Exciting  news today!  Looking forward to seeing you in New York City for a Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits workshopled by Chris Forbes at NextGen:Charity, Times Square, AXA Equitable Theater 787 7th Avenue, NYC November 18-19th http://NextGenCharity.com/

NextGen:Charity: Sharing ideas on the future of charity and philanthropy

NextGen:Charity is a conference in NYC on innovation in non-profit and philanthropy work that will be attended by 500 executives of leading non-profits and foundations. The conference is two days with presentations at the AXA Equitable theater in Times Square on Thursday, November 18th and workshops on the second day, November 19th at Columbia University.

The event will be very much like TED ( www.TED.com ), and features celebrity presenters: Seth Godin (#1 business blogger & 12-time bestselling author), Nancy Lublin (DoSomething.org & Dress For Success founder),  Peter Thum and Jonathan Greenblatt (Founders of Ethos Water), Scott Harrison (charity:water ), Scott Belsky (Behance), Randi Zuckerberg of Facebook, as well as Google for Non-Profits, and many others. Attendees are CEO’s and executives of major non-profits and foundations. Our media partners include Fast Company, Charity Navigator, Chronicle of Philanthropy(.com) and Mashable who will share content from the conference with over 2 million people online and in print.

You can see more details at http://nextgencharity.com

Some Things Can’t Wait. Market NOW

Get your mission moving. Whether you’re an association or a charity, the time is NOW to transform marketing, try new ways of managing and tap into how you can reinvent your organization.

If your organization is like so many others, you’re feeling the pinch of the economy.  Fundraising revenue is down, membership is experiencing attrition and nonprofits are struggling to survive these tough times.

The AMA’s 2010 Nonprofit Marketing Conference can help you turn things around.  This year’s conference offers unique insights, proven cases and solutions-oriented sessions led by some of today’s brightest minds in nonprofit marketing.

Nonprofit Marketing Conference: Chicago

Swissotel Chicago: 323 East Wacker Drive
Chicago , IL  60601
10/11/2010 8:00 AM  – 10/13/2010 12:00 PM

EVENT BROCHURE

Don’t wait. Now is the time to strengthen your brand and your market position. Get a head start by registering today for the Nonprofit Marketing Conference.

WORLD CLASS KEYNOTES
Download Full Session Descriptions
DAN PALLOTTA Author, Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine their Potential Are you really ready for change? Ddan Pallotta will challenge your  long-held beliefs about charity and share how you can begin down the road to transformation.
SCOTT M. DAVIS Chief Growth Officer, Prophet & Author, The Shift: The Transformation of Today’s Marketers into Tomorrow’s Growth Leaders Today’s Marketer, Tomorrow’s Growth Leader Learn the 5 shifts you must undertake to transform the role of marketing in order to drive growth agenda.
CHRIS FORBES Co-Author, Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits and Nonprofit Marketing Coach Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits Are you survivor savvy?  Chris Forces will show you how to get aggressive by developing a personalized battle plan for your organization using a proven arsenal of Guerrilla Marketing tactics.
Featured Nonprofit Thought Leaders Andy Ferrin–National 4H Council Wendy Macgregor—Feeding America Emilio Pardo—-AARP Cynthia Round—-United Way Worldwide Reji Puthenveetil—–Group Newhouse Angela Geiger—-Alzheimer’s Association Kay Keenan—Big Brothers Big Sisters of America Candace Hanau—Save the Children USA Evan Mcelroy—-Boys & Girls Club of America

One personality trait you need in great measure as guerrilla marketer is imagination. Nonguerrilla marketers make the mistake of thinking imagination means being the most creative. Even the most expensive advertising agencies can miss this point. It is not how creative and slick you can be that makes the most impact for your message. There are plenty of snazzy ads that don’t work. There are numerous commercials that are entertaining or funny that can’t sell anything. It’s not the most artistic advertisement that makes the difference—it is the one that gets the most response.

Guerrilla Marketing Thought: Very often it is how you frame and solve the problem of getting the attention of the people you want to reach that makes the difference. That takes imagination not art.

Take a lesson from Pulitzer Prize winning photographers. They are not the ones who make the news. They don’t engage in planning the events of history, they are simply present and put the frame around the moment. They zoom in on the right part of the picture to catch the eye. They have the angle that tells the story of the event in the picture. They have timing that clicks their shutter at just the right second. They portray the real, raw, energetic, or joyful emotion that gets a gut reaction from the person looking at the image. The Pulitzer winning photos are often not always the most artistic images, but they are usually the most honest and relevant for the moment. They are in their moment, are you in yours?

