(Non-authoritative) advice on setting up a community campaign

On Tuesday, decease Beg to Differ learned that friend and barista extraordinaire  Anthony Lewis and his roommate Mark Douglas, view lost their apartment in a fire that consumed their 19-unit building in Ottawa’s The Glebe. They were both uninsured. But what could we do to help? Here’s a blow-by-blow of what we came up with.

(NOTE: we’re not financial, legal, or Web experts. This is just opinion based on trial and error. Know a better way? Let us know in the Comments!)

But first: please give!

Sorry to give away the ending, but this is the solution we came up with to help our friends. Click the ChipIn button below if you want to contribute.

If you find yourself in this situation:

1) Reach out fast through social networks (both kinds)

I originally heard from my wife who heard from some mutual friends from the Bridgehead coffee-shop community – an off-line social network.

Then, after reaching out by phone, e-mail, and Facebook to our very small circle, we realized that the boys needed a lot of stuff to start their lives again – and while they’re not wealthy, just re-stocking two wardrobes and basic furniture is going to be thousands of dollars.  But we didn’t have any clue how to start setting up a fund for them.

Twitter and Facebook turned out to be a Godsend. Within 30 minutes of asking the question, we had 20 or so responses with some great info and offers to help. Blogger Vicky Smallman and her husband Pat were especially helpful, calling around to Community Associations and politicians to find out what was already going on (thanks to all who helped).

2) Set up a bank account

Turns out that the front line in responding to local disasters is the good-old-fashioned community bank branch. They are eager to set up special accounts, and to physically collect donations.

What they don’t do well is allow you to easily set up online donations. Frantic Google searches turned up very little information.

However, even if you go with PayPal or another online payment option, you’ll still need a bank account, so figure out who and how to manage it and call a local bank as soon as you can. In our case this turned out to be the thing that took the most time, so get started early.

3) Set up a PayPal account

Yes, there are other payment options, and PayPal a) isn’t perfect, and b) will charge transaction fees. But for us, it was the familiar, trusted name, and it lets you accept donations by credit card, cheque, and gives you access to other options like ChipIn(see below).

What wasn’t easy was figuring out what kind of account we needed. If you aren’t a registered charity (and who is in these situations?), the “PayPal Website Payments Standard” product is the one that is free to sign up for, but allows you to set up a “Donate” button like the one on this site that citizens in  Hampshire County, Mass. set up to help arson victims in their community (Thanks @Verrilliance).

At this point, you can simply start e-mailing or Facebooking the PayPal address to friends. So the next steps we took are optional, but there are some advantages.

4) Optional: Set up a blog

It’s helpful to have a simple, intuitive Web address as a central “clearing house” for information – but also to give as much evidence as possible that you’re a legit cause. BE COMPLETELY TRANSPARENT: use real names, and let people know what their money is being used for.

We used WordPress.com to set up our blog. , but Blogger or TypePad work just as well. If you’ve never set up a blog, it’s easier than it looks, but it’s helpful to get somebody experienced to help – as long as they’re not too fussy (fussy equals time). All you really need is a page with “how to help” links.

But note that while WordPress.com is fairly easy and offers flexible design templates, a WordPress “hosted” site doesn’t let you use the ChipIn.com widget or even the PayPal “Donate” button, so there’s a trade-off.

Optional: I also bought “www.helpanthonyandmark.com” from GoDaddy.com for around $10, and re-directed traffic straight to the blog.

5) Optional: consider ChipIn.com

The ChipIn.com service is free, and lets you use these nifty little widgets in almost any blog (except wordpress.com – grr).

The nice thing is that you can set a campaign limit, and you get the “thermometer” to track progress. But because it uses PayPal, it creates an extra click, so it’s definitely not required. It also slowed us down a bit, so in retrospect, we could have gone without it.

6) Back to the social networks

Then, once you’re set up, work it, work it, work it with your broader networks. In our case, we are just getting on this a few days after the event, so we may have lost the advantage of time. But hopefully this information can help others get started faster.

Idea for Social Entrepreneurs:

Someone needs to set up a site that makes this process DIRT SIMPLE for non technical people. Anyone want to take up the challenge?

Two items have Beg to Differ chuckling today. And they both have to do with names that create a bit of unintentional humour….

Story 1: a tale of twins…

First, here a friend tells me through Facebook that his son just introduced him to two friends, this site twin brothers Omar and Sharif.

Now, advice this could be a coincidence, or just me showing my age, since Omar Sharif isn’t exactly a household name any more. But as I told him, if they called their other children Lara, Zhivago and Balalaika, I’m thinking the parents knew what they were doing. (and if you still don’t get it, you’re going to need Google right about now).

Story 2: and speaking of names that have become a liability…

I promised I wouldn’t comment on this story any more, and my friend blogger Shannon Mc Carney would never speak to me again if I added too much to the misery of a certain young swinging billionaire. However, the one thing that caught my eye, was the name of the sex addiction clinic where the aforementioned has hung up his clubs for the time being:

“Gentle Path”

I’ll let you critique the name in your heads – and possibly the comments. I’m just too classy for that.

And while Gentle Path is part of the Pine Grove Behavioral Health & Addiction Center (website here), and I’m sure they do fine work, it struck me that, gosh darn it,  a sex addiction clinic must be the hardest thing in the world to name. Or market. There are just so many double-entendre minefields.

Just try and look at the photo from the Center’s about us page (right) and not come up with a racy caption in your mind.

See? You can’t do it!

Let’s call it the Sharifa Law

Whatever you’re branding, always think about the whole “brandscape” when you pick a name – and look for unintentional humour with the eyes of your most cynical critic (me for example)!

