Community Non-Profit Groups Need To Publicize Their Fund Raising Events

I am going to generalize on the subject of non-profit organizations in our town regarding their efforts to "get the word out" about their fund raising events.

There is no question that publicizing fund raisers is not easy in a 45 square mile town, with multiple post office addresses, a limited number of not for profit bulletin boards, no local daily newspaper, and only one or two local radio stations. Add in the mixture of families with no children, or no children in k-8 or high schools in the town, single person households, retired and senior citizen households, and households with no one involved in sports/civic/municipal/social organizations and you have a fragmented population in terms of effective communications.

Not all people utilize e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Patch, blogs, electronic bulletin boards or other technologies. The Township has a municipal website including a programs and events calendar. Patch has an events calendar and accepts notices of fund raising activities from non-profit groups. Many local businesses allow the posting of flyers on their premises. The First Aid Squad allows some public event information to be posted on their outdoor sign. The Observer Tribune and several free weekly publications accept and publish notices of a wide variety of events.

In order to take advantage of these avenues of communication, an organization has to reach out and notify the various outlets of their upcoming activities. That is where town wide communications seems to fall apart. It seems many non-profit groups either fail to reach out or use only one or two of the possible avenues of communication.

The result is that many fund raisers and events don't get the kind of response they hope for and depend on. The reason I'm bringing this up in my blog is that there were at least three local events/fund raisers that I would have participated in or contributed to if I had known about them. In one case I was not on the mailing list the organization used, in another I only found out about the fund raiser when I glanced at a posted flyer while waiting to use an ATM machine. I am going to try and develop a list of all the non-profit organizations and clubs in town, along with a "check list" of as many free communications outlets I can find that serve our community.

Then I will try and share the check list with the organizations and see if we can reduce the number of events and fund raisers that fail or under perform expectations due to the simple fact that many residents were not aware of them. I am sure I will hear from some of you regarding "deficiencies" in the idea I am proposing. Some groups may feel that they get what they are looking for in terms of participation in their events and programs. I also hope to hear from some individuals and groups that have additional ideas on how to make this work. Thanks to those of you who will take the time to read this.