Putting a Bow On It – How To Create New Giving Opportunities For Your Community

Kenny Jahng —  2012/12/28 — Leave a comment

American Express Open Forum recently featured some of my tips for holiday commerce tactics. I love the site for all of the practical advice and case examples they share for the small business / entrepreneur. First, go take a quick read of this article on “The Holiday Home Stretch”

Kenny Jahng marketing expert featured in American Express Open Forum article

 

The general ideas presented in this article are fair game for non-profit, ministry and cause-related efforts.   Mark Batterson’s National Community Church has taken the idea of gift catalogs and wrapped it around missions giving.  A Christmastime catalog of giving opportunities.  The program has become so successful that they are making it an annual tradition at their church.

 

national-community-church-missions-catalog

 

Some of the keys to success here are:

  • Positioning things that normally aren’t thought of in a giving paradigm into one that makes it sharable with someone else.
  • Presenting the opportunities so that they are in various price categories.  People need to have access to various entry points for giving.
  • Showing the transformation or impact in a tangible way so that someone understands HOW their contribution will make a difference.
  • Ensuring there is a diversity of opportunities — types of gifts, recurring vs one-time, price levels, bundles that appeal to different demographic groups (kids vs. adults. women vs. men, family vs. singles, individual vs. groups, etc).

What can you do with your giving opportunities to “put a bow on it”?

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Contribute To My Upcoming Book Project: 1001 Social Media Marketing Tips

Kenny Jahng —  2012/12/27 — Leave a comment

The New Year is almost here — and it’s time to think ahead about what BHAG’s you can come up with for 2013.  One of my goals is to publish a series of books (most on the Kindle platform) to help more individuals, non-profits and ministry leaders ramp up their communications efforts.

For one of them, I am inviting you to become a contributor in an effort to help empower more people to harness the power of social media for their own cause.  Simply submit your contribution below to get started.

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Top 10 Christian Charities With Most Impactful Work

Kenny Jahng —  2012/12/20 — Leave a comment

When it comes to end-of-year charitable giving, the number one questions a donor usually ask is: Where can my donation make the greatest impact in the lives of others?

Well, ROI Ministry, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization of market place believers and Christian leaders who desire to make the greatest Kingdom impact possible with their God-given resources.  And to answer the question, ROIministry.org went out and challenged exhaustive research on non-profits, historical advice and giving patterns of strategic givers and the largest Christian foundations in the world. After a reviewing nearly 1,000 causes, the donor advocacy group has produced a list of the 10 most impactful Christian charities.

Typically, non-profits’ 990 forms are reviewed by donors to ascertain program verse overhead expense, however this group felt that a biblical approach also requires evaluating “good lasting fruit” from gifts. In addition, many of the Christian charities in the survey also responded with physical needs met per dollar, amount per meal, clean water, etc. Others emphasized the spiritual part of a person, as “this had to be included, because people are the only thing that last forever.” To verify and evaluate, this ended up being many trips to specific ministries and to the “ends of the earth” to see the “fruit” and employ checks and balances used to track this.

The result? ROIministry.org found that the most impactful Christian charities serve the “least of these” billion people at the “ends of the earth” who are currently only receiving 1/3 of one percent of all Christian giving today.

Most impactful Christian charities list

TOP 10 MOST IMPACTFUL CHRISTIAN CHARITIES OF 2012

  1. “You” – A reminder that individuals like you have ability to increase giving impact substantially more than organized charities

  2. Jesus Film Harvest Partners

  3. Compassion International

  4. Legacy World Mission

  5. 410 Bridge

  6. Faith Comes By Hearing

  7. Global Media Outreach

  8. Gospel for Asia

  9. International Leadership Institute

  10. Equip

ROI Ministry has also partnered with the National Christian Foundation (NCF) to develop a free web-site to give anonymously to the Top 10 ministries, available at www.roiministry.org/top-10   The organization does not charge fees and receives no compensation from ministries highlighted. One hundred percent of all giving goes to the ministry’s specific program that achieves the greatest impact per dollar. More information can be found at www.roiministry.org

Do you think faith-based charities can be more effective than secular charities?  Please share your thoughts and leave a comment below.

