Leading the Way - February 2010
Marketing our Association through Community Service
By: Reba Peden, PP, PLS, NALS Marketing Committee Vice Chair 2008-2010
With contributions by Caryn Wolchuck, PP, PLS, CPS/CAP, NALS Marketing
Committee
Our need is to gain more members in the association and visibility to the
community gets us more attention and, therefore, more people in the legal
community will be aware of us. We can market this association through
visibility of our association through community service.
Getting involved can be both fun and rewarding. There are so many organizations
that are more than willing to take whatever help you can give them and give
you publicity in return. Most of the larger organizations such as the
American Heart Association, Habitat for Humanity, Snowball Express, and others,
have their own Public Relations Department who will publicize your events
in connection with theirs which helps to get your name out.
Some of the smaller organizations and local community services, such as your
local children’s home, veterans associations, etc., will be happy to split
profits from an event if you do the majority of the work on the event. This
can be as simple as holding a 50/50 raffle or as extravagant as holding a
celebrity waiter dinner event.
Does your budget have a Humanitarian line item? It should. You
should budget in what you believe your chapter can make off of one fund-raiser
(such as a bake sale or a raffle) and then build on that. What is even
more important than the money you can raise is sometimes the effort and elbow
grease you can put into a community project. Habitat for Humanity for
example. You may not have the kind of funds that allow for a “Sponsorship”
donation, but they are always willing for you to come out and work on the
houses being built.
Have a chapter T-Shirt made up to wear for your community service
events (if you are going to work with Habitat, get 2 shirts because you will
probably ruin one). Bright colors with your chapter name and logo on
it helps you stand out in the crowd.
Volunteering at the local children’s hospital or veterans hospital, nursing
homes, libraries, soup kitchens and other places can be done without costing
the chapter any money at all.
If you find that you cannot summon up enough volunteers to help at an event
such as Habitat for Humanity, perhaps you can assist an organization with
a monetary donation. Ask your members (especially your vendor/members,
such as court reporters or legal placement agencies) to donate prizes (such
as gift cards) at your monthly meetings. Then sell tickets for an opportunity
drawing to be given away at the end of the event. All proceeds would
be given to the charitable organization chosen before the meeting. If
you can set aside a few minutes before your monthly speaker, perhaps you
can have a representative from the charitable organization say a few words
about the charity; that will do wonders for your ticket sales!
Publicize Your Event
Take lots of pictures and write articles or press releases for your local
newspapers. The large newspapers are not as quick to jump on a community
service project article as the smaller weekly papers are, but they will
usually run your story somewhere in the middle of the paper. The
smaller weekly papers are more likely to run it with pictures and give
you better coverage. It doesn’t take much to write an article.
Most newspapers prefer to get the articles and pictures by
email. Check
with your local paper prior to sending in your articles for preferred formats. Sometimes
they will run the article as written, other times, if you peak their interest,
they may have someone call and get more information from you and do a more
in-depth article.
One word of caution about choosing to assist a member who may be down in a financial situation, this cannot be done through the chapter bank accounts. If you have a project for a chapter member, for instance, they have a child with medical problems and you want to do a fund-raiser for that, you cannot use chapter money for the donations. Any donations would have to be made from INDIVIDUAL TO INDIVIDUAL. This falls under the category of Inurement. Falling into this puddle can get you in trouble with the IRS and could cause NALS to lose it 501(c)(3) status for the Foundation. Below is the section from the IRS that covers this pesky situation.
INUREMENT
From www.IRS.gov: Inurement/Private Benefit
- Charitable Organizations
A section 501(c)(3) organization must not be organized or operated for
the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the creator's family,
shareholders of the organization, other designated individuals, or persons
controlled directly or indirectly by such private interests. No part of the
net earnings of a section 501(c)(3) organization may inure to the benefit
of any private shareholder or individual. A private shareholder or individual
is a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the
organization.