Episode 200: What Fundraising Teaches Us About the Power of Promo

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Common Skew, and today we have multiple guests on the Skewcast from two different organizations. One organization is Promo Kitchen and the other Promo Cares. Now, each organization recently worked on separate fundraising initiatives, and I thought we could interview some of the participants involved as a way to help bring awareness to the work, but also to explore their experiences as a teaching moment for us. Today we're talking about using the power of merch to elevate brand awareness, raise funds, provide recognition, and rally your tribe toward a good cause by creating limited edition merch drops, plus the marketing tactics that help propel great campaigns, like using sneak peeks of merch on social, newsletters, creating FOMO, and how to integrate a shop experience to not only make it easy, but to emotionally connect with an audience and ignite enthusiasm around a cause. It's a fun way for us to explore best practices by the pros, but also bring awareness to the amazing work these organizations are doing. My first conversation is with Kate Plummer and Ashley Colati with Promo Kitchen, and my second conversation is with Carrie Cowden with Promo Cares. Promo Kitchen is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, an all-volunteer organization built and led by pros in the business. Promo Kitchen represents a cross-section of the industry from suppliers, distributors, and service providers. They focus on best practice sharing through their podcast, educational events, and networking events, and they have two mandates: education and mentorship. Our guests— Kate Plummer is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Clearmount. While it was never her intention to go into the family business, Kate joined Clearmount around 12 years ago and has since carved a unique position in her business and in the industry as a thought leader and a voice of conscientious creativity. Kate is vice chair of the industry's only peer-led nonprofit dedicated to industry education. Ashley is the senior enterprise account manager at CommonsCue. She spent over 12 years working as a distributor before her role at CommonsCue. She now helps large distributors assess their workflow and current systems to uncover pain points that cause bottlenecks in productivity. An unsung hero in this story, but one of my favorite people in the world, is the uber-talented Kathy Chang of Redwood Classics. From Kate's initial idea to create a fundraising merch drop to Kathy's creativity and beautiful work creating a one-of-a-kind apparel piece exclusive to Promo Kitchen to Ashley's productivity power, the three of them launched an entire experience from concept to market in less than a week. After my chat with the Promo Kitchen team, I talked with Carrie Cowden of Promo Cares, who's not only an incredible mentor in our industry, but also a pro when it comes to fundraising and nonprofits. She won a PPAI Pyramid Award, for her work elevating a nonprofit, which we dig into. But she's also driving the Promo Cares fundraiser Sleep In for Good, which I'll explain right after this chat with Kate and Ashley.

We came here to actually talk about a project that you launched for Promo Kitchen, a recent fundraiser. Tell us about that fundraiser, what it was about, why you did it, and a little bit of the mechanics. We're going to jump to Ashley for the deep dive, but give us the overview of why you felt like you wanted to launch a merchandise program to the merchandise people to raise funds for Promo Kitchen.

Yeah, so Bobby, I don't know if you know this, but the pandemic was pretty tough for a lot of people.

Was it?

Was it for us? For us hermits, we might have missed that part.

