A number of months ago on this blog I wrote about a new online phenomenon called Pinterest. This online pinboard has taken the social media world by a storm and has influenced many other sites who are bringing people together around images.
I was obsessed with Pinterest when I first discovered it. I still really like it although I confess to visiting slightly less frequently. I find it a fun way to express the things that I am passionate about. It continues to inspire me with fabulous recipes and travel destinations and gardens and photos of dogs. (I'm in the market for a dog so am looking around for the perfect "next" dog for me).
I am clearly not alone. The number of users on Pinterest has rocketed to over 23 Million users (according to Comscore). The really hot topics are food, fashion, travel, pets. But here's the best part. Those are many of the same topics that are hot within the BiddingForGood marketplace. Fundraising auctions are raising lots of money by auctioning off travel packages, and dining certificates and even fashion and accessories. So now, and this is the really important thing. (To coin Bill Clinton) Listen to me. Now you can PIN images from your auction onto Pinterest for the world to see. Why is this important? Because it is another powerful way to get the word out about your auction and to invite the larger community of cause-minded shoppers to come on in and bid.
BiddingForGood has some of our own boards on Pinterest on topics like Goodness in Action, Fashion Finds, Things we love and more.
Our clients continue to amaze and impress us with their creativity. As much as we think we've got the best collection of auction experts around, our clients continue to dream up ideas that we haven't thought of. They are dreaming up ideas that are helping them run the best, most successful auctions around. So Pinterest should definitely be added to the bag of tricks that successful fundraisers are using to raise more money. With 23 million people engaged on Pinterest, there's something exciting going on there. Why don't you jump in and see what's it about all about. It really may bring more bidders to your auction and what's not to love about that.
Here are some of the items that have been "pinned" from BiddingForGood.
And
And here's where you can find the PIN icon on an item page. If you are a member of Pinterest, all you have to do is click it and the item image will get posted to Pinterest. Easy! And fun!
Next week, on Thursday, September 27, BiddingForGood will be sharing the stage with Constant Contact at the first of a series of Seminars. The first one will take place in Boston at Space with a Soul.
Spending Less, Raising More is the name of the event and it's all about helping nonprofits and schools run better fundraising events. Why the partnership? Well both companies are incredibly invested in helping nonprofits succeed. While Constant Contact has a suite of tools that have helped all kinds of companies do better email marketing, social media marketing and event marketing, BiddingforGood is all about using fundraising auctions to raise much needed funds for nonprofits and schools. Many of our best practices are about using social media to promote your auctions and using email marketing to solicit items, to promote events and more. There is so much synergy between our two companies that we decided to head out on the road and share best practices, share some new ideas and ways to galvanize your fundraising.
As I've said many times before, no one ever said raising a lot of money was going to be easy, but there sure are a lot of great tools that make it easier and help you be more efficient. We'll give demos of the full line of products from each company and have lots of time for attendees to mingle and get to hear from their peers. BiddingForGood will even do a demo of our Mobile Bidding technology which should be lots of fun for everyone in attendance.
If this sounds like a good way to spend a morning, click here to register. We'd love to have you join us. If you have colleagues or friends who you'd like to invite, please do so. We promise you'll come away with lots of ideas and tips about how to run better events and how to take your fundraising to the next level.
We plan to visit some other cities later this fall. Stay tuned for those dates and info. In the meantime, rock on with your fundraising. We look forward to meeting many of you live and in person.
I just read a very interesting article about how people view their own creativity around the world. The article which appeared in Ad Age was inspired by a global study conducted by Adobe. It also talked about whether people perceive their countries as maximizing their creative potential. What an interesting topic. Believe it or not, we found this article because we were having an internal debate here at BiddingForGood about how many of our customers think of themselves as creative. We sure hope that most of them do.
Here's the good news. Here in the United States we give ourselves higher marks as being more creative than any other country around the world. 52% of Americans think of themselves as creative. 6 in 10 felt that creativity was very important for the health of our country. In this election season, it's an interesting idea to ponder. But we'll resist getting into an election discussion today. It rarely ends well.
Personally I place very high marks on creativity in life and in work. But for our customers who are putting on fundraising auctions, I would place creativity as a crucial attribute of the organization. Creativity in promotion, in merchandising, and in creating a great experience for your supporters are all really important to a successful auction. Where do we see creativity at it's best? We see it in the unusual and "priceless" items that customers put into their auctions. We see it in the way that they merchandise their auction and their items. We see it in the creative ways that people address challenges around fundraising. And we all know that there are many challenges associated with asking people to part with their money.
So here's to creativity in life, in work and in fundraising auctions. May we never settle for old and tired but always look for fresh ideas, fresh thinking and new ways to inspire our supporters.