HoundsGood: Chronicles of a Virtual Volunteer

Many small organizations wonder why they should purchase a laser printer over an inkjet. Inkjets are a fraction of the cost of laser printers, that is for sure. I remember canon toners being an arm and a leg on my college budget. However, the laser jet printer lasts much longer, the finished product is more professional, and you get many more prints out of it before having to change toner. You are less likely to get smeared papers as well. Sometimes groups are lucky enough to get a printer donated. However, what do you do when you want to upgrade or someone helps you upgrade? The cartridges from your old printer are just taking up space.

Gmsupplies.com offers a wide range of toner cartridges, that you may find a little more economical than others sites. What is an added attraction is that they have a program where they buy back toner, developer, and other related supplies. You can make a little money to set aside for the new cartridges you need. One may say it is better to give your supplies away to the next person. However, I have found with specialized parts and supplies, they are more likely to sit around, just in a whole new place. It is hard to guess what someone else’s machine takes and be right about it. Rest assured, your toner cartridges and other accessories will be recycled or reused.

Why should a nonprofit organization think about SEO or an SEO Company? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. If people cannot find your organization’s website, they can’t donate or follow you on the web. Sure, it may cost a little bit of money to hire one, but if people can find you, then that is more than half the battle, and it will increase volunteer offers as well as donations. You may argue that people know your url, but what about people that have never heard of you, but might have values and interests aligned with your mission?

Buildtelligence Web Solutions just bought SEOCompany.com this past Tuesday, which was a very smart move on their part. There is more information about it HERE.  It is sort of a “practice what you preach” move in making it very easy for people to find them, as they can just type in the manner of business that they are and the website would come up.  To me, it is the smartest move since 1800Flowers was purchased and beat out FTD.

Buildtelligence/SEOCompany.com specializes in various components of SEO including marketing and pay per click.  Even when it is a big crunch for SEO companies that seem to have cropped up under every rock, Buildtelligence has been thriving.  In fact, they have won an award for creating high wage jobs in central Florida, despite the downturn in other industries in the area.

Maybe a similarly smart move is in the works for your nonprofit.

When one runs a charity event, whether its a street festival or a ticketed event, there are always little ways you can enhance the experience. That especially goes for volunteers who are busily trying to keep track of people. I remember my days of going to concerts and putting on a wristband to let everyone know I had already paid, or a fair letting people know I bought ride passes. I didn’t realize how inexpensive Custom Tyvek Wristbands were.

If you are content with a single, solid color, you can source them for only $16.50 from Wristbandexpress.com. You can get cool prints starting at $18.50 a box. There are even styles that have duplicate bands. The bands have matching numbers, so you could easily use them for parents reclaiming their children. I would imagine you could have a fun game as well if you wanted to people to mingle to find their match.

I just designed my own sticky wristband thingies on the site.   I wouldn’t normally have chosen a Brontosaurus, but that is just the mood I am in right now.  You can choose from a generous variety of fonts as well as clip art to make it look just how you want.  If you don’t want to use clip art, you can upload your own graphic and go from there.  There is a set up fee, but after the one time set up fee you can order as many boxes of 500 as you want for a reasonable price.

So get out there and promote while you party! Make everyone jealous as your donors or attendees travel around town.  If people see their wrist bands, they are going to wonder what they were up to and check it out for themselves.

Mary Wilson-Burkett was a single mom who actually put herself through college on the power of grants and loans.  Within five years, she was able to pay everything off.   There may be money out there for your special project just as it was for her life changing investment in herself.

Many of you are aware of various grants available to both non profit organizations and to individuals.   In fact, I have come across people that depend on their business model working based on obtaining windfall funding such as this. Grants are not as easy to get as just filling out a form. Sometimes, one gets lucky, and the idea you have is so compelling that you win everyone over. More often, however, there is one grant awarded per year from each organization and you almost need the help of a professional advisor to have a chance. In fact, Synergy Pro Consulting concerns itself with that very thing.

The folks at Synergy Pro Consulting offer one on one coaching to help an individual identify funding sources, apply for, and win grants. Of course, you can send away for every book out there, but often experience saves a lot of time. You will be walked through the process of creating a dynamic and unique custom proposal, which is three quarters of the battle.