Some people were fine, some people just needed the work, right? Some people had a rough time. And but it was a tough time for fundraising, and we, like, at Promo Kitchen, we kind of looked at our books and we're like, okay, we're gonna cut these things. Like, we don't We're not using them as much as to get our value out of it. And so at the beginning of the pandemic, I of course was like, let's lock down our spending, let's see what we're doing. Yeah, make sure our money is going somewhere that it's needed. And like, how can we grow our mentorship program? How can we grow our community outreach? How can we do education and everything? And so it kind of became this thing of, you know, our normal sponsors are suppliers, and the past year has been incredibly difficult for a lot of suppliers. Like, if it wasn't financial, it was emotional or Or it was just this roller coaster of restrictions, opening, COVID, like everything. And so we made the decision, Johanna and I decided last year that we weren't going to charge, like we weren't going to ask for donations from our suppliers. They'd been a partner to us for so many years, but we were just like, we're not gonna do that. But of course, as a nonprofit, you can't really just be like, we're taking another year off and we're not gonna fundraise because we still have, you know, Everyone thinks, oh, you guys are like scrappy and like we shoestring budget the whole thing. But at the same time, it's like we still have costs to kind of keep this going. And so it's been bandied about and about like what could we do to raise money. And the idea of a shop was sort of like, you know, like that's really cool. Like let's see how we could run this. And I was talking with Kathy Chang from Redwood and she goes, can I do something for you? Like, can I, can I help you in any way? And I was like, well, you know, we need to think of fundraising. Like, how could we get creative? And she goes, why don't I give you sweaters and you sell the sweaters and you can take that money? And I was like, okay, fine, but how the hell am I going to sell sweaters? And right, and I'm like, that's a great idea. And it is that thing, we're in promo kitchen, we're in the promotional products industry, and we don't do any promo. We don't, like, we don't, we don't have swag, but the things we do have are our mixer things, like our mixer outfits. And so what I really noticed over the year was that what we kept seeing on Zoom calls and people's social media posts were our t-shirts from our mixer, because it becomes this big thing of we have a contest, you submit your designs, you vote on them, and the winning design gets these t-shirts made. So we've had winners in the past, and those t-shirts just kept showing up on social. And I was just like, okay, how do we make something that makes us feel like we're part of this community? And like, again, how do you tie in that emotional thing? And I was like, okay, we really— instead of like back burner Kathy's donated sweaters, how can we figure this out? Like, what do we do? I was just like, okay, we're figuring this out. How do we run it? And it became this thing of US tax laws are a pain in my butt, having to figure them out. And I just kind of sent a message, like, and so we were gonna run it through Kathy's like Shopify site and we're gonna do it that way. And it was like, well, what about tax here? And what about this? And how do we do this? And like, what if free shipping kicks in and blah, blah, blah. And then I finally just sent a message to Ashley being like, hey, can we talk? And then Ashley comes back, she goes, I know what you wanna talk about. Yes, here's what we're gonna do. And so what we did was we did a limited edition merch drop of Redwood sweaters that had, uh, we didn't do the traditional like, here's your logo, Left Breast logo, which Bobby, as you know, is a pet peeve of mine. But we did a monogrammed PK and had that on Left Breast. And it was, so we kind of launched it as a merch drop and, and learned what that was.

One of the things I want to mention is that All of this sounds grand and simple, but there's a lot of details. Meaning Kathy said, we'll create some merchandise, we'll sell it, that'll be our fundraiser. But as, as Mark Graham has taught me, like, the details, it's the detail. There actually is no such thing as details. Everything is important. So enter Ashley, stage right. Finally, as we're chatting here about the shop itself and how this worked and how the merch drop actually worked, the mechanics of it. So Ashley, how—

you've done these before.

As I said in the intro, you were a former distributor. None of this was new to you, but merch drops have become such a rage in our clients' world and consumer world that it fits really nicely with the Promo Kitchen fundraiser. How did the mechanics of a merch drop work?

So first off, I want to say that you skipped the part, Kate, where everyone saw a sneak peek of these sweaters with the PK logo. Because Kate and Johanna got them as like a gift from Kathy from Redwood, and they were wearing them. And I think I saw an Instagram post or something, and then someone wore one to one of the promo kitchen Zoom calls, and everyone was like, I want one. And so before any of this started, we realized that everybody really wanted this. And if anything, I like volunteered my time because I wanted to get my hands on it— hands on a sweater, because they do look really cool.