You need to be in your moment and ready to position the eyes (and ears) of the people you want to reach in the right way. You can frame how people experience your marketing in ways that may not get the awards and accolades of the advertising industry, but that cut to the heart and get people responding to you.

Many organizations put together their marketing materials with the worst approach for getting attention from the people they want to reach. They send their messages out with “Me Marketing.” Me Marketing is the kind of communication that centers on the organization. When I pick up your brochure as a prospect, I am learning about you and what you want to do. You are talking about you. You are telling your side of the story.

You Marketing is just the opposite of Me Marketing. Most people are tuned into what matters to them. They tune in to the messages that speak to their needs from their perspective. If I pick up your brochure and it is talking about “you,” you are really talking to the people you want to reach. People are far more interested in what benefits them. This approach, forces you to find the benefits and life-application of what you are offering to people.

Now go back and look at your website or brochures. Do you tell about your mission, your great staff, your awards, your programs? Is it all about me-me, me? How can you change the copy to reflect more You Marketing?  Nonprofits are sometimes the worst offenders when it comes to “Me Marketing.” It’s not hard to find examples in the “About Us” sections of their websites. It’s true nonprofits need to be passionate about their mission. But it is important to understand that people visiting your site will have their own perceptions and will tune-in most to things that appeal to their needs.  Don’t just talk about yourself.

Help the person who is reading your website or printed materials put themselves in the story line. Put the people you want to reach into the picture and they will pay much closer attention to you.  Every sentence needs to be about the reader and how their involvement will make a difference in your community. As you write your first draft of the copy on your website or brochure, start all your sentences with the word you. As you write and after you edit, you will have a very compelling message that resonates with your readers.

Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits, released July 2, 2010, is the latest book in the guerrilla marketing series and it is hot off the press. Co-authors Jay Conrad Levinson, Frank Adkins and Chris Forbes team up to offer 250 tactics to promote, recruit, motivate and raise more money.

In this webinar co-author, Chris Forbes, will share his insights and expertise around marketing of nonprofit organizations and projects. Join us for what is sure to be an insightful and inspiring talk.

After the interview, there will be time for questions, answers and discussion with participants.

Event Creator: Sarah Eaton of Eaton International Consulting
Event Type: Web Event
Name: Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits with Chris Forbes
When: Aug 19 2010 – 9:00am – 10:00am-Aug 19 2010 , US/Pacific (GMT-08:00)*
Participant URL: http://tinyurl.com/lcpublic

Short Description: Join me as I interview Chris Forbes, co-author of Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits.
Detail Description:

A lot of nonprofits are doing a lot of good things that are ineffective in achieving their mission. Your organization’s ability to accomplish your mission can become strained when you don’t keep a sharp eye on your mission and objectives. Beware of mission drift in your product development, programing and other planning. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Even if you can do it well. Don’t let your mission be stampeded under a herd of Purple Cows! And don’t assume that because you have always done something in your organization that it is essential to your mission. Who knows, leaders before could have lost their focus on the mission too.  Guerrillas are focused on long term results and sustainable impact.

Could you be convicted of success?

One of the problems with nonprofit marketing is people have trouble finding the right metrics to track in their outreach. Well, here’s an idea to help. As an exercise, ask yourself if your organization were on trial for accomplishing your mission, what would be the evidence used to convict?  What would the charges be? Who would the lawyers interview as witnesses? Could your strategies stand up under cross-examination? What are the exhibits that would be used in the case? If the media were covering the trial, what would be the headlines? These are the metrics for your organization’s success, track these things.

The real crime is to be guilty of nonprofit marketing and only have a little circumstantial evidence of your effectiveness.

A Special Message from Jay Conrad Levinson:

Dear Guerrilla –

I promise that the best use of your time and energy this year will be to learn about marketing in the home of the Father of Guerrilla Marketing.  You’ll learn in face-to-face sessions with me and get the personal attention you deserve.

That means doing everything you can to attend the Guerrilla Marketing Intensive from August 16th through the 18th at my lakefront house just outside Orlando, Florida.  You’ll benefit from 21 hours of invaluable training, all delivered by me, personally, in an intimate and comfortable setting that overlooks Lake Monroe.

