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Daniel Benoni

Charitable Checkin Turns Your Good Deeds Into Rewards - 0 views

  • aking the checkin and making it philanthropic
  • lets users post their actions via SMS, web, email, Foursquare or Google Talk.
  • ach act earns the user points that can be redeemed for actual rewards and discounts
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  • choosing to snack on an apple rather than a piece of cake
  • or larger projects like volunteering your time to a non-profit
  • users start to build a social identity based on their actions.
  • where users flesh out profiles based on their philanthropic interests.
  • This concept of a charitable social layer has taken off on other online platforms like Jumo or Causes.com. People are becoming more conscientious of how they’re perceived online. This social layer based on philanthropic interests is both an easy way to track causes and a positive way to self identify.
Daniel Benoni

On the (un?)importance of design - 0 views

  • On the (un?)importance of design
  • We recently underwent a Cinderella-like transformation: A total redesign of the WP Engine website from despicable steaming pile of hideousness to a designed, thematic — dare I say artistic? — sleek new look. Does it matter?
  • It was such a contrast, customers emailed us saying “Thank God you fixed that horrible website. I was embarrassed when referring you guys to friends.” But hold on. They were still customers. And they still were referring us to friends. So I wonder, did it really matter?
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  • It must have mattered. Look how bad it was. Not only were the pages just ugly, they were peppered with database errors and CSS blowups
  • . It doesn’t prove design doesn’t matter, but it does suggest design may not be the deciding factor.
  • Can you see at what point in time we changed design?  No?  Must not have made a difference. Let’s look at time-on-site:
  • Nothing. But this is all superficial — what Really Matters is the Conversion Rate: are more or fewer people signing up each week:
  • Hmm. Looks like everything objective is saying “it doesn’t matter.” But as much as I respect and follow Lean Startup theory, objective measurements aren’t the only things that matter. Those customer emails matter too.
  • The other day we landed a large customer who said they could tell from our website that among our competitors we’re more mature and ready to handle a bigger customer like them. I can tell you — objectively — that we’re among the youngest of our competitors, and although I have a list of reasons why “we’re better,” the truth is that particular customer would probably be served just fine by several of those competitors. Was it the design that gave us that edge? Could be. Didn’t hurt, anyway.
  • Still, the more I look at the importance of design in the startups in my little career, the less it seems to matter.
  • Modern Lean Startup theory blares out from the red-tiled rooftops of Stanford: Seek the Data and Ye Shall Find! First the bounce-rate. If our website design was repulsive — literally — the bounce rate should now diminish. Here’s the data:
  • An even more extreme example comes from my second company ITWatchDogs. I displayed its old homepage at the magnificent Webstock design conference in Wellington earlier this year; the crowd whooped at our violent assault on the visual arts, complete with calliope menubar colors, two broken images tag above the fold, and a layout model that could be seen as a “grid” only after consuming a pillowcase of mushrooms:
  • But you’re anticipating the punch-line — ITWatchDogs grew every month, made millions of dollars, stole business from competitors with billion-dollar market caps (and professional-looking websites), and had a successful exit.
  • Of course it’s only fair to also point out some of the many instructive counter-examples: Hipmunk is the same thing as Orbitz or Travelocity — the only difference is amazing design, not just because it looks good but because it’s so useable. In the words of Joel Spoksly — the design “affords usability.” (P.S. Early Hipmunk team member Alexis Ohanian is so cool and smart and rich and funny and successful and good-looking that really he doesn’t deserve to be alive. (P.P.S. Hey flamers, for God’s sake it’s a joke! Don’t you realize I’m just sore from losing the Pecha Kucha competition to him?)) I always use and recommend Amy Hoy’s time zone tool only because it’s just nice to use and look at. (P.S. she also authors a terrific blog aimed at the solo entrepreneur.) Many people credit Mint’s smash success with their terrific design. Considering how many features were broken for how long, it’s hard to argue. 37signals documented — with data — how design changes results directly in more credit-card-swiping customers. It doesn’t get more “business value” than that. So where does that leave us in the “matters / doesn’t matter” question of design?
  • I think you can go either way, but you must decide whether or not you’re going to value design as core to your startup’s identity, and then act consistently. Here’s what I mean.
  • It’s clear from the outset that design is the only competitive advantage Hipmunk has over its competition. Specifically, by making the flight-search problem pleasurable and useable instead of feeling like you’re navigating pivot tables from Excel ’98.
  • They don’t have better data, better branding, better name, better SEO, or more money. Just better design, and not just easily-copyable incremental improvement, but a quantum leap better.
  • When design is that fundamental to the business — how it acquires and retains customers, garners attention and referrals, and distinguishes itself in the market — obviously design can be the most important thing.
  • Conversely, at ITWatchDogs the company’s internal and external culture was that we’re low-cost, friendly, approachable, regular guys, who understand exactly what you worry about, exactly what your budget is, and we nail it. The site might have looked bad, but our message couldn’t have been clearer.
  • But it is useful to decide where you come down on the question of design in your startup, because if it’s important you’d better work on that right now and develop a consistent culture of valuing design through-and-through, and if it’s not important you’d better decide what is important and nail those things all the harder, because you’ll be competing with people who are using superior design to cover up their lack of competency in those same areas.
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    Design, important or not
Daniel Benoni