There's actually a bigger story to that. I should have mentioned that. It is one of those funny things of, I was sitting here working late on Promo Kitchen one night and I was wearing Common Skew clothing because I spend most of my time from SkewCon, Skew Camp, everything looking like a Common Skew employee. And I messaged Joe just being like, I'm tired of looking like a Common Skew employee. I need to start looking like a Promo Kitchen employee. And Kathy had gone like, can I help you with anything? Like, let me know. And I was like, I want Promo Kitchen sweaters. And I was like, cream crew neck, orange stitching. And Kathy's like, sure. I normally go to Kathy with my demands just being like, I want this. And she's usually no, shuts me down. Or she says, yeah, I've got one for you. And so this time she came through for Jo and I. And then I thought, oh, this is like this cool exclusive, like, you know, Jo and I are the cool kid club. And then the rest of the team was like, no, no, no, we want in on that cool kid club too. And so I'm not going to say death threats, that threats were made if I didn't get these sweaters. So I think Ashley's correct in saying that, uh, this came about because the determination to get one of her own. So again, guys, exclusive, it works in terms of people wanting your cool stuff.

And the demand was there internally. So we all wanted them, but it was like, how do we turn this into a way to actually generate some funds for Promo Kitchen?

Yeah.

Ashley, what about what then? What would be a next step in terms of creating not-for-profit merchandise through like a shop experience? And maybe I should back up and let you explain, as Kate outlined the problem, how are we going to get this merchandise out to folks? What role did the shop play first, and what are we talking about for folks that are new to the business?

So I think just working with so many distributors, I've seen people do really cool merch drops, and so I was excited in my volunteer role with Promo Kitchen to be able to like do that because in my day-to-day job I don't get to sell promo anymore. I'm telling people about the Commerce U platform, but it was my chance to kind of like put that hat on and be involved in a, in a drop, as Kathy would call it. So immediately I thought of we should use Commerce U Shops because it had a lot of the variables that they were looking for. Like some of the obstacles around shipping, they're coming from Canada, they're shipping throughout the States. How do we get donations for them without worrying about like the tax in the different states. And so I actually had a conversation with Mark Graham about the whole thing because I wanted to get his opinion before saying, can we use a Commons Key Shop for this? And he had a lot of great input and was totally like into this idea. And his suggestion was, if it's a donation to Promo Kitchen, then you don't have to worry about the taxes because it's a donation amount. So for a certain amount that you donate, you can get a gift of a sweater. So that's the way that we phrased it. And then just— there were 3 different styles that Cathy had offered us. We had some great images, threw them up into a shop, and were able to aggregate all of those orders together at the end to create a PO for Cathy and her team and then drop ship to all the different locations.

Right. Yeah. In terms of efficiency, I mean, what I love about this is you have Kate is acting as the client in terms of the experience here and what she wanted and what she needed. And then Ashley, of course, you're playing the distributor's role where you're coming in with the solution. Were there— what are the other marketing pieces that you did to help promote the shop and the whole experience and the whole event?

We kind of did a little bit of everything, and it was a lot of like, what should we do? And It was our first one. And I'm really excited to say like, it was pretty successful for us. So we'll probably keep doing it. But it was one of those, it was a higher value item. So these were selling for $90 each. And so we're just like, where, how do we get as many touchpoints? So we put it out on our newsletter, we did an e-blast to the people in our community, we put it out on social. Kathy was fabulous in that she had a professional press release written for us. And, and so that went out to like PPAI, PBBC, ASI, promo. Like, basically, if you had promo somewhere in your name, we were going after you. And, um, and so we did that. And then we asked everyone to sort of promote it on your own. And, and then we did personal outreach as well to certain people, just being like, you might not have seen this, here's what it is. And it kind of became this mini hustle of like following the very traditional ways of like how you advertise something, while at the same time throwing it at the wall and seeing what sticks. Like would this get us a sale? If we did this, would it get us a sale? And so that was always interesting. I think I was giving Jo hourly updates at one point until she told me I had to wait until the, like, 4 hours had passed. And I was like, oh, I could do that. And I did it in 2 hours. And so—

That's great. Ashley, what else? Anything else that we might have missed in terms of promoting the event and maybe the shop mechanics?