When money starts growing on trees, you won’t have to worry about grants and funding.  Until that time, it is nice to know that people who have been successful at winning grants are there.  In fact, one of the coaches happens to be Mary Wilson-Burkett.  After her schooling and experiences, she developed the first funding coach curriculum.  Real people who have real track records are much better than hiring a think tank, whose members have only worked with theories.

In high school, I transferred to a very small school where we had a variety of fundraisers to meet the goal of new uniforms or a class educational trip. One of my fondest memories was of selling Chocolate as a fundraiser. There were candy bars for the quick sale, then boxed chocolate that our parents usually bought. You would think we would have eaten most of the profits. Actually, what we did was sell them to each other. We would, of course, ask our family to buy them, and sat through every ball game hawking them, but we each carried our boxes to the lunch room and cleaned up.  I am just glad it wasn’t the same time of year as the Presidential Physical Fitness test!  We would have all flunked!

In fact, they are probably the same ones that Gertrude Hawk Chocolates offers to this very day in a variety of flavors.  There are is all sorts of goodness there to use as fundraisers or to buy as gifts.  Yes, there is such an occasion as “Happy Birthday to Me.”  I would imagine that for myself, I would buy a lot of these cute two toned puppy chocolates.

These days, everyone is reinventing the wheel when it comes to various fundraisers. Sometimes old fashioned things are big successes for a reason. We could have just directly asked people for money, but I think we learned something about business better this way, even though we bought a lot from each other. I guess you could call that “knowing your consumer!”

What did you do to raise money for your class trips back in your day?

I have been a part of several animal charity groups, and more than one had contemplated either purchasing a transport vehicle or accepting a donation of one. In the “pro” column is having access to a vehicle whenever needed. The cons have to do with maintenance and upkeep. Also, sometimes people have vehicles they are interested in donating that are beyond practical use.  Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.  If you can repair the vehicle or add an engine for less than it would take to buy a new vehicle, it may be an extremely attractive alternative.

One solution that I discovered is GotEngines.com. You can buy Honda engines, Ford engines, and those to other makers very economically. You don’t have to be a mechanic to participate. There is no situation where you have to look through all the engines and choose which one looks prettiest.

Quite simply, you enter in the make and model of vehicle you are looking for an engine for.  Then, the nice folks at GotEngines will write back to you and let you know what they can source for you at the best price.  There are options for new, used, or rebuilt engines available.  Time definitely sometimes equals money, and letting the experts search for you saves so many resources.

On their website, I noticed that GotEngines.com has supported the Epilepsy Foundation in the past.  Not only can you feel good about the bottom line that the parts will help you maintain, but you can feel good that you are supporting a company that gives back to the community.

The concept of having attractive, but not expensive, facilities and efficient management is very important for sanctuaries and farm based rescues. Because of the work that is required, volunteer and donor retention is vital. When the chickens look happy and the horses are clean, word spreads.

There is a new style of chicken coop that an architect has designed.  It is not the little shack you are used to seeing!  Chickens have a nesting box which is safely off the ground, but still have a little outdoor area to peck around in that is covered in mulch.  I have learned that chicken droppings are good fertilizer, and the mulch allows it to decompose.  The mixture can then be used to fertilize plants that you grow on the roof of the chicken house.  In fact, the feature I noticed first was the area on top where you can grow herbs, vegetables, or flowers.

In other words, the chicken isn’t just earning her keep by producing eggs, but she can help with the garden too.  that darn rooster who wakes you up every morning will also be saving his neck as well.

On GreenChickenCoop.com, you can order a complete chicken coop, a knocked down chicken coop to assemble yourself, or just the plans for building a coop.   That certainly provides an option for every budget, I would say.   At left, is a view of a closed coop.  Of course, yours doesn’t have to be brown, blue, and orange.  You can paint it whatever you like.  Have you ever built a chicken coop?  What do you think about this one compared to your attempts?

