmas Wish, you can e-mail me: jbentz [at] prospectmx [dot] com.
what if a non profit needs the help so badly that they don’t even have a blog or easily editable website?
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@ethan: A non-prof without a blog or website is more than welcome to enter our contest. Our graphic design and programming team can build an easy-to-use, attractive website that also has SEO best practices included for a non-prof that fits that description.
It’s not published here in the blog post, but a press release about the contest says we will “work on developing and implementing an internet marketing plan that will best fulfill the goals and needs of the non-profit organization.”
If you know of an organization like this that would be interested in entering, have them simply post their answer in the comments section below.
Thanks for your comments.
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cool
love the idea btw
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Since 1883, Hospitality Homes has provided no-cost, temporary home-based housing for the families who accompany patients to Boston-area hospitals. This compassionate resource is provided through a network of local host families who open unused bedrooms to welcome guests who are here under tremendous emotional and financial stress. Unlike the well-funded and better known hospital housing programs like Ronald McDonald House, Cam Neely House or others, Hospitality Homes is open to guests who are here with patients of any income bracket, diagnosis, treatment center and duration, and the network of host homes creates a greater supply of housing than can one building structure with finite bedrooms and eligibility restrictions.
I am a longtime host family and Board member. Were you to have a family in a medical crisis, there could be no greater gift than the warm and unconditional welcome by “strangers” to help you to be near your loved patient at a time of medical crisis or urgent need.
In the current economy, the demand for this resource by patients’ families and the hospitals who need housing to bring patients here (60% are pediatric cases from all over the world, largely for cancer, cardiac, organ transplant and burn care) for here has risen exponentially because Boston hotels are very pricy and often sold out. Hospitality Homes runs on a scant budget and 3 1/2 staff, yet has to keep pace with the demand by recruiting and training more host families (including multi-lingual), training hospital social workers, and cultivating donor dollars. The program screens and trains host families, receives qualified guest referrals from hospitals, and then matches the guest family (number of people, duration of stay, need for kitchen or parking, transit access, language, pet allergies, etc.) to available host families. This process is usually provided with an urgent drama hinging on our ability to fulfill a housing request, and is technology dependent. Hospitality Homes is a 501c3 nonprofit and is entirely donor funded.
Thank you for consideration. What a great offer!
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An interesting twist on an old promotion – tell me why you need it and the best story wins.
The beauty of such promotions lies not only in who wins, but in the challenge to all who enter to actually verbalize why they should be chosen – what is the core value they bring to the game.
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@Global Patriot – Apologies if I am misunderstanding you, but by choosing a “winner” by no means are we saying one non-prof’s core value is more worthy than another.
That said, a non-profs understanding of the importance of internet marketing to their goals as a non-profit will definitely be considered in addition to need.
I don’t think I’ve ever come across a non-profit that didn’t have a great cause. I just want to make sure everyone understands that we aren’t here to say one cause is “more important” than another.
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Marketing is an unfamiliar concept for my nonprofit organization. It’s important that we understand that marketing is more than just the old sense of making a sale or obtaining a donation. Marketing is a way to satisfying the consumer and donor needs, but where will we start is the question?
It will allow us to develop our public relations strategy. We will be sure to use the media, other associations that are reaching out to the same target market that we are.
By developing and maintaining a professional Internet presence by creating a web site. Our Organization can use a web site as a great resource to display useful information, news, monthly newsletters, and events, create community, share alternatives to donating money, and showcase the benefits of our organization.
Researching and maintaining our prospect and customer databases. We will not let these resources be wasted. We will use it for special mailings, follow-up telephone calls, event invitations, alliance development, research profiling, and market segmentation.
Show and advertise the results and objectives that the organization achieves. We fill find that it is effective to showcase those that are receiving benefits, inversions, activities, and projects.
Always actively search for alliances with other organizations, commerce, government, advertising media, and business. This step alone often brings the most benefit to nonprofit organizations.