I think just that organic outreach. All of the volunteers with Promo Kitchen sharing it on their social. I mean, we're in the branded merchandise industry and there were so many people that were willing to spend $90 for a sweatshirt because it's cool and it's what it represents and they want to be a part of the club. And because it's limited edition, we thought about like keeping the shop open longer, but then we were like, no, this should be— you've got to get your order in by a certain time and then it's cut off and then you'll never see these again. Like, this is your chance, so get in there. And I think that that really pushed people to place their order.

Yeah, yeah. Ashley was the cool kid going like— because normally I'm like, no, we've gotta, we've gotta do as many as possible. And, and Ashley was the one going, no, a merch drop has an end date. And, um, and then you create the sense of FOMO and exclusivity. And she's like, that's what we want. So if we do it again, people react faster to what you're doing.

Absolutely. I, I was so surprised to learn that James Jebbia, who created this whole concept of the merch drop, did it because of supply chain issues. They weren't sure they were going to be able to get that product again, so they created a definable window of time that you had to get it. And what they did was just blow up this entire concept that became— so it's something that we can actually use to our advantage in the supply chain issues that we're having, is creating a type of pop-up shop experience for our clients and then creating that exclusivity around it where it's limited offer, limited time, get it now. So actually, you've had experience as a distributor selling the merchandise. You've had experience from the CommonsQ side building software and selling software. This time you were actually involved in the mechanics of watching this thing unfold. What was exciting about that part?

That's why I wanted to jump in so bad, because I wanted to, to try it out for myself and put that distributor hat on again. And it was, I would say, the most exciting part about being in the back end of this fundraising merch drop is that every time an order would come through, I'd get the little ding notification and I would see it come through. And so then I would like ping Kate and Johanna and say like, this person ordered, or being able to see, um, just like we had this little vote going, like, is it going to be more crewnecks or zipnecks or the zipmocs? And like being able to see which style won out. So that kind of stuff in the back end is really neat.

I hope everyone hears this. I think it's an important part of it. Here's the tone and energy around a concept like this, because we are involved in the business. We're like building it. It's kind of— it's, it's sweat and it's hard work and we're creating it. But look at the excitement we have and just remember that with our clients. This is how they feel too when we're launching something so special that's really close to their heart and raising funds and building awareness. Last question, Kate, you're also, as I said in the introduction, in the incentives and awards business. And any tips that you can recommend? You've seen some amazing programs. I've been in your factory myself. I have seen some really cool product and some really cool awards. Can you share some tips that you have on how we can use merch to build awareness and also elevate any causes that we're doing work with?

I think there's like— that's a big question, what we can do. And so I'll narrow it down to what I see done in awards, because obviously awards fill my life. But it is one of those things is we see a lot going on for nonprofits and merch awards for us, in that there is this point where you really need to reward and recognize the people who helped you get to a certain point. And in the award side of things, is we have a lot of nonprofits come to us being like, we want to award top donors. And, and you can get stuck in this idea, someone gives you $1 million, a handwritten note is fabulous, beautiful, you're going to want to do something a little bit extra. And a lot of nonprofits kind of, they like balk at this, like spend money to make money, but that's usually where we kind of come into play. Like we come into play in sort of a recognition point for your top volunteers, your top donors and your sort of VIPs as sort of a takeaway of what people remember you next. And merch on the other side of things, so the t-shirts and everything else, is that they're really good at building community. And so you'll always see people with volunteer shirts. And it was this thing— and Ashley is from Toronto as well, so I don't know if you remember this— of like when the Pan Am Games here came here and everyone had those yellow volunteer jackets. It felt like you would just sort of signaling what you were— you were cool enough to be part of something. And, um, and so I think that's what everyone always wants to do, is have this merch to be a signal that you're something, part of something. And like, I saw it with one of my clients once, is we did these awards and they were really simple. They were kind of our most popular shape, which is like this dome award, but every year we did it a different color. So we like moved through the rainbow, we like did all sorts of things. But for her, it was really exciting because she would go into her top donors' places and they had them all lined up and they were just like this rainbow of like people's participation. And it really became this like, and for her, she was like, hey, this really matters to my, these people who are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for my organization. And for me, it's a small investment, but it's sort of, again, like how do you tie into the community of what you're trying to do? Because people dropping money on you, fabulous. Love it, not going to be against it. But at the same time, it's like you don't want that to be a one-hit-and-gone. How do you emotionally connect to people? And sometimes the tangible— we're in the tangible business, and, and the tangible touch is important.