Build, market, measure in parallel - LaunchBit - 0 views

  • First-time web entrepreneurs often tell me "Oh we're moving really quickly...we're launching in just 6 months."
  •  The trouble is that product traction isn't just about getting a product out the door.
  • Your biggest competitor isn't any company or individual.  It's time -- the duration you have before you run out of money, morale, and the enthusiasm your significant other/family has for your endeavors.
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  • The trouble with my last company was that our experience in software development came from large companies, where your job is just to ship code.
  • So we thought that a launch was just about writing the code.  And, we did that in 6 months.  But, what we didn't account for was that in a startup, you don't have a ready large group of users just waiting to use your product. So, your launch time must also include a cycle of user experience and marketing.
  • So, if you do everything in series in a drawn out way like we did: build, market, measure, it's a cycle that can turn months into years.  Eric Ries suggests that shortening an iterative loop and going through such a loop multiple times quickly is the key to success.  I would take that a step further and suggest not only cutting activities to shorten that loop, but to do as much of this loop in parallel.
  • Our workflow looks like this: get your Unbounce or LaunchRock page up from Day 1 and start marketing before you have a product.  You can gauge interest and get signups from the very beginning until you're done with the first iteration of the product.  Start getting the Craigslist posts out there on Day 1 to get feedback and potential customers immediately.  Once you have enough of an idea of what to build, start mocking up your idea.  Get those mocks back out to potential customers to make sure you're on the right track.  Iterate as much as possible on paper before building, because it's much faster to re-draw than to re-code.  "Delete features" on your paper prototypes as well, reducing what you need to actually build in code.  Try to code as little as possible to shrink that build time to about 1-2 weeks.  By the time you're done building your first prototype, you've already acquired users from doing marketing in parallel.  This puts you in a position to start measuring usage and gauging interest immediately before iterating through that loop again.
  • Build, market, measure should happen as much as possible in parallel to reduce your launch time and keep your money, morale, and support up.
Daniel Benoni

Dan Shapiro » Vesting is a hack - 1 views

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    Startups are a lot of work!  He quits AcmeCorp and takes a cushy executive gig at a fortune-500 tech firm.  Jill's left solo. Years pass.  Jill first works without salary, then pays herself a pittance.  She bootstraps the company, starting with consulting and moving on the develop a highly successful web service.  As she brings on staff, she issues stock to new employees, ultimately handing out a half-million shares of the company.  Eventually she's the CEO of a 50-person firm, pulling down a respectable $200k per year as the CEO; nearly as much as Jack's pulling down at his gig (not including his benefits and bonuses).
Daniel Benoni