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Thank you for this unique opportunity. I have pasted a link to the contest article below as well as added it to the homepage of our website. When you visit ffabt.org in the left column you will see our appeal for your graces in the holiday season. Thanks for this unique opportunity! I will paste the text below as well to forego any chance of a server going down and missing out on the contest.
http://ffabt.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67:wish&catid=40:who&Itemid=80
Please Grant Our Christmas Wish ProspectMX
Everyone who has ever tried to start a non-profit with visions of creating sustainable social change knows the failure rate is even greater than those who try to start a small business. Everyone you run into seems to throw up a wall. Today’s information age has compound problems as well. More awareness is coming to larger firms, and with the flood of inquiries major funders have received many have cut off all inquiry based communication and have opted to hire research teams to find funding opportunities. So where does a growing non-profit seeking to expand its services turn? Well in this day and age the answer is simple, viral and internet markets. The two top ROI generators across industry. Viral marketing, better known as word of mouth, has always been the most cost effective solution to marketing. Treating people well drives positive awareness of what you do and more referrals from others who can help grow your profits, or in the case of non-profits, help with securing needed funding.
However, just starting out it is difficult to grow a viral base quickly, but FFABT is working on strategies to assist in the mission. Attending strategic events, volunteering for other organizations, partnering on initiatives are all strategies they employ to secure their name is getting out there and in a positive way. Yet, if you are to realize a funding goal of more than 200,000 you need to do more, a lot more.
That’s where the “Christmas Wish Contest” comes in. Everyone who knows our organization sees we have a lot in the works, and we are a very lean organization with a strong priority on outreach and direct services, so what tends to get neglected? Internet marketing, it is by far the other most cost effective way to get our name out to those who are looking to fund poverty ending and higher education access causes.Hoping to be recipients of ProspectMX’s grand prize in their Christmas wish contest, the company is giving away $10,000 to help a non-profit with their internet marketing.
So how would this help us? Well for starters it would expand awareness and help grow our reputation so hopefully we can realize our 2009 funding goal of $980,000 in a time where leaders of many organizations have just thrown up their hands and have started to cut employees.The company works with organizations on a host of services and can assist with growing our reputation, building a site ranked higher in search results, help with keywords so more funders find us in searches, help us expand our PR distribution to a national level, as well as a host of other things that we would be grateful for in this holiday season.
More than anything this would afford more time to keep growing our outreach documentation that can be used in partnership with their services to create widespread awareness of our actionable solutions to end generational poverty in the United States. As many of you are aware this is a complex area that we could use an expert’s help with to realize the greatest benefit. As experts in their field of internet marketing the team at ProspectMX has ample experience to help us with our cause.
Rory Wilfong, Steve Young and Dave Conklin started just as we did, with no-startup capital whatsoever. However, by the end of year one they grew their first venture to having gross sales of $360,000, followed by over $2.5 Million just a year later to $3.6 Million by end of the third year. Their experience in innovation and relationship management will be an invaluable asset to growing our organization expeditiously.
In 2007 they started ProspectMX as their second joint venture, so their new organization is relatively new in its lifecycle as well. Their contest affords a very unique opportunity to partner two rapidly expanding organizations with a common mission of positive social change. At this time in our organization’s lifecycle the cards are statistically stacked against us. However, strategy and perseverance have gotten us this far, and we don’t intend to stop there. Please join me in making a special Christmas Wish that we be selected for their Grand Prize so we can expedite our fundraising in the coming year and expand our services so we reach 100,000 served by 2010.
For questions about this article or for a release to publish, please contact Stephen Durkee at (480) 440 -1240.
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Bridging Communities in Southwest Detroit serves the homebound elders, creates intergenerational experiences, and is rebuilding the community. We use volunteer services to provide the pinnacle of compassionate, complete, and cost-effective service to assist an elder in remaining in the community of their choice.
We are a small, grassroots organization relying on the help of over 2,000 volunteers to support the elders in their home. Being able to connect to potential volunteers through our online presence is imperative in this day and age. The recruitment opportunities are endless and we need a comprehensive plan to achieve greater success.
We are also in great need of donors. Our website is currently confusing as to how to donate to us and we do not have significant donor opportunities throughout our site. Our site does not have a consistent marketing goal and purpose – we have looked for marketing folks, but have only been able to find web programmers, not designers or marketers.
A successful internet marketing plan could help us increase our capacity for direct eldercare service, positive volunteer experiences and learning opportunities, and a stronger organizational capacity through increased donations. We are a collaborative organization at heart and any information we learn is shared with many other organizations in Detroit.
Thanks for the opportunity to apply!
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My entry is at http://www.morgretdesigns.com/index.php/2008/12/31/how-can-internet-marketing-benefit-oer-commons/.
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