Spotlight pitch problems: wanting to have it all

For the past week, order Beg to Differ has been collecting and commenting on the great  Spotlight Pitches you’ve submitted  – so thanks, cure and please keep them coming!  And so far, even though the pitches ranged from Big Oil to bicycles for Africa, from electricity to social work, we’ve started to see a few common problems. So we’ll deal with a few of them over a couple of posts. Today: the temptation to be all things to all people.

Pick a section, any section

One of the awkward parts of finding yourself in a spotlight moment is not deciding what to say: it’s deciding what to leave out.

But listen up Jack: nobody’s goes looking for “all trades”, and nobody ever pays for flexibility – not even your employer. People give money to other people to solve a problem.

We all want to be seen as flexible, capable, multi-talented, able to do many wonderful things. And yes, being flexible is important. I’ve built a career on being able to apply my expertise in many different ways, in many different industries. But nobody ever paid me to be flexible. That was a bonus.

Respect what they expect

You have to understand that the human brain is organized like a phone book. As we learn about products and companies, we group them into categories, which we use to frame our expectations when we go looking for something new. So when someone asks you “what you do”, you’ll be doing them a big favour by by associating yourself with a recognized category in their head, then getting to the special qualities that make you unique.

It feels limiting. And it doesn’t feel fair. But it works.

So if you’re a social worker, start by saying so. If your company sells software, tell me that before you launch into your “solution bundles” routine.

We need more pitches!

We’ll be collecting  and offering free advice on your Spotlight Pitches all this week, so please leave your pitches comments below or  check this post for ideas on refining your pitch.

Give us your best short statement about yourself or your company

Yesterday, discount we got a few great Spotlight Pitches – responses to a spotlight question like “so, viagra order what do you do?” or “what’s your company all about?” Today, cialis 40mg we got an idea from Mark Dykeman’s Broadcasting Brain post:  how to start 2010 by doing better work. Great thoughts, fantastic choices, and what’s better, the format inspired us: we want to publish your “Spotlight Pitches” on Beg to Differ!

This is NOT an “elevator pitch”

Every time I work with clients on an “elevator pitch” for themselves or their company, three things happen: 1) they ask for time to prepare and make notes, 2) they try to figure out how much information they can cram into 30 seconds, and 3) they almost always end up sounding robotic – like they’ve memorized lines for a grade 3 class play.

And as for content, inevitably, the “pitch” that results leads to a long-winded, jargon-laden tangle of insider words that we then have to untangle, prune, and tune for a human audience.

Now there is absolutely value in nailing an elevator pitch, and my clients are always happy with the results. But it takes a lot of time, and you have to acknowledge up front that it’s an artificial construct. The truth is: you may never get your 30 seconds!

What you do get all the time are spotlight questions.

So your answer has to be:

1. Conversational: it needs to sound natural, non-pushy, non-threatening. In other words, not like a “pitch”.
2. Grade three reading level: use simple sentence structure, not too many modifiers or adjectives.
3. Short: we’ll say 100 words or less, but you’ll get extra props if it’s “Twitter ReTweet friendly” – say 110 characters or less.
4. Universal: it has to be clear enough to help someone who is not in your industry understand your thing. Think long lost cousin at a barbecue.
5. Leave ’em wanting more: yes, answer their question, but in a way that also invites further conversation. Choose ideas that have legs.
6. Take a few tries: Yesterday, people gave a few short bullet points – which helped us play a bit with possibilities.
7. Open source: this is the Internet folks, so if you put it out there, it’s because you want comments, criticism, even remixing, etc.
8. Open for re-publishing: unless you tell us not to, we’ll assume you’re cool if we publish,  ReTweet some examples, or (with extra permission) discuss your pitch in more detail in future posts.

Here we go, the spotlight question:

So, what do you do?

Beg to Differ on how to answer “spotlight questions”.

Yesterday morning, symptoms while doing client work in my “second office” (the local Bridgehead), buy I ran into a friend, an acquaintance, and a former colleague. In all three cases, I  gave them a “spotlight moment” by asking:  “so, what are you up to these days?” Trivial question? Not at all. The answer to that question – or others like “what’s your company all about?” “how does your product work?” or “what do you do?” – is something I call a “spotlight pitch”.

Spotlight on… and… GO!

When I asked my coffee shop question, in all three cases, the answer was initially a vague “oh this and that”, or “getting by”, or “the usual”.

Sound familiar? That’s certainly what I want to say when someone turns the spotlight on me (and I’m a performer in my spare time). It’s like a moment of stage fright: uncomfortable, vulnerable, it makes us feel exposed, and we want to get it over with as soon as possible.

But those awkward spotlight questions are some of the most valuable opportunities any of us ever face. Because in that one moment, a person is asking you: “How are you relevant to me?” How can I remember you?” “How can I help you?” Or one step further: “How can this meeting become more than just an exchange of pleasantries?”

That’s a lot to pack in a short encounter I know. But essentially a spotlight question is the quintessential branding moment for products, ideas, or professionals. It’s your chance to either shine or be ignored.

Intrigue them. Wow them. Don’t settle for jargon, cheese-ball marketing speak, or pat answers. Most importantly: start a conversation.

In my coffee shop encounters, after probing a bit, it turned out that in all three cases, there were synergies between what they were doing and what I do for a living, and it turned out I could help each of them out. But that’s only because I kept asking questions. Most of the time, one spotlight moment is all you get.

So how about you?

Think about your answers to simple questions like that? The spotlight’s on. What’s your pitch?

I’d love to hear examples of Spotlight pitches that worked for you, or completely failed, in the comments below.