What Do You Stand For? - 1 views

  • 10 Experts, 10 Predictions, 1 Year January 6, 2012 at 9:06 AM by Research & InsightsLast month we looked back at the top trends of 2011, but now that the New Year is upon us, it's time to look forward to what 2012 has in store. We've convened the biggest and brightest minds in cause marketing, corporate responsibility, nonprofit marketing and volunteerism to share their top predictions, programs and issues for the New Year.As for our perspective, we say look out for an influx of disruptive campaigns in 2012. The cause industry continues to mature, and with the flood of new campaigns in the market, companies and nonprofits must do more to make sure their cause stands out in the chatter. Companies will make bigger and braver commitments, support broader and bolder issues and increasingly go out on a limb all in the name of cause. We'll also see more companies support niche causes and partner with smaller, more nimble nonprofits for further differentiation. Let's shake things up this year!
  • My one cause marketing prediction is that by the end of 2012
  • 2012 will see the rise of the employee activist. As 2011 saw the second coming of the consumer activist with powers heretofore inconceivable, the new year will bring the awakening of the most powerful brand ambassadors - the employees. This year employees will awaken to the opportunity they have to create real change inside the corporation and in their communities, simultaneously. Corporations will embrace the chance to help their employees to make that change."
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  • "As CSR and sustainability continue to converge into ‘business excellence,' we will see a growing recognition within executive ranks to understand, recognize and leverage the value of a responsible and sustainable work culture. 2012 just might be the year when change management becomes institutionalized as a prerequisite for growth and profitability."
Daniel Benoni

The 7-Stage Evolution of a Socially Responsible Brand - 0 views

  • For decades, the decision to be an environmentally and socially responsible company has been based on the bottom line: Would it be profitable?
  • In terms of traditional accounting and the legal requirements of corporations, costs always outweighed benefits.But it now seems that this equation is starting to lean the other way as brands recognize the potential financial and reputational advantages they can gain by engaging with consumers around the shared ambition of building a better world.
  • We can see this already happening among some leading brands such as Pepsi, Google, Nike, Patagonia and Starbucks, who have all earned consumer respect for their involvement
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  • ow did this come about? In large part, it is because the payoff for corporate engagement with customers has risen dramatically as a result of social media.
  • As the brand’s customers become loyal fans, they use their social networks to spread the word about that brand, driving even more new fans to join in. This dynamic may have its initial upfront costs, but it pays off in the end through an extended global audience of buyers and fans.
  • Transforming a brand into a socially responsible leader doesn’t happen overnight by simply writing new marketing and advertising strategies. It takes effort to identify a vision that your customers will find credible and aligned with their values.
  • The Seven StagesThe process of becoming a brand leader in the next decades will be an evolutionary one involving at least seven stages.
  • Unsustainable corporate self-interest
  • Self-directed engagement
  • C-suite reflection
  • Consumer facing self-interest:
  • Self-directed reform:
  • Brand leader:
  • Brand visionary:
  • Indeed, if we consider the online reach of companies like Facebook and Twitter, the offline reach of companies like Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Walmart, and the fervent consumer loyalty that companies like Apple, Nike and Patagonia inspire, it’s easy to imagine how a web- and social-savvy population could coerce these companies — and any others who want to follow their example — into becoming the leading global brand visionaries of the future.
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    Describes exactly why Corporate Social Responsibility is the bomb right now. It's a "you better hop-in" bandwagon that most companies can't ignore now!
Daniel Benoni

Virtual Volunteers - How to Recruit Online Volunteers For Nonprofit Fundraising - 0 views

  • Virtual Volunteers - How to Recruit Online Volunteers For Nonprofit Fundraising
  • Most parent organizations, charities, teams, and other non-profits can always use as many volunteers and donors as they can get.Organizations have difficulty finding volunteers for a variety of reasons.
  • the smaller and more local the organization is, the smaller the number of potential volunteers there are available.
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  • a community soup kitchen will never be able to recruit as many volunteers that a national hunger relief charity will be able to.
  • smaller nonprofit organizations have the same needs that the larger ones have
  • fundraising, there is always a need for a fund-raising chairman, a person to do publicity, team leaders and members and the list goes on
  • virtual volunteers.-Volunteermatch.org -Networkforgood.org -Charityguide.org -icouldbe.org -Onlinevolunteering.org -Serviceleader.org -WorldVolunteerWeb.org -Youthxchange.net
  • For example, if you are in need of a graphic designer you might be able to find a virtual volunteer half-way across the country willing to design your fundraising promotional materials.
  • Managing virtual volunteers requires a person with good communication and computer skills.
Daniel Benoni