I love that you created a continuity program with an award, which is ideally what you want to do anyway. So we're going to dig into tactics now, because what happens, I think, in a distributor's world is often someone will reach out to a distributor and say, hey, we need shirts for our event, or they'll, they'll cite a product or they'll cite one project. But what we're unpacking today is that there are multiple options within that not-for-profit to help them build awareness and to recognize, like you said, their donors. Awards is something that you might have even thought about, so that when you're working on that project they've asked you about— for those that are new to the business, there's other opportunities that are all around this not-for-profit that you can help. Tell me again the stat, because I've forgotten it, but how frequent does an award program repeat on average for a professional?

On average, it's between 5 to 8 years that it's an ongoing program before a refresh, and that might be they change it entirely, or they just redesign the award and update the look of it. Or, um, Bobby, you love talking about this one because we have an award program that's been going on for 40 years now, and their refresh for it was simply updating their logo. Wow.

We had a custom Crystal Awards program that was in the six figures. It was $150,000, rough range, and it repeated for several years. It never ended. It just evolved and became a bigger program. So you look at the lifetime value of that project is amazing. So that's why I love talking about this. Do you have any other examples you wanted to share?

You know what, there are so many that we do where a lot of it is people kind of get stuck on what to give to donors. And it can be like, you see a lot of this, like, you know, donate $50 and get this. And, you know, it's usually we're looking at it from the lens of an industry being like, well, that only cost them a dollar. Or, you know, oh, they, they splurged for the premium version if you're a VIP. And, and so we have, we do a lot of pieces where, because everything we do is custom and unique and, um, and we can do one-offs, is there becomes this art piece aspect of what we do. And I think for especially charities is that you always want to show off to your donors because you want to make it a bragging point about what you do to them, like really to recognize them and to do work that way. And, and so we'll have pieces where they come in and they want to do like an art piece for their donor, and that becomes like the defining factor of it. It's like, we want an art piece.. And sometimes you'll buy art and we'll create bases and it's really simple, but we do these one pieces and they're really simple. They're designed to look like a glass sculpture in a way. And for them it was very much of, we want something that they can't find out the price of, which sounds really weird, but it is true. You want to be able to show off and have it without the donor going, well, they've just spent my money to give it back to me. And that's a really tough part to be in because Shallowly, donor recognition leads to more donations. Yeah, and that's, you know, you see it in so many different ways, like Kickstarter, like get your name on our wall, and people want to feel recognized and like noticed, and sort of how you do that is really creative. And then it's just, again, always think of awards like awards reward and recognize. How did you get here? From someone's help. And so we do board gifts as well. Like, this is—

yeah, I love that.

This is a Promo Kitchen one, but we did Promo Kitchen awards, and it was really nice to hear from some— one of our former chefs just being like, I'm not normally allowed to bring promo into the house, and I was allowed to bring in this. It's like, cool, we did it.

What I love about this too is that ego, in a positive way, is what you're selling to. Because there are folks that are typically— when they're donating particularly sizable amounts, they don't need any more stuff, right?

They don't need any—

any— you can't really fashion an executive gift for them in any way that they can't go out and find that or create that. But creating a unique piece that allows them to show what causes they care about and what they're passionate about is ideal. And what I love about your particular line of work— how can we get involved in Promo Kitchen?

