Using Your Home Based Business IOVC Strategy to Build the Membership of Your Favorite NonProfit
Are you involved in fund raising for nonprofits or are you a small business manager who sees a business opportunity in helping a nonprofit organization? You researched your cause and have volunteered to help your local community organization? As a solo business owner you may have a home based business and you have determined that helping out is a good way to meet the community and give back.
With that decision, you are now helping and yet you would like to be efficient as possible.
As an office automation specialist I propose you look at your internet, office, voice and customer relationship (IOVC) tools that you use in your normal business and apply them to your nonprofit work.
To do this first let's look at your normal membership building process and then let's apply your IOVC tools and process to a non profit or any membership building process.
To start, usually we initiate an event that will interest a number of potential members.
For our purposes an event means an email campaign, a snail mail campaign, a telephone callout campaign or the classic neighborhood in-person event at the local establishment.
Once we decide on the type of event, we start distributing information to interested prospects.
For a phone call out you call and gather information and send data to those who are interested.
For a mail program, you get the group together, you start folding forms, licking stamps and sending documents in the regular mail or postal system.
If an in person type event, you have your sign-up forms and you encourage folks to leave their names.
If you produced an ad in the newspaper, then you wait for the form to be mailed backed in.
When done, you get your names; you head back to the office or home and start the data entry process, entering name by name into your organization's database.
When you review the above, it is extremely manually oriented process, very time intensive and requires a lot of your member's personal time.
While this works, it is not necessarily efficient.
Then when you see how most organization or non profits operate, especially local neighborhood ones, resources are scare and proactive members with lots of time are even scarcer.
As the pressure mounts to build your membership numbers you start looking for ways to improve your efficiency.
Applying your normal IOVC business automation tools that you probably have in place already can make a major difference in your membership building process.
So you ask, what tool would you use to radically transform the IOVC business building process? Would you believe it's your website, your autoresponder, your phone system along with the aid of your prospective members that can make a difference? It sounds simple and obvious but the way you put them together can make a huge difference in building your membership base.
With that decision, you are now helping and yet you would like to be efficient as possible.
As an office automation specialist I propose you look at your internet, office, voice and customer relationship (IOVC) tools that you use in your normal business and apply them to your nonprofit work.
To do this first let's look at your normal membership building process and then let's apply your IOVC tools and process to a non profit or any membership building process.
To start, usually we initiate an event that will interest a number of potential members.
For our purposes an event means an email campaign, a snail mail campaign, a telephone callout campaign or the classic neighborhood in-person event at the local establishment.
Once we decide on the type of event, we start distributing information to interested prospects.
For a phone call out you call and gather information and send data to those who are interested.
For a mail program, you get the group together, you start folding forms, licking stamps and sending documents in the regular mail or postal system.
If an in person type event, you have your sign-up forms and you encourage folks to leave their names.
If you produced an ad in the newspaper, then you wait for the form to be mailed backed in.
When done, you get your names; you head back to the office or home and start the data entry process, entering name by name into your organization's database.
When you review the above, it is extremely manually oriented process, very time intensive and requires a lot of your member's personal time.
While this works, it is not necessarily efficient.
Then when you see how most organization or non profits operate, especially local neighborhood ones, resources are scare and proactive members with lots of time are even scarcer.
As the pressure mounts to build your membership numbers you start looking for ways to improve your efficiency.
Applying your normal IOVC business automation tools that you probably have in place already can make a major difference in your membership building process.
So you ask, what tool would you use to radically transform the IOVC business building process? Would you believe it's your website, your autoresponder, your phone system along with the aid of your prospective members that can make a difference? It sounds simple and obvious but the way you put them together can make a huge difference in building your membership base.