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Christ-Centered Photography, Royalty Free

Kenny Jahng —  2012/12/10 — Leave a comment

A colleague of mine passed along this relatively new resource site today: www.LightStock.com – It follows a similar business model to www.iStockPhoto.com, www.123rf.com and others.

LightStock.com - Royalty Free Christian Photos

What makes this venture a bit more interesting than “just another stock photo site” is the claim of integrating a Christ-centered lens.  Take a look at some of the vision that is shared on the LightStock.com site:

The unwavering belief that there are thousands of photographers who are hungry to use their God-given gift to equip the body of Christ and ultimately glorify God.

An invigorating idea that Lightstock could fundamentally change the way Christian designers, chief creatives and church staff members go about their creative endeavors for Christ’s kingdom.

The unrelenting pursuit to forge the strongest link – connecting an army of faith-based photographers to the Christian community at large – an audience hungry for meaningful visual resources.

 

The concept is that all photos that appear on the site will follow at least one of three attributes:

  1. Shot by a follower of Christ
  2. Visibly faith oriented
  3. Invisibly highlights God’s glory, goodness and mission for His creation

I plan on checking out the site the next time I need some images for blog posts or projects.  The big question will be if their respository is deep enough to become a reliable source of quality images on a consistent basis.  But it definitely is a welcome entry into the royalty-free image resource niche for sure.

Check it out at: www.LightStock.com

Does having a Christ-centered approach to a business and resources as stock photography make a difference?  Is it enough to potentially compensate for lack of inventory, features or other benefits found on competitor sites? Please share your comments below.

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Merry Christmas, Call Me Maybe Style

Kenny Jahng —  2012/12/10 — Leave a comment

Looking back at 2012, the USA Olympic Swim Team contributed to one of the biggest social media sharing phenomenons with their Call Me Maybe mashup parody video.  It wasn’t just a blip and was of course included in the international coverage of the Games, but 10 million video views later, the video is an example of something else that’s happening — video as a form of content publishing for the masses has gone mainstream.

Call Me Maybe Social Media Viral Video

 

The genius of these cover videos of pop music hits is that they are actually really easy to script, record and publish.  In fact, if you think about it, you could take various people in your organization and create an end of year video in this style that’s enjoyable and relatively easy to pull off.  The result is that you really put on display all of the parts of Check out what the team at Wheaton College did with their Merry Christmas video message.  I love the simplicity and the fact that they used this format to put on display the various parts campus life and departments who make it all happen all year long.

For an institutional end of year video message, I thought this was one of the more fun and engaging executions of the year-end message.  It sure beats the staid “From all of us at _________, we wish you a safe and joyous holiday with your family. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!” type message, doesn’t it? Face it, those just get deleted as soon as they are opened.

The only thing I would change is for someone at Wheaton to upload it to YouTube instead of Vimeo and secure a Google Non-Profit Grant so they can put a donate link at the end of the video (HELLO WHEATON — if you’re reading this, contact me directly and I can help make this happen).

You could even take the cue from Wheaton and recreate this same music video with your own team singing the various parts of the song, right?  Are the various people on your teams going through your head right now?

What about creating one that features all of the various volunteers and/or donors that support your organization? And if you’re able to plan just a bit, you can bring a video camera to various groups activities throughout the year to sing parts of the song in order to assemble your very own blockbuster video at the end of next year for Christmas 2013.

If song isn’t your thing, what about reading a poem, or a famous passage in this style on camera?  As you can see, there are many possibilities for creating a short, but engaging video like this.

Can you see your own group produce a simple year end video like this?  What is keeping you from making that dream — what you have in your head right now — a reality?