Yeah, so head over to promokitchen.org. There are so many different ways that you can do it, whether you join our weekly Twitter chat, you sign up for a newsletter, sign up for our podcast. If you want to volunteer, we're always looking for volunteers. And just think, if you've got weird skillset, come join us anyway. We were, we will always find a slot for you somewhere. I mean, Ashley joined us and we talked to her and she's like, actually, I really like to do graphics. And then she's moved to Promo Chat and now she's, you know, running our fledgling shop experience. And so it's, it's really neat and we're growing constantly. We want to be sustainable in that growth. So even if you don't have the time, don't think we will take time, talent, or treasure. So you can donate at promokitchen.org as well, if you'd like to sort of have us keep going, but also sign up for the mentorship program. Is either be a mentee or a mentor. Don't think that, you know, if you're like, no, I definitely need a mentor, you might be someone's mentor. So sign up for that in either way. And we want to see all fresh new faces.

And yeah, I love that every mentor needs a mentee. And I want to say a fringe benefit from Promo Kitchen is being involved. You get to hang out with folks like this and some of the elite thinkers in the business, whether they're new to the industry or they've been doing it a while. You get to immerse yourself in a community that becomes a little microcosm of a wonderful experience, um, just working with others to foster and build a better future for the business.

So thank you both, Kate.

Thank you, Ashley, for joining today.

Thanks for having me.

That was my chat with Kate and Ashley. And now onto my conversation with Carrie Cowden of Promocares. Promocares is an organization that inspires, educates, and provides actionable strategies to encourage social environmental responsibility in the industry. Now, they wanted to create an annual fundraiser for causes they could support, and this year they chose NAMI Wake County as their charity of choice. NAMI is the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It's the nation's largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. Promocare wants to raise awareness around the stigma of mental health and its connection to sleep deprivation.. They created a fundraiser called Sleep In for Good. It's a brilliant idea because as we all face new challenges in a post-pandemic world, and particularly as our industry is facing a lot of sleepless nights right now due to supply chain issues, HR challenges, and more, it's a perfect initiative. You can learn more and donate at promocares.org and just click on the Sleep In for Good tab. They're raising funds through November 8th, the day when daylight Savings Times ends, which is brilliant. And you can join them for their happiest of happy hours at 6:00 PM ET on November 8th, which you should be able to attend with no problem because you'll be well rested. See how that works? Carrie Cowden is the president and founder of Connect the Dots Promotions. She's one of our industry's most admired mentors. She was a PPAI board member. Her experience is vast working as both a supplier and a distributor. In our chat, we talk about how promo played a pivotal role in changing the dynamic of one organization's fundraising efforts. It's a project that Carrie and her team won a PPAI Golden Pyramid Award for. You are tuning in right when we are chatting about promo cares and the importance promo cares plays on our industry's buyers and their thinking.

Here's my chat with Carrie.

Yeah, what I love about that is clients more and more, particularly Gen Z, millennial buyers, are, that's a big part of it. It's no longer sort of an opt-in. They want to know that their money is spent toward good causes. They want to know where their dollars are going. And so the timing in Primal Care and what's actually happening in the market has been tremendous. One of the things I mentioned in the intro is that the other sort of subtopic I love to talk about, and you do too, is that I wanted to talk about the charity. I wanted us to bring attention to that. I wanted us to let our community know because folks want to support causes like We need to be reminded of sleep, sleep deprivation, and what's happening in our world. I have to tell you a quick sidebar. Catherine Graham told me one time, she said, this is a great leadership. She said, if there's one thing you get under control, you better get your sleep under control because you were talking about habits and things like that. You know, and I did, and I took her advice and I did, and I finally got that under control. But one of the reasons I love talking about this topic too is that we're doing this whole show on charities and the impact of brain development. Merchandise and charities, and particularly not-for-profits. It's this— I think it's like this quiet underdog of fundraising because it builds community, it inspires, you know, inspires connection, it definitely builds awareness because we see these things. You've worked with a lot of organizations and you've worked with nonprofits, not just what you're doing now with Promo Cares and NAMI. How have you seen merch play a leading role?

