NFTE Fall 2011

9/13/11

 

Fall projects outline:

 

•      Annual Report

•      Accounting system

•      Fundraising campaigns

•      Grant renewals

•      Marketing & Communication

•      Sphere community integration

 

 

910/11

 

Marketing & Communication

 

Krista and I were joined by an Advisory Board member and four Executive Council members to discuss our upcoming marketing initiatives during a dinner at Orale, Orale in the financial district. The dinner quickly developed with a cohesive flow achieved through rich and directive dialogue among everyone in attendance. Nearly all of our target topics were explored, which gave the entire team individual action steps to advance our plans.

 

We began the session by discussing the necessity of establishing an accessible database that contains all of the marketing materials for every single audience channel. It is crucial that the overall message and tone within the collection of documents be consistent.

 

• Look to complete documents existing marketing materials (x)
  • Make sure all documents are consistent/ updated and same size.
  • Further develop and update brochures.
  • Adopt-a-class looks great, love the student profile (update).

 

Growth will be achieved through extensive planning and seizing opportunities in a timely fashion to gather momentum. An overview of the tasks, related to the process of marketing and communication clean-up, are listed below:

 

• Ownership of FB (media control)
• Social media strategy needs to be put in place first
• Brainstorm: Individual giving campaign
• Focus on civic engagement:
  • Through leadership
  • Development of forum
  • Ex: Strategies LLC
  • Need better/complete media coverage
  • Digital Classroom:
    • Monitor consistency of content (quality)
    • Reference: World Series of Innovation
    • Create Fact Sheet: future audience via existing community
    • Need to clean up message for fundraising by the end of the year
    • Create: excel spreadsheet that outlines, message & audience (correlation between the two).
    • Establish connection with fiscal year and school year
      • Initiatives through mailings and campaigns
      • Look for opportunities with businesses that have excess funds on the books near end of year.
        • Tax write-off donations
        • Communicate with our NFTE community about potential resources ( corporations and individuals)

 

Existing gaps within NFTE were identified and discussed.

 

• Need: strategy consultant, communication strategy
  • Contacts/referrals within our NFTE community
  • Leverage the appropriate networks (existing)
  • Fit specific skill qualifications

 

Identify resources and gather support.

 

• Look to National for support, guidance and any leads
• Must create our own feel and voice of the Bay Area (captures the overall vision of NFTE)
• Explore connections for media outlets (contact)
• Create platform to efficiently update information with HQ
  • Leverage HQ media release

 

We need to further explore the copious amount of opportunities social media platforms can provide. Establishing an external outlet for more youth engagement will be our primary focus.

 

• Facebook presence (increasing activity):
  • Student video generation:

v  Have teachers incentivize the creation of student videos

v  Videos can cover anything from personal bio, business idea, pitch, thoughts about business/current events

v  Teachers can allocate (x) amount of students a week/month to create videos

v  Teachers present the project as either an assignment or as an extra credit opportunity

v  Accountability: students will create a video they are proud of; if there name/reputation is attached to it, via Facebook link.

• Create a competitor analysis
• Look for balance of content generation (quality v. quantity)

 

• Linkedin: create consistent existence through appropriate use of language
  • Need: to effectively use Linkedin as a promotional tool
  • Must have all Executive Council and Advisory Board join network and funnel personal connections to NFTE (with aim at gaining funders)

 

• Leverage marketing message across all audience groups and stake holders
  • Consistent message
  • Larger innovative involvement
  • Look at global scale: Digital Classroom

v  How can we involve NFTE Bay Area with our global programs?

v  Ex: India branch identifies problems, US branch provides solutions

 

The external communication reach of NFTE Bay Area needs to expand. We must continue to explore ways to diversify our community with an audience that has the resources, knowledge and capital to help us reach our goals. Increasing our community of supporters (donors & volunteers) will be driven by diligent campaign management and powered through our new software, Blackbaud Sphere. Specifically, in order for us to reach our funding/community activity goal for 2012, we must develop a strategy that details the action steps for each email marketing campaign.