Companies See Volunteering As a Benefit | Atlantic Philanthropies - 0 views

  • She's been to Sri Lanka and South Africa as a participant in Accenture Development Partnerships, a program that sends employees to work on nonprofit projects in developing countries.
  • As more employees see volunteer work as a way to learn new skills or move their careers forward, volunteering has become a sort of corporate benefit.
  • For an annual fee between $5,000 and $50,000, companies can give their employees access to a VolunteerMatch list of 55,300 nonprofits seeking help. Nonprofits join for free.
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  • Field said one major attraction for companies is the chance to align their employee volunteer programs with the objective of their business.
  • Volunteer programs are tied efforts to retain two major employee groups, younger workers looking for work-life balance and ready-to-retire older workers who want to serve their communities,
  • Bramhall, 29 agreed the Development Partnerships program is a retention tool for Accenture.
  • Workers who are part of Gen Y say they want a job that lets them also exercise their personal values and beliefs, according to a study by Deloitte & Touche USA LLC. The study shows 62 percent of Gen Y respondents between the ages of 18 and 26 want to work for companies that give them a chance to use their skills to help a nonprofit.
  • Lupe Garcia, associate general counsel in the legal department at Gap, Inc. said her supervisors have recognized the fundraising and communication skills she developed in her volunteer work have increased her skills
  • Employees at Gap can spend up to five hours of paid time each month on a volunteer activity. If they spend 15 hours of their own time volunteering, Gap will give $150 to the organization, as well as matching any employee donations.
  • "An important driver in wanting to do this was really a desire to do something with my skills that had a broader impact, that had a deeply social impact," Coghlan said.
Daniel Benoni

Pro Bono Standards & Valuation - Pro Bono 101 - Resources - Lead Pro Bono - Taproot Fou... - 0 views

  • Pro Bono Standards & Valuation In partnership with the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP), Taproot Foundation has developed standards for pro bono service to professionalize the field and ensure the consistent quality of services delivered to recipient organizations
  • Examples of Pro Bono Service HR team audits the HR systems of a nonprofit Finance team develops managerial accounting systems for a nonprofit Property development team helps a nonprofit secure and design office space Creative team develops a nonprofit's annual report Working as part of her company's pro bono commitment to a nonprofit, a professional tax accountant provides tax consulting to needy individuals in the community
  • Examples of Other Skills-Based Service (Not Pro Bono) Executive serves on a nonprofit board and gives informal advice Manager coaches high school student on a business plan competition An accountant independently provides free tax services to an individual in the community who can't afford tax advice Engineer designs a technology curriculum for an after school program Working as part of her company's pro bono commitment to a nonprofit, a software designer sets up staff computers (setting up computers is not within the core description of a software designer's professional expertise)
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  • Current Dollar Fair Market Valuation Pro bono work should be valued at Fair Market Value (FMV) and recorded as non-cash giving in CECP Survey Question 9.  FMV is the hourly or project cost that a paying client would incur for the same service. Companies are encouraged to use the three scenarios below to assist in determining the FMV of services rendered.  The dollar values in the scenarios below are based upon current U.S. salary data adjusted to account for geographic differences and typical fee-discounting practices.  CECP is currently unable to provide dollar-value assistance for non-U.S. pro bono service. Paid-release-time service that does not meet the pro bono criteria should be recorded at a dollar value that is appropriate to the skills involved in CECP Survey Question 22 (do not include pro bono hours in Question 22, as that would be double counting hours recorded in Question 9). When in doubt, the current Independent Sector rate is appropriate.
  • For companies with minimal pro bono tracking capabilities In the absence of employee skill area data and internal billing rates, CECP recommends using an estimate of $120 per hour for pro bono service projects. This is based on a rounded average billing rate for mid-level employees across disciplines, highlighted below. For companies with moderate pro bono tracking capabilities Companies that track the seniority level or skills deployed in pro bono projects should use the following chart to value pro bono hours if internal rates are not available.
  • For companies with robust pro bono tracking capabilities Companies should use their best internal billing information to determine the FMV of services rendered. These valuations should be adjusted to reflect billing differences by: geography, seniority level, rate discounting, employee skill area, etc. To do this, companies must track project metrics that affect billing rates so that an accurate, defensible valuation for pro bono contributions can be recorded. CECP strongly encourages companies to track pro bono to this level of specificity whenever possible.
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    GREAT INFORMATION. To read! - Use cases leads - "What to track in pro-bono" - References, etc. 
Daniel Benoni