I always think overarching— you've got this advertising world and then there's promotional products and it's always like billboards and then promos like right on the list, you know. So it's like, you know, I'm an advocate for getting some type of product in there, but the most important part of that is when you put that product in there that it's not just slapping a logo on and being like, yay, I did a product for that, or I sold 1,000 pieces. It's like, again, thinking about the journey from, you know— I become jaded now because of all the promo care's work because it's like, where did this t-shirt come from? And like How was the workforce? Things that I never thought I would think about. But I also spin that as a differentiator as our company, because we're looking at more than just slapping your logo on an item. Like, you want to know all those things. So when it comes down to merch, like, you know, you got to put your money where the mouth is and say, if we do this and add this product, which is utilitarian, cost-effective, what is your end goal? And it's like, and you can kind of plug, plug back in because it's at the bottom of the list, but it does play a large role in it and it can be extremely successful, especially if you start with the end in mind, I think.

Yeah. What I love about branded merch, and we're both like, we're talking to an audience of believers. We're believers. So we all know that here. But here's the thing I think that's an interesting distinction with branded merchandise for not-for-profits is that typically when folks are wearing that shirt, whether it's a Band Together shirt, whether it's NAMI, or whether it's the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society There's typically a story behind why they're wearing this. There's a story by why they're connected to that charity. There's a reason they're wearing. And so what I love about that is that dynamically what happens is that's better than a billboard because it's an ad. What the story does is it allows folks to share not only the story of what's going on with the not-for-profit or the foundation or whatever it might be, the cause, folks that are impacted by it, and that can get sparked by simply wearing wearing a t-shirt. And so to me, that's why I call it the underdog of, you know, this— these types of movements. You've done these kind of projects for clients before. Do you have examples you've created for customers that you love?

Well, my favorite one, we won a pyramid from PPI for. We were really excited about it.

So is this the flip-flop story?

Yep, the flip-flop story. Yeah. So we knew that their giving was kind of going down, and there's— I can't remember if Danny— forgive me, Danny Rosen— if he wrote the article or shared an article with me, and it was about the world of nonprofits do not need another walk. And I was like on the 10th year of chairing this walk. And I'm like, ah, like, and then you start seeing profits, you know, because revenue changes and sponsorship changes. And if you don't have a champion within that corporation, is that still gonna work? So all that's flying around in my head. So we were down in Mexico with a bunch of girls, cuz I believe in girls trips and getting away and having their mental health protected.

And right.

Someone just brought up this random Guinness World Book of Records for the most people running in flip-flops. And I was like, oh my gosh. And she said, we should do that for our school. And I'm like, okay, there's 500 kids there and there's like the whole Valley of the Sun to help with this one cause. Like, we need to do this. So we all came back and like, we just started. And one thing that I will say is you have to have a believer of the promo at the top. So the CEO of this organization was like, she heard the story and she's like, oh my gosh, yes. Not everyone will have that reaction, but she let us kind of go. And because of that, we were able to, like, you're telling the story. I was able to reach out to my corporate clients and say, hey, like, number one problem, homelessness, we need to work on this. So I was able to get them all to be sponsors and then get their name on the flip-flop for the organization. So it was just this beautiful, like, thing that came together just because we told the story. And so the, the best part about this is there's, there's actually in Raleigh, North Carolina, ironically, there's a running club. That was the winner of the title, the most people running in flip-flops in a 1K. And so when we started going after it, they started seeing all of our media and they started reaching out to me. And so I have been in touch with them and we are, they were able, they were raising like $2,000 or $3,000. They're up to like $16,000. And like even that little incremental shift, it's so freaking fun. So now we're like taunting each other cuz we haven't been able to have the event for 2 years. And we're the current record holder, so this next year we don't need to go for it again because there's a cost related to it. And so now it's like, if we can lift all the boats because of, you know, this one silly event, then let's get after it.