 

• Fundraising Platform
  • Expand email list
  • Increase money given
    • Leverage existing connections
    • Contact dormant supports (who have not donated within the past 2 years)
    • A small number of individuals account for 80% of NFTE donations
    • Need to seek high worth individuals as well as creating a link with mass small donors (ex. New Obama campaign)
    • Need: to increase ‘asks’, ‘gives’ and harvest new individuals
    • Creation of the donation well (mailings and campaigns)
    • Ex: Charity Water (donate your Birthday)

1. Make sure all SM (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin) is consistent and updated
2. Email marketing

v  Email signature link

v  Share stories and connections with friends through Facebook

• Look to cross pollinate using existing NFTE community
• Sign up with NFTE via newsletter
• Seek eMarketing campaign

v  Look to bootstrap

v  Sign, join, volunteer, donate

• Segment content to audience

v  Ex: new software (Sphere) http://www.blackbaud.com/products/internet/emarketing.aspx

• Existing: Donate through MyEmma

v  Donate link

v  Auto-response email

v

We need to funnel donors to email list and further understand legalities of opt-in and opt-out email features. Let’s not reinvent the wheel and call upon our Executive Council and Advisory Board to share emails, and connect with potential funders. All board and council members will be given marketing material the covers the ‘ask’.

 

 

10/1/11

 

Annual Report

 

The annual report highlights stories and projects that will continue to evolve with the help of our funders, active volunteers, Advisory Board, teachers and dedicated staff.

 

The Bay Area is a very special locale to teach youth entrepreneurship. There are countless opportunities for young, driven and well equipped youth to make a direct influence with their community. We understand the importance of delivering a relevant learning structure that encourages our youth to engage with our community and locate surrounding opportunities.

 

With the guidance of our entire NFTE Bay Area community, students have been able to funnel their hard work, school work and business knowledge into promising futures. Many students have acknowledged the power and positive influence of NFTE Bay Area programs. There is nothing more important to us than influencing our youth and their perspective about achieving a successful future.

 

10/4/11

 

Reconciliation

I manage the expense accounting for all NFTE Bay Area expenses on a monthly basis before I sent the package to HQ. On the 4th of every month, our MasterCard statement comes in the mail and I begin the process of reconciliation.

 

 

10/17/11

 

Digital Classroom

The Digital Classroom is our newest innovation. The technology is used to incorporate youth from low-income communities throughout the Bay Area with the collective creativity and expertise of the extended NFTE community. This technology is the next generation of collaborative teaching and meshes perfectly with our custom youth entrepreneurship website and other innovative modes of communication and collaboration.

 

NFTE Bay Area is eager to innovate and test new methods for engaging and motivating our students to find their own paths to success. NFTE alumni are 60% more likely to want to go to college and are 45% more likely to want to start a business after they graduate from our program. We are now working to leverage technology to expand the reach and network of our students to build on our current success. Through the Digital Classroom Initiative, a program we piloted in spring 2011, our vision is to connect the 50,000 NFTE students we reach annually, as well as the teachers, volunteers and NFTE staff around the world who serve them.

 

 

On October 17^th, the NFTE class of San Leandro High School was joined by NFTE Founder Steve Mariotti. (video coming soon)

 

 

11/1/11

 

Blackbaud Sphere Integration

The NFTE staff and I just completed a three day seminar introducing our new service technology software, Blackbaud Sphere in Malloy Hall at the University of San Francisco. This software will revolutionize the way we communicate our message. Sphere will act as a robust tool to support the creation, collection and accessibility of communication for every point of contact.

 

We are all excited about the power of Sphere and the capabilities it will unleash. It offers an in-house CMS which will allow us to streamline all of our events, email campaigns and fundraising efforts (say good-bye to MyEmma). Fundraising campaigns, such as the Mentor Campaign will now be completely driven through Sphere. A more in depth process will be outlined by Monday, Nov. 14.

 

Over the next week, we will all be working feverishly to get a better understanding of Sphere and how we can use it in the most effective, beneficial manner.

 

The seminar topics included:

 

• Sphere/NFTE website
  • The Sphere impact within the NFTE website
  • Volunteer applications/resources
  • Constituent Management
    • Database designation between Raiser’s Edge and Sphere
    • Comprehensive contact records
    • Database Management
      • Searching the database
      • Advanced searching with Queries
      • Contacts records, adds, edits
      • Actions, Notes, Media updates
      • Organizational Contacts (relationships)
      • Segmentation and auto updates
      • Forms
        • Wrapper Content
        • CMS
        • Volunteer Center
          • Naming & describing positions
          • Volunteer manager dashboard & maintenance
          • Updates to my calendar of events
          • Background check results and process
          • Queries/Reports
          • E-Communications
            • Form Build
            • Wrapper Content Review
            • Building a list
            • Testing your list
            • Executing your mailing
            • Practice Session
            • All About Reports/Results
              • Query tools
              • Standard Reports/ Modification/Archive
              • Execution of all communications

We are all excited about the immense opportunities that Sphere presents.