If you lived here, you’d be home by now

I borrowed this title from Lisa Williams who spoke at Tuesday night’s Ethos Roundtable. It turns out not only was this saying on a billboard, it’s also the title of a book and a TV Show. Williams’ talk was about the “hyper local” movement and how motivated bloggers try to use modern communication techniques to make the places we live feel more like home.

I often meet with nonprofit groups at Marketers Making a Difference who want to know how to get press coverage. Specifically, they usually want to know how to get into The Boston Globe. The Globe is a great publication but it’s not always the best choice. For example, one group served the Medford/Somerville/Cambridge area exclusively. They needed to focus on media that covered their service area. In addition to focusing on the traditional media that their target audience is most likely to read, I usually suggest they identify blogs that appeal to their constituents.

In the past, the best ways I knew to identify relevant blogs were Google and Technorati.com. Tuesday night, I learned some great new ways to find local content. Lisa Williams is the creator of Placeblogger, the largest searchable index of local weblogs. If you’re looking for someone who writes about your neighborhood, this is the place to look.

Local content seems to be popping up everywhere. There’s also Patch. This is a project funded by AOL that employs journalists to write local content for their “Patch.” There are currently 75 Patches in Massachusetts. Then there’s Wicked Local which is specific to Massachusetts and currently covers 162 locations. (But not Boston, Lowell, or Worcester. This is for content that might be missed by the major media outlets).

So, if you’re cause is local, you now have more tools than ever to meet your constituents where they live.

Help A Reporter Out

At today’s Marketers Making a Difference meeting I learned about a great resource called Help A Reporter Out (HARO). It’s a service that reporters can use to find sources and you can use to find reporters who are looking for experts in your knowledge areas.

This is the kind of service that used to only be available to PR professionals through expensive subscriptions to services like Cision. HARO is advertising supported and therefore free to users. I can’t speak to the relative quality of the leads, but it seems to me that this part of the ongoing democratization of information made possible by the internet.

The good news is, this makes it easier for you to get media contacts. The bad news is, it makes it easier for everyone else to get access too. Maybe that’s not bad news after all. It means that instead of putting resources into getting access, you should be putting into having something to say.

For more cool marketing-related resources, check out our Delicious resource list: http://delicious.com/mmdboston

BOGO!

If you know that BOGO stands for “Buy One Get One” then you already have a sense of how much this concept has been ingrained in the American psyche. Even the government is getting in the act with programs like the Social Innovation Fund where grantees must match government funds with private donations 1:1 or even 2:1 or more. Programs where a supporter is offering to match private contributions up to a specified limit for a particular period in time are known as “challenge grants” and are a great deal if you can get them.

“Matching Funds” usually refers to corporate programs that provide matching funds to employees for nonprofits that meet their guidelines. Even in tough economic times, many companies still offer matching funds and they are available 365 days a year. All you have to do is ask. But, many nonprofits don’t because of one thing that everyone hates – paperwork. The donor has to file paperwork with the employer to get the matching funds and the nonprofit has to process paperwork to receive the gift. But, now there are some tools that can help. Matchinggifts.com from HEP Development Systems offers a searchable database of matching gift companies and tools for processing them.

Fancy tools or not, everyone can (1) identify the major employers in your area that offer matching funds (2) collect data about where your donors work, and (3) publish information about matching gifts in thank you notes, on your website, etc. Why? Well it’s obvious that matching gifts represent money you could be leaving on the table. Research also indicates matching gifts can increase revenue per solicitation and the response rate, as indicated in this article from AFP.

But it’s not just about maximizing a single transaction. I don’t have research to back me up, but I believe that matching gifts can be another way to cement your relationship with your donors. Yes, you are asking them to do a little extra work. But, they are giving you money in order to do good in the world and this gives them the opportunity to double what they can do. Everyone wants to do more with their money. Help them help you.