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This is a brochure I created for one of my businesses that, in the end, was not a success. The concept was inspired by my getting tired of being haranged by the ‘membership drives’ of my local public radio station. I thought there must be a better way for non-profits such as this station to fundraise – other listeners hate it as much as I do, I’m sure, and I was betting the announcers also dreaded it.
I thought that, if the station had a membership discount card that they could promote on the air throughout the year, listeners would be happy to purchase such a card for say, twenty dollars or so; the cards would have discounts provided by local merchants who would receive free mention on the air in return for offering a discount of 10% or more to cardholders.
Smaller groups might also benefit, I thought, such as non-profit schools and the like, who could ask their students to corral their parents, etc. to purchase the membership discount cards to support the school, the band, sports teams, or what have you.
The non-profits would use the cards as fund-raisers, merchants would get free promotion for their businesses, and cardholders would get discounts on goods and services – win-win-win!
As it turned out, merchants were easier to enlist than non-profit groups. Not ‘easy,’ but ‘easier.’ As with my newspaper of years ago, I should’ve done some market research before going to the trouble of building a website and employing independent contractors to hustle up merchants for the card.
It still seems like a good idea to me, but non-profits are not profit-making businesses, and so, I guess, don’t always see the financial possibilities of ideas that come their way.
I always think my ideas make so much sense, who wouldn’t want to participate! Most, but not all of the time, I’ve been right – not this time!
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