It's beautiful. That is amazing. That's amazing. What is it that we need to know as distributors that are selling branded merch for nonprofits, for initiatives like this? What is it that you've learned that you can pass along for a couple of tips or ideas on how we can position these things? I mean, that story alone is a great example of how we can go to market. But there's a couple of things at play here. You've got the dwindling budgets, you've got all kinds of challenges with these organizations, but we know branded merch can create a movement. We know all the things it can do. How would you package that up for distributors to say, here's a couple of things that I recommend you do?

So I would say start with the end in mind. And you know, there's one thing about, you always hear about donators and they're like, oh, I have 500 bottles of water, and then that organization doesn't need 100 bottles of water. So really connecting with that client and that nonprofit and understanding what their needs are. And if their needs are to have an event to increase giving or whatever that is, start with the end in mind and know I'm gonna have to plug something in there to make it make it happen. So ask the questions, I think, is the most important part. Don't just assume that they want whatever it is you're giving. Really dig in and make sure that's it. And then remember that they have limited resources because we have our companies and we do this all the time. They don't have the time to think. One, one position could be doing 10 different things. So if you can become friends with them and a resource for them and plug in, then that's a beautiful thing. And then it makes it easier to plug the promo in, I think.

Yeah, that's a really great point. And I love what you said about asking questions, because if you had not known that article— if you weren't sent that article by the king of connection, Mr. Dean Rosen— if that article didn't hit your viewpoint, you would not have brought that to the charity, and that shifted their perspective too. So you have to kind of know what they're going through as a nonprofit. A lot of times our clients will call up and they just— it becomes a very transactional— I'm more resource, they're, they're the transaction— and it becomes transactional as opposed to what you said, which is digging a little deeper in the time, right?

Exactly.

And not making an assumption, right?

Right, right.

And then look at, like, if you're, if you're wanting to know what ROI it is for me as a person, it's like, okay, don't even talk about the pricelessness truly about what that gives to me emotionally. And to be able to make the connections— I mean, my company name is Connect the Dots. It's like I want to connect all the things. But then, you know, going in to be able to put it in as a case history for the PPI Pyramid Awards. And then there's a great resource out there, which I have to plug, The Red Goldfish, Stan Phelps and Roger Burnett wrote. And this is full of promotional products, case histories about doing good. Like, we have a lot of resources at our fingertips that you can use. And always call. Like, I'm 100% open to talking. I love raising all the boats.

Yeah, we also, I think, take it for granted how important our, our role is for these organizations. And I remember once we were doing a lot of fundraising and actually merchandise for a charity that was really close to my heart. And I remember the director of the charity said to me, Bobby, why aren't you talking about this? Like, why aren't you bragging about it? I was like, Danny, we don't— I said, we don't really— is a different Danny, but I said, we don't, we don't want to brag about it. We don't want to come across as braggarts. We just want to help. And he said, you're doing us no favors by staying quiet. He said, the more you talk about this, the more you share what you're doing. So I would encourage distributors too, that if you're doing work for charities and nonprofits and folks like that, they really need your help in promotion and marketing. And share that story with your other customers. And like you said, you've got these great connections with corporate buyers, you've got these great connections with charities and nonprofits. There's a way to make all that happen. Right, right. Carrie, thank you for your time. Appreciate you joining today, particularly with everything you've got going on. We won't get into it, but you all do a lot. And appreciate, appreciate so much. And good luck with this. Thank you. And maybe we should tell our promo friends, make sure you're getting sleep.

Yes, make sure you're getting sleep. And by November 8th, we have our last Sleep In for Good donation, and we're having a happy hour that night. So it's gonna be the happiest happy hour before you can—

Awesome, that's great. There'll be details where we post this information.

Carrie, thanks for joining.

Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkuCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkuCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.