Facebook Launches Non-Profit Resource Center - 0 views

  • Facebook is launching a resource center to help non-profits use the social network.
  • The site will include educational materials, tutorials and a downloadable non-profit guide geared toward raising awareness and funds for causes specifically through the social network.
  • how to create a Facebook Page and explains how to set up events and use discussion boards to connect with an audience
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  • he Resource Center will also include a spotlight section for successful non-profits and a success stories app where Facebook will showcase best practices and try to build a community around shared stories and advice.
  • The resource center is clearly meant to provide non-profits tools, but it’s also a sign that Facebook is taking social good seriously. Facebook has been a home to online philanthropy for some time, but it is not the only game in town.
  • t’s important from a business perspective to establish Facebook as a hub for non-profits online, but ultimately the cause — and social good — should come first.
  • The page has already raked in more than 410,000 Likes and only seems to be growing. Has social good hit the mainstream? Should more companies create resource centers?
Daniel Benoni

How to Increase Internal Corporate Community Engagement - 7Summits Blog - 0 views

  • Internal communication and collaboration within intranets has documented solid ROI’s encouraging companies to look to it more and more for increased innovation and decreased costs.
  • Q. So how do you activate your internal community to reach a positive ROI? A. Facilitate Employee Engagement within the platform. A successful company and a thriving corporate culture doesn’t come from an org chart and people identified by numbers it comes from HUMANS, community, and allowing other users to benefit from each other’s expertise. Successful internal community participation directly and indirectly helps users across divisions and regions achieve their goals, find experts, and collaborate efficiently.
  • Successful internal community participation directly and indirectly helps users across divisions and regions achieve their goals, find experts, and collaborate efficiently.
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  • Internal communication and collaboration within intranets has documented solid ROI’s encouraging companies to look to it more and more for increased innovation and decreased costs. While many organizations have achieved these positive ROI’s, the process to realizing them is often challenged. Activating the community, and getting users to interact with each other becomes a difficult behavioral change, but one that is invaluable to the company as a whole and its employees
  • No one is participating because companies are simply using a different communication medium for the same old message. The voice of a community should reign relevant to the workers, not the executives, a common mistake we see with many failed internal community and intranet projects.  The fastest way to make a community relevant and to gain participation is to make it human and to upgrade the messaging to fit the distribution tool.
  • Identify ambassadors/ Experts: Don’t ignore those able to deliver genuine knowledge, identify them, embrace them, and give them room to speak in a HUMAN voice. Engagement breeds engagement. People who are most likely to contribute include natural leaders, employee’s active on other social networks, and members who had a say in the initial community planning stages,
  • Recognize these experts: Thank users who do participate. Many companies build communities prompting “Find an Expert” “Ask a Question” but the true value of the question and answer feature is getting people to answer those questions.
  • Invest in Information Architecture and User Experience: We’ve seen several communities that are lacking engagement because it is unclear to users HOW to engage.  Investments in information architecture are often over looked, even though they are vitally important. 
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    great article to support the need of an internal collaborative tool facilitating community engagement!!!
Daniel Benoni

