Checking In On The ASO Bring Light Fundraising Project
Earlier in the month we took a moment to acknowledge the Alabama Symphony Orchestra (ASO), whose application was selected for the free fundraising project at BringLight.com. As promised, today’s installment will report on the ASO’s impression of working with Bring Light as a fundraising service and examine how they’ve been using Bring Light for their project…
In order to find out more, I contacted Megan Cottle, ASO Institutional Giving Manager, who was responsible for implementing the fundraising project. I noticed that the ASO launched their project page within a few days after returning from the New Year’s holiday