The National Geographic Society doesn’t really use Star Trek teleporters to save money, but more importantly, valuable resources on travel.  It would have been cool though, right? Instead, they have been using LifeSize HD video conferencing equipment. It is a teleconferencing system that allows researchers, writers, and employees to get together in real time, from wherever they are on the planet.

Of course, they could always do a conference call, but you can’t exactly show people your dinosaur bone through the phone. Webcams might work, but they don’t exactly have “whole room” technology where multiple people can tune in at one location. I remember the old video conferencing units that were jumpy, and caused you to break down and pick up the phone instead. Nowadays, technology is more advanced, and you don’t have that unbearable ten second lag and “one at a time talking” that used to happen. Money is saved, fuel is saved, and productiviy has increased.  I would call that great stewardship of grants and donations!

I have had a lot of fun the past two weeks promoting the Saving Shelter Pets spring auction.  Someone asked me recently about what would make a good donation to an organization when you don’t know what to get.  Some folks don’t want to just give a monetary donation, and some folks don’t have an item that they would consider donating to auction.

A great idea is to give a few lower denomination Visa Debit cards that are prepaid. This way, an organization can place them in the hands of volunteers for their gas money. Of course, there are many times when people simply volunteer their time and resources, but sometimes people have time but no resources. With a debit, they can put gas in the tank of a volunteer vehicle, or perhaps the organization’s donated van or spaymobile. This makes it easier for volunteers knowing that they won’t have to be responsible for gassing up a group’s van, especially if they have the time to volunteer because they are unemployed.

Of course, you can also get prepaid debit cards to help you budget. There is no danger of overdraft that way. When you are done you are done. For small organizations and loose bands of volunteers, they provide less red tape. They can simply be handed the card, and just keep track of their receipts versus chasing someone down for a check.  It is especially hard if the check writer is a volunteer themself and are working their “day job” at the moment one needs the cash.  Another thing is that it helps a group hold onto the purse strings.  It may be tempting to give more volunteers access to the cash, but prepaid cards insure that if someone proves unreliable, they cannot walk away with sensitive information, or very much.

If you are looking for a new idea, and the group you wish to donate to does a lot of pick ups, a prepaid debit in low denominations may be the perfect idea.  Of course, a higher denomination is a great auction donation, but they will also do in a pinch for the day to day affairs.

During the Florida hurricane season, and tornado season in the midwest, disaster preparedness is in your bones. You fill up the bathtub with water to help you flush later. Cranking flashlights, battery powered radios, and candles all come out of the drawer. When I was eight years old, I remember hiding in the basement, not only making sure my dog was safe, but I took my piggybank and my picture book, too, just in case. I justified that if the house blew over, I would at least have some money in the bank to buy some food. Of course, I wasn’t Oliver Twist. I did have parents, and that may have seemed precocious, but I suppose I was thinking a little farther ahead. Yes, I am the type nowadays to grab a flashdrive if weather should strike.

With so many applications on the internet these days, it is easy to pick up and leave, and just log in at another computer. However, I am well aware that major companies can’t always do that. There are server after server of client information. After witnessing many offices flood irretrievably during Hurricane Katrina, and seeing papers fly like snowflakes on 9/11, the concept of colocation as a stopgap for disaster prevention is being more widely considered. Your data and server would be hosted remotely.  Sure, there may be people who think it is redundant, but the first time you have an IT emergency, you will have wished you did.

If there should be weather related damage at your business, or another IT emergency, your websites and servers can still be up and running with no interruption. It may take a few hours or days for your people to regroup, but to the public, you will be “business as usual.” Someone may go to a website once and if it is down, they will check back later. However, if they do this two or three times, they may never return. It is so important to maintain trust.  If you can handle your own business in an emergency, a potential customer will know you can handle theirs.

As for a nonprofit, it is even more important.  Of course, it is important for the sites to be running during a disaster, as you hope to still generate donations.  However, you will probably also have much sensitive information on donors and more.  You would not want to lose this and have to start from scratch.   Data loss is not always caused by physical damage.  It can also be caused by a volunteer leaving or not having the time, and the person who once hosted everything decides they cannot.  Then, what do you do?  At least you have your server hosted remotely so you can easily salvage.