LinkedIn Now Lets You Include Volunteer Experience in Your Profile - 0 views

  • LinkedIn is adding a new “Volunteer Experience & Causes” field to profiles, the company announced Wednesday. The section will let users highlight and showcase their unpaid or charitable work experience.
  • Promoting your charitable experience will help get you a job, according to a recent survey by LinkedIn. The company polled nearly 2,000 U.S. professionals and found that 41% said that when they are evaluating candidates, they consider volunteer work just as much as paid work. Of the hiring managers surveyed, 20% said they gave a job based on a candidate’s volunteer work experience.
  • Of the 2,000 professionals surveyed, 89% had volunteer experience but only 45% included that information on their resume.
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  • “A lot of people said, ‘I didn’t want to appear to be bragging, I see volunteering as something that I do on a very personal level and I don’t expect to be rewarded for it on a professional level,’”
  • “There are a lot of people that keep it private because they do it for themselves and i respect that,” Williams says. “But at the same time, I think there’s something to be proud of with your commitment to causes.”
Daniel Benoni

Why your company should have a single email address - 0 views

  • Yet, when it comes to email management, most companies seems to adopt a somewhat broken posture: either they don’t advertise any public email or they advertise too many of them.
  • The right number of emails to be advertized by your company is ONE.
  • Fragmented communication issues were numerous and yet subtle. Here’s some anecdotal evidence: Sales team pitched a prospect with the usual 3min introductive verbatim, later to discover that the prospect was already very familiar with our technology, as the prospect was already one week into integrating with Lokad. As a result, the pitch was less than useful, and the sales team appeared clueless. (They were clueless.) Support team, not aware of the importance of a prospect, replied with a short email pointing toward our online documentation to a VIP (Very Important Prospect) who was basically asking for a direct call. Not only we missed a big opportunity to engage with a VIP, but we appeared somewhat carefree too (VIPs expect to be treated as such). A client with a technical question our billing, unsure of the proper contact, decided to separately email sales@, support@ and billing@. He got 3 distinct answers, triple effort for us, and one of them, poorly phrased, seemed to bring a different answer. We spend hours undoing the confusion afterward.
Daniel Benoni

HOW TO: Decide Which Charities Your Business Should Support - 0 views

  • Giving is big business. Every year non-profit organizations solicit companies in the hope of obtaining
  • Giving USA reports corporate giving increased 5.5% to $14.1 billion in 2009.
  • Businesses are willing to give, but are often confused as to which causes might be best for them.
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  • Businesses can build stronger relationships with their stakeholders through their charitable endeavors. Helping others while helping themselves can lead businesses to bigger profits.
  • on’t forget your employees
  • Clarify your business’ values
  • Find out where your stakeholders are donating
  • First Steps
  • Picking a Charity
  • Determine the criteria for the potential charity
  • arrow it down: Search for charities that meet your criteria. Here is the tedious part. Giving USA cites there were more than 1 million charities in the United States in 2009. You may want to enlist another person or a committee to help with the selection process. GuideStar.org has a wonderful search function that allows you to pick through its database by criteria
  • Compare mission statements
  • Make sure organizations are registered
  • Transparency and accountability
  • Trustworthy non-profits will discuss their programs and finances
  • Give your partnership a trial run. Test your partnership by donating to a small project before doing a large campaign.
  • Charities are a fulfilling way to further the mission of your organization while helping the community in which you live and work. Keep these tips in mind the next time you conduct your next cause marketing or charitable campaign, and your organization will be sure to come out ahead.
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    This article is the bomb. We should rehearse it before pitching to a company and show how the process should be done and how we can help them go through it with Invup!
Daniel Benoni

Why Top Brands Are Investing So Much Time In a Social Media Leaderboard - 0 views

  • Why Top Brands Are Investing So Much Time In a Social Media Leaderboard
  • Massive brands like Intel, Audi, Microsoft, Ford Motor Company, Toyota and AT&T have also invested in EA and are quickly rising up EA’s business leaderboard. The real-life success of a company seems to directly correspond with EA’s scoring algorithm. The Fortune 500 ranks public companies by the most after-tax revenue for the year, but how does EA determine its scoring? “We really look at the following: Activity (how much and what you do), audience (who’s listening) and engagement/interaction (how are people engaging you),” Dups said. “So if you can break down any network in that way, you can figure out what we listen to.”
  • Getting In Early
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  • So if brands aren’t necessarily going by their EA network score to judge their return on investment, how do they know if their time is well spent? Robert Scoble thinks it’s too early to say whether brands will see a major return on their EA investment. “It’s something fun to play around with, but that’s all I’d be doing right now if I were a company,” Scoble said. “That said, you could get a lot of PR by playing around with services in early stages of the game. Everyone remembers [the companies that were early to] blogging and Twitter. No one cares about the 3,000th one there.”
  • Intel is seeing results from being an early adopter. “As one of the first Fortune 50 brands on EA, we got first-mover credit,” explained Rhoads. “People noticed we were participating and were able to interact directly through the game with a very active, pre-existing community. It’s very satisfying to invest in that community and I think gratifying and perhaps surprising when a brand re-invests back in you. As far as results are concerned, it’s hard to tell.”
  • While larger companies are always among first adopters for new social networking sites because they have more resources and staff, the true test will be if smaller companies will flock to EA as they have to Facebook and Twitter. Most companies will likely need harder evidence of return on investment in order to justify getting into the game
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    Potential partner, they could use our score in their algorithm, we could ask them some question about their algorithm, we offer them a social value in their score and they drive us really interesting traffic and brands! To check soon!
Daniel Benoni

Yael Cohen: The New Generation of Karma Junkies - 0 views

  • Flash forward to 2011, and philanthropy is the new black. Everywhere you turn, people are spending a few months abroad to build a school
  • volunteering at the blood bank in the evenings after they finish their 9-to-5 job. Everyone has a cause
  • This nouveau philanthropic righteousness is definitely making the world a better place and is empowering a generation to believe that they, as concerned citizens of the world, can make a difference to global issues
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  • Why now?
  • what's with the boom in charity work in recent years?
  • candidates for medical school are becoming more and more qualified right out of university. With great grades and amazing recommendations, it can be hard to differentiate yourself from the pack. Enter philanthropy.
  • It adds some much-needed clout to your character and shows you can commit yourself fully to a project and see it through until the end.
  • Bus ads, billboards and online banner announcements all broadcast the latest causes to hit the scene. Perhaps all this good karma talk has seeped into our collective subconscious minds and led us to believe that the only way to live a worthwhile life is to include a little do-gooding in our daily activities.
  • the most important factor at play when it comes to philanthropy: the pure, selfish, unadulterated sense of warmth and happiness that comes from knowing that you've just used your valuable time to help someone who's not you
  • we've all started realizing that helping other people is just another way of helping yourself.
  • classic debate over whether or not there is truly a selfless good deed that one can partake in, because no matter what altruistic endeavor you're undertaking, you are still selfishly reveling in every little good vibe and pat-on-the-back that comes your way as a result of your labor.
  • behind every good charity organization, there stands an army of amazing volunteers. So, here's to all you karma junkies, altruism enthusiasts and kindness fanatics out there. Consider yourselves all cyber high-fived, because the work you're doing is actually making the world a better place.
Daniel Benoni

Marketing Campaigns are Betting Big on Social Gaming - 0 views

  • GamesThatGive is one company helping brands take advantage of the social gaming boom via Facebook
  • GTG makes custom-branded Facebook games with charitable twist. For example, its You Play, We Give campaign for MasterCard donates as much as 10 cents to Junior Achievement Hudson Valley for every minute a person plays the game, which has more than 30,000 Likes and gets more than 80% of visits from returning visitors. On average, gamers spend 45 minutes on the game page each visit.The concept and execution are the same for GTG’s other big-name clients — Pepsi, Propel, Starbucks and Quaker. A user can play those companies’ custom-branded games on Facebook for a short amount a time until a pop-up box appears requesting that the user “like” the company in order to “double your donation.”“Not only are thousands of dollars going to charity as a result of people playing games, but large companies are successfully using branded social games to turn Facebook fans into customers,” Archer says.
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    Social gaming (not game dynamics :) in fundraising campaign...
Daniel Benoni

Companies Adopt Gaming Techniques to Motivate Employees - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • Striving to make everyday business tasks more engaging, a growing number of firms, including International Business Machines Corp. and consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., are incorporating elements of videogames into the workplace. They're deploying reward and competitive tactics commonly found in the gaming world to make tasks such as management training, data entry and brainstorming seem less like work. Employees receive points or badges for completing jobs or meeting time limits for assignments, for example. Companies also may use leaderboards, which let players view one another's scores, to encourage friendly competition and motivate performance, experts say. This "gamification" of the workplace, or "enterprise gamification" in tech-industry parlance, is a fast-growing business. Companies have used digital games for a number of years to help market products to consumers and build brand loyalty. What's emerging is using games to motivate their own employees.
  • Tech-industry research firm Gartner estimates that by 2014, some 70% of large companies will use the techniques for at least one business process. Market researcher M2 Research estimates revenue from gamification software, consulting and marketing will reach $938 million by 2014 from less than $100 million this year.
  • SAP even turned its gamification efforts into a game, holding a series of "Gamification Cups" to generate ideas for turning various business processes into games.
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  • 400,000 employees, roughly 40% of whom work from home or on the road, gaming is a way to help colleagues connect and stay engaged, explains Mr. Hamilton.
  • found that employees trained on video games learned more factual information, attained a higher skill level and retained information longer than workers who learned in less
  • Still, gaming experts say there are some pitfalls for companies when implementing games internally. Companies need to make sure that the games are designed to actually reward desired behaviors and are not just doling out meaningless awards or badges.
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    Gamification Article
Daniel Benoni

The 5 Minute Guide To Cheap Startup Advertising - 0 views

  • trategy #1: Try to Get Permission
  • Strategy #2: Use Advertising to Test
  • Use advertising as a testing tool rather than a long-term stream of customers.
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  • use it for what it's best at: the ability to generate a slew of visitors very quickly, and to be turned off just as quickly.
  • With properly tracked conversions and an ad on Facebook
  • deal market for your applicati
  • another example, with AdWords you can learn in a hurry which keywords convert for you, and which don't
  • Option #1: Niche Advertising
  • Option #2: Google AdWords
  • Option #3: Facebook
  • 10-15 cent clicks under the right circumstances.
  • The key to low cost Facebook clicks is having a high click through rate (CTR). The key to a high CTR is a combination of a powerful image, an engaging headline, and laser-focused targeting.
  • Target your demographic information so tightly that you can write a headline that addresses them specifically.
  • Start the ads with a modest budget of, say, $5-10 per ad per day
  • But since you've chosen a small group of people, they will start to tune out the ad rather quickly. At this point your CTR will drop and your cost will climb. Pause the ad, and start over with new cities, new images or new headlines.
Daniel Benoni

CharityVillage® Research: Say "Thanks," keep in touch, and deliver on your pr... - 0 views

  • Bell Canada, for example, receives 9,200 requests for either philanthropic or sponsorship support each year
  • ell faces a major challenge in dealing with these applications, and making the difficult decisions concerning which to support and which to turn down, while striving to get good value for its sponsorship investments. Overall, she points out, the objective is "to connect to the things that matter"
  • Bell does not sponsor individual athletes, individuals who simply have an idea or cause they wish to promote, or business launches. If applicable, Foster points out,
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  • The applicant must be financially sound, and Bell will be strongly impressed by organizations with low administrative costs which can offer a partnership that will fit its corporate vision and strengthen its position in the niches it wants to occupy.
  • crucial for Bell to have telecommunications exclusivity in the project
  • s it a unique made-in-Canada concept?
  • Is it likely to attract positive public attention?", "Is the applicant a Bell Canada customer or potential customer?", "Does this proposal present an opportunity for a commercial return for Bell?", and "Will there be a role for Bell employees to play?" No organization, Foster points out, will ever meet all of the criteria, "... but the more 'Yes's, the better your chances."
  • Offer proposals that make commercial sense to Bell Canada
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    Charity Sponsorship.. from the company point of view. Good to read before we go meet a company for a feedback!
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