Charity Spring Patch Digest: See the top giving foundations in Connecticut

Patch Tips: Their GIVE 5 Campaign

In addition to devoting editorial coverage to local charities as well as an entire channel of Patch to volunteer opportunities, Patch aligns its company goals with local charity goals to improve the lives of its customers and their communities. With that in mind, the Patch developed the Give 5 program so that Patch’s daily operation can give back to the communities we serve. Here's how they do it: Patch gives 5% of its advertising space, free of charge, to local charities from the communities Patch serves. All Patch employees spend 5 working days each year volunteering in the communities Patch serves.

Fairfield County Funding Opportunities

List of top giving foundations in Connecticut. GE leads the list at $112 million in annual giving. The Fairfield County Community Foundation is #6 at $13 million.

The Carnegie-Whitney Grant , sponsored by The American Library Association Foundation, provides grants to libraries, organizations or even individuals up to $5,000 for the preparation of popular or scholarly reading lists, webliographies, indexes and other guides to library resources that will be useful to users of all types of libraries in the United States.

The Open Society Foundation awards grants up to $10,000 to support the development web-based programs that connect youth policy workers around the world. (No deadline - ongoing)

If your charity does anything at all to address the problem of bullying, now's the time to be  querying the foundations and corporate giving offices. According to this report, all most all of them are making this their cause of the moment.

Breaking Fairfield County Charity News

Domestic violence is of great concern to any community, including ours (DVCCT). Here is a powerful infographic from the International Rescue Committee offering a global view of this problem.

Lance Armstrong steps down as chairman of his namesake foundation founded in 1997 amid his personal battle with cancer. Livestrong is a national cause, so in a way impacts our community. Mostly, though, this LA Times article is useful for its description of how a controversy unfolds. Armstrong will remain on the foundation's board.

Donor Relations

Starbucks spends $1,400 to acquire a customer who starts off by spending $4.25 for a Caramel Frappacino®. Why? The 20 year Lifetime Value of a Starbucks customer is $14,099. Amazon spends $240 to acquire a customer for its $69 Kindle. Insurance companies pay more than 100% of the first year’s premium to acquire a policy holder. When the donor complains about your overhead expenses, you might want to use these real world examples as justification for the investment your charity needs to make to find and hold on to your donors.

Inspiration through Appreciation: The Power of Thank You!

Corporate Social Responsibility 

More than 3,600 Campbell employees (including our own Pepperidge Farm employees) volunteer for “Make a Difference Week.”

Media Tips

How to set-up a media center at your special event. A media or press center is simply a dedicated space for journalists who will be covering your event. They may or may not use it, but it needs to be available anyway, just in case. For large events, your media center would be in a separate room. However, for smaller events it could be a corner of the event venue, or even just a table.

Social Media Tip

One reason why your email campaign may be losing ground: political season over-saturation. Open rates for marketing-related emails are now at historic lows — more than 80 percent go unread. Here is a good report on this issue.

Thought for the Day -- A word today from Seth Godin

Missed opportunities vs. poor execution

When you think back to the last ten years of your career or your company's history, how much of what you haven't achieved is due to missed opportunities (the product you didn't launch, the service you didn't choose to do, the effort you didn't extend, the stock you didn't buy) and how much is the result of doing your assigned tasks poorly?

____ % missed   vs.  ____ % incompetence

Now, compare those percentages to where you spend your time, your focus and your anxiety.

Charity Spring

This is our second post for Fairfield County charities! See what nearly 2,300 people around the world are reading at Charity Spring (live since October 4th). For many additional links to help you build financial support and awareness for your Fairfield County cause see the Charity Spring Patch Digest homepage.

Please comment here to let us know what news and opportunities you want us to find for you or to simply let us know what you think.