Inside ASI-AP

I hosted our third boardroom lunch of the year last week - 9th July - and we had an invited audience of sales and marketing executives. We tried a new boardroom layout this month with a single long table setup in true boardroom style rather than our 3 separate lunch tables.

Last year we used the theme of "what keeps you awake at night" as a means of getting feedback and prompting discussion. This year I have adopted a new theme based on the 7 business drivers of high-performance non-profits and the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF). The 2 business drivers I used for this luncheon were "segmentation" and "automation". See more in the copy of the speech below.

Liza and I went to a seminar this afternoon hosted by Xponential where we heard Ted Hart talk about having success in online fundraising.  I hadn't heard of Ted before and I'm not sure what makes you a guru (he didn't talk at all about his success or history) but the content was good.

The presentation was about 4 hours long and was broken into two sections, a review of Web 2.0 and why this is important and then in the second half he did a live review of just about everyone's website in the room.

I hosted our first boardroom lunch of the year yesterday - 30th April - and we had an invited audience of finance managers and finance executives. We had a slightly smaller crowd than expected with a few same day cancellations but overall I was very happy with who was in attendance.

Last year we used the theme of "what keeps you awake at night" as a means of getting feedback and prompting discussion. This year I am adopting a new theme based on the 7 business drivers of high-performance non-profits and the iMIS Business Excellence Framework (iBEF). The 2 business drivers I used for this luncheon were "automation" and "process".

In writing up todays monthly luncheon I realised I did not post my speech for the previous luncheon which was for CEO's and executives back in November. The lunch was held on 16 November 2007 and was well attended due to our special guest - Bob Alves, ASI's CEO. We even had 2 execs from a potential customer in NZ fly over for the luncheon and to meet Bob - which was a first!

Like the October luncheon for finance executives I based this presentation on the iMIS Value Cycle; plus I also discussed the Australian Business Excellence Framework and ASI's own 7 Business Drivers of High Performance Non-Profits. The business excellence frameworks are very relevant for forward thinking CEO's and proved to be a popular topic. I also used the same "what keeps awake at night" question to get feedback on some of the issues the CEO's in attendance are facing.

Jay presented the first Friendraising seminar today in Melbourne, with about 16 attendees in total. The seminar was promoted as an educational event on Friendraising technology without specific reference to iMIS or ASI. I believe we earned a lot of respect in taking that approach with the audience today.

Jay had put some new slides together to explain the Friendraising model and they are the best explanation I have seen so far of the social networking fundraising model that we call Friendraising (also called peer-to-peer fundraising or team based fundraising or even a-thons). Jay had a video camera recording his presentation today so in the next week or two there will be a video available for everyone to watch.

I always look forward to a busy schedule of events in the office as it means more and more people get to come in and visit us and hear our message. I am not completely convinced a message needs to be heard "8 times, 8 ways" before it sinks in, but I am convinced that the message needs to be communicated a number of times from different people. And for me the events we run are a key part of that communication.

This week we have the iMIS Friendraising seminar in Melbourne and Sydney (see here for event info), we have the MD Boardroom luncheon in Melbourne and we have some customers coming in for training.

The US-based AFP - Association of Fundraising Professionals www.afpnet.org - recently held its annual conference in San Diego. ASI was a sponsor of this conference including sponsoring the conference proceedings CD, which meant that delegates had to visit the ASI exhibition booth to pick up a copy of the CD. About half of the sessions are included on the CD, and I have uploaded a copy of the CD to our internal network here:

N:\melbourne\marketing group\Marketing\Conferences & Tradeshows\AFP Conference 2008 CD\start.htm

There are some interesting papers available on the CD including annual giving and direct response topics. Unfortunately only 1 of the 'technology in fundraising' sessions was included (a typical sign of technology presentations?).

Some new ASI videos have been posted up to the ASI Community on YouTube (www.youtube.com/asicommunity). Remember to subscribe to the community if you want to get notifications of new content. The one below includes stories from iMIS fundraising customers in the US.

This week we kicked off a new campaign to promote Friendraising. A direct mail campaign inviting prospects to attend seminars in Melbourne (29th April in ASI office) and Sydney (30th April at the Grace Hotel) began and will be followed up with emails and phone contact.

This seminar series will focus on the concept of friendraising (rather than the product). Attached is a copy of the postcard invite and below is copy of the letter that has been posted to contacts.

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Wednesday 9 April 2008

Last month I attended as both a delegate and as a sponsor the "CEO Symposium" event run by Associations Forum. This is the third year this event has been run by John Peacock and his team. The venue this year was the Novotel Pacific Bay Resort at Coffs Harbour. A copy of the agenda is here: AF-CEO-Symposium-Brochure-08.pdf

The delegate numbers were about the same as the previous year (65 delegates), but I did notice the average size of the organisation they represented to be smaller than the previous year. In fact this is a trend that we have been noticing at most of the conferences in the past year. A consistent number of CEO's and senior staff from the large associations and non-profits are just not attending.

I video-taped the seminar run by Philip King of Artez that I posted about a couple of weeks ago. This has now been converted into Quicktime movie format and available for download below. Note that the file is 289 Mb in size and will take 15-30 minutes to download depending on your internet speed. It is a Quicktime file so you need to have Quicktime installed on your PC if you don't already (or download it from here).

From Saturday through to Tuesday ASI had a booth at the Perth FIA conference, and Marla, Colin and myself were there to attend to the booth and learn a few things.

Marla flew out today, Colin and I (Jay) fly out tomorrow morning.  We're heading off to Perth for the FIA Conference.  Once again, ASI are sponsoring the conference and will have a booth that the three of us will be tending to.

This year all of our efforts are going into letting people know about the new iMIS Friendraising module, and we decided to use the Friendraising module as part of a promotion, here's how it works:

1. Colin, Marla and I will try our best to get as many friends as we can.
2. For every friend we get, we'll take them through the donation process using iMIS Friendraising.  No one actually has to donate anything, just go through the process to see how easy it is.
3. For every one who 'donates' ASI will donate $5 to a pre-selected charity.

So who are the charities:

Marla, Colin and Jay are on their way to Perth today and tomorrow to man the ASI exhibition stand and to spread the word about iMIS Friendraising. Information on the conference can be found on the FIA website - it runs from Sunday through to Tuesday.

The team has come up with a great concept to promote Friendraising, with matching caps and shirts asking conference delegates to "Be my friend" !

Two weeks ago Jay created an entry on Wikipedia for "Friendraising" which is the term becoming more commonly used for online event-based fundraising using social networking and viral marketing concepts. One of the best examples is Cancer Council's Australia's Biggest Morning Tea event, and more recently Girls Night In, both of which iMIS helps run for Cancer Council Victoria.

However less than 2 days later the wiki entry had been completely updated by an unknown account and the definition now reflects a more cynical view of fundraising. Take a look at the current page here; then click on the history page to see the progression of changes; then click on the discussion page to see a comment already made on the latest definition (not Jay's definition). Want to see Jay's original text - click the history page and then click on the date of the first entry (has jaymcc as the author name). Or read it below (I have pasted it in).