 

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Interview: Bryan Miles, Founder of Miles Advisory Group / eaHelp on Virtual Executive Assistance

Kenny Jahng —  2012/12/05 — Leave a comment

It still surprises me a bit that whenever I mention that I actively use virtual assistance across the various projects I’m managing, it is still somewhat of a novelty.  The majority of people have not used any sort of remote help. . . yet.

But whenever I have walked someone through the process of finding and utilizing outsourced help, it has been a big win — and in a couple of cases, they have become basically addicted to scaling their work with the help of remote assistants.   This can come in form form of help with small finite tasks as well as hiring contractors to do full blown large-scale projects.

Slide1

One way virtual help can have a big impact for most business workflows is the role of executive assistant.  This is where Bryan Miles, founder of Miles Advisory Group comes into the picture.  Bryan has built out a service providing proficient virtual executive assistants who are all US-based, native-English speakers, technologically adept, and as he explains a bit in this interview, typically are of a much higher caliber than for what you probably would be utilizing them for.

Bryan Miles - MAG Miles Advisory Group

Check out how he describes the service MAG & eaHelp provides in this video interview below.  (the video session went totally 8-bit on us in a couple of spots, and Bryan looks like he’s morphing into Wreck-It Ralph here and there, but the audio is just fine and you’ll be able to appreciate the interview content just fine). Continue Reading…

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Using the Science of Persuasion in Your End of Year Giving Campaigns

Kenny Jahng —  2012/11/28 — 3 Comments

So Want to improve your communications for end of year donor development or other community building campaign?

Take just one of the 6 core principles shared in this great video overview piece on the Science of Persuasion and you’ll be sure to see some improvements in responsiveness and engagement.

First, take a look at this fun video:

 

I’ve previously shared about the book, The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity — edited by Daniel Oppenheimer and Christopher Olivola. If you want to learn more about the 6 principles shared in the video, that you’ll love this book — because it talks about the value, social factors, role of emotions and other important influences in charitable giving.

But again, even before diving into the Science of Giving book, I’d challenge you to take just one of the principles of persuasion presented here, and figure out a way to incorporate some of it into something you’re doing right now.  How can go back and revise language or positioning, or the sequence of messaging to leverage this learning?  Here’s a quick review again of the principles. . .

6-principles-of-persuasion

Continue Reading…

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Churches Across Nation Can Join #SandyThanksgiving Disaster Relief Project in New Jersey

Kenny Jahng —  2012/11/07 — 1 Comment

Liquid Church is coordinating support from communities and organizations outside of NJ for the #SandyThanksgiving project. The outreach coordination leaders are asking churches across the country to consider taking up a special offering for the Hurricane Sandy victims on the upcoming Sundays – November 11, 18 or 25.

Details for how your church can support the relief efforts are available at: www.SandyThanksgiving.com.

Continue Reading...
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What is the Ideal Length for Our Web Video?

Kenny Jahng —  2012/11/06 — 3 Comments

In terms of content marketing, videos are “the new black”.

If you’re on the web, you want to attract the attention of as many new people as possible. And you already know that if you’re producing content for the web, video needs to be a part of the mix.

YouTube Viral Videos in Church Marketing

The question is, just how long is the ideal video length?

90 seconds?

3 minutes?

4 minutes?

10 minutes?

Popular notion has been that you want something definitely under 5 minutes if you want it to be shared and spread across various social networks.  Attention spans just aren’t that long.  While the average online video viewed is 6 minutes 14 seconds, if you look at the most shared videos on YouTube you get a different story: Continue Reading…

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Viewer Engagement In a Can (of Diet Coke)

Kenny Jahng —  2012/10/26 — 1 Comment

View Engagement with Video

Everyone is going nuts of this new Diet Coke commercial for the 007 Movie.

Why does it work? Because it engages the inner 007 in all of us.

Before we discuss, check it out: Continue Reading…

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