I plan on sharing insights, one after another, that will probably blow you away because so many of them fly in the face of conventional wisdom.  Our last Guerrilla Marketing Intensive, held in June of this year, was a resounding success, as you’ll hear when you view the video you can click to after you finish this email.  Every person who attended got a whole lot more out of it than they ever expected.

www.gmarketing.com/intensive

You’ll also get a signed copy of the latest Guerrilla Marketing book, and be awarded a handsome, framed Certificate of Completion, along with a highly professional workbook for the hands-on exercises you’ll be doing.  But most of all, you’ll leave the Intensive with more solid, usable, unforgettable, and practical marketing wisdom than your competitors will ever have.

Some attendees felt that the Guerrilla Marketing Strategy that they created, with my help, was their most important take-away of the three days.

We’ll explode myths you may have been believing, investigate new avenues that are still unknown to most business owners, and delve into the secrets of Guerrilla Marketing, many of which have created millionaires and a fair share of billionaires.

Guerrilla Marketing is rapidly becoming mainstream marketing, and those who don’t know why are suffering.  That’s why we’ve now sold over 21 million copies of Guerrilla Marketing books and why they’re now in 62 languages.  As there are now two kinds of businesses — growing and dying, there are also two kinds of business owners — constantly learning and hopelessly clueless.

The size of our Guerrilla Marketing Intensive is limited. But we’ve made it simple to afford by letting you make two payments of $2499 each.  That fee is expected to double when the recession ends, so don’t miss out on it now.

Just view the video about it by clicking on the blue hyperlink below, then register while you can still be admitted to this rare opportunity to learn what guerrillas must know about marketing in 2010 and beyond.

www.gmarketing.com/intensive

I look forward to meeting you and sharing crucial guerrilla marketing insights with you.  Every single word i say will be directed to improving your profits starting immediately and lasting forever.

Jay

ps: My daughter, Amy Levinson is standing by to answer your questions by phone at 360-791-7479 or by email at olympiagal@aol.com

Jay
The Father of Guerrilla Marketing
Author, “Guerrilla Marketing” series of books
Named one of the 100 best business books ever written
Over 21 million sold; now in 62 languages

PS: You’ll never enjoy learning more than at this Guerrilla Marketing Intensive.

IRVINE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Most ministries do not have a lot of money available to use for marketing. But you don’t have to have a lot of money if you use Guerrilla Marketing to promote your faith-based nonprofit. Much of what Guerrillas need to be effective in outreach is a little application of time, energy and imagination. Guerrilla Marketing takes the mystery out of nonprofit marketing and gives you practical actions your organization can take to get people to help you spread the word without spending a lot of money. With Guerrilla tactics a church can get a lot of attention and mobilize parishioners very quickly.

“Great things can happen when people are buzzing about the great things your ministry is doing”

“Great things can happen when people are buzzing about the great things your ministry is doing,” explains Chris Forbes, co-author of Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits with Jay Conrad Levinson and Frank Adkins. “If people are not talking up your faith-based nonprofit, you can start using Guerrilla Marketing to get them to help you spread your message. There are 200 Guerrilla Marketing weapons at your disposal, many of them are free. Guerrillas don’t rely on a single marketing tool to get the word out, they use a combination of them.”

Forbes offers the following ideas to get you started in your own Guerrilla ministry outreach:

Satisfying Relationships: Put first things first. The secret to getting real word-of-mouth advertising from members in your church is to treat people with respect and meet their needs better. Many churches are so busy looking for the next person they want to invite to their church, they overlook the active members and let lapsed attendees slip through the cracks. Satisfied members naturally talk about their good experiences to other people.

Use of Language: Outside people don’t understand church jargon, so don’t use it in your promotions. For example, you may know what words like “exalt,” “equip” and “anointed” mean, but what do these things mean to the people who have never visited your church? Be careful to use only terms that have a clear meaning to your target audience.

Word-of-mouse: Make it simple for your ministry’s messages to spread online. Use Internet widgets and digital tools that make it easy for inspired people to talk about your ministry to their contacts. Put your promotional materials on the web and make them compatible with social media networks. Posting your events on sites like Facebook and Twitter can help your church members spread the word within their personal relationship networks.

Mini-media: Give church members pocket sized invitation cards, mail post cards, post yard signs, give out t-shirts, hang posters, and use other tools to invite people and talk up your church. Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits lists and describes 30 Mini-media Guerrilla weapons you can use.

News releases: If you are going to have a special event that’s worth talking about, remember to also alert the media about it with a news release. If your event is newsworthy, the local media will cover your event and their reports will attract people to your ministry. Guerrilla Marketing is the truth made fascinating. What could be more newsworthy?

Testimonials: Ask people to share a testimony in person at your church, in writing, on video, and in other media. Always get permission before using a church member’s picture in promotional materials. When you use their image, you are implying their endorsement.

Going Guerrilla in faith-based marketing can get people talking about your church, your programs, the gospel, and anything else your church is doing. When good buzz is happening, your church reaches more people in ways that are the most credible to seekers and prospective members.

Learn more about mobilizing your faith-based nonprofit’s supporters and church’s members by reading the book Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits.

Chris Forbes http://gmnonprofits.com/ is the co-author of Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits with Jay Conrad Levinson and Frank Adkins. He is a certified Guerrilla Marketing coach specializing in nonprofit marketing. He frequently consults within the Southern Baptist Convention with 16 million+ members.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Forbes is available for interview. Review copies of Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits, cover image, and author headshots are available.

Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits

Free Nonprofit 911® Webinar
Tuesday, August 3 at 1 pm ET

Learn to develop a personalized battle plan for your organization using the proven weapons of Guerrilla marketing to promote, recruit, motivate, and raise more money for your nonprofit.  Chris Forbes and Frank Adkins, co-authors of thew new book, Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits with Jay Conrad Levinson, the father of Guerrilla marketing, will show you how “going guerrilla” can give your organization the survivor’s edge.

Join the webinar to find out how to:

• Cultivate the Guerrilla Marketer’s personality in yourself
• Turn your mission statement into a powerful marketing asset
• Use The Golden Rules of Fundraising Success
• Add your organization’s calendar to your marketing arsenal

A few lucky participants will win a free copy of their book so register today! >> Here!

Recently Pastor Rick Warren posted this article on his blog and newsletter “Eleven ideas for researching your community” with Guerrilla research tips useful to faith-based nonprofits for learning about their community. A large percentage of nonprofits, including the largest organizations in the United Stated, are affiliated with religion. We feel the ideas in the article are suitable for any nonprofit, so we are re-posting them here. Our book is designed to be useful for all types of nonprofits. You can find more easy-to-implement research ideas in our book that was recently published by Entrepreneur Press, available on Amazon and in bookstores. Do a zip code search (here) chances are high there’s a Barnes & Noble near you with Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits in stock right now!

How do you find out about those who live in your area?

• Media Representatives: Sales people who work for newspapers, radio and television stations, outdoor advertisers, know a lot about your community. Talk to them and also learn about the available communication channels in your marketplace.

• Book Stores: Read books and reports of religious surveys. Increasingly, books containing reports of religious research are published each year. Become familiar with the available research that is most similar to your target community.

• Site Visits: Take a ‘windshield survey’ by driving through the neighborhoods where you want to launch a new outreach.

• In-depth Interviews: Talk to community leaders, business, nonprofit groups, anyone who deals with the public locally. Make it a point to get to know the “gatekeepers” of your targeted community.

• Internet Search Engines: Don’t leave your house looking for research until you have spent time searching the internet for community information. So much is available online it would be a mistake to not take full advantage of what you can find on the web.

• Libraries: Get to know your local librarian, he/she knows where to find resources you might overlook like, the Sourcebook of Zip Code Demographics, a handy reference guide with the specifics about people in your community by zip code.

• Government Agencies: Your local school board, chamber of commerce, economic development authority often publish important statistics that are relevant to your ministry.

• Demographic Services: There are many companies that package demographic information at a relatively low cost. If your church is affiliated with a denomination, check your denominational office for available demographic data.

• Original Research Projects: You can conduct your own original surveys, interviews, and focus groups. A simple door-to-door survey could offer tremendous new insights about your community.

• Persona Profiles: Use the information you gain in your research to create a profile of the people you want to reach.

• Other churches: You might interview other pastors in the area to get a consensus on the spiritual climate of your community. Pastors who’ve served a dozen years in a community should be very aware of local issues and spiritual trends in an area.

The bottom line is this, no one should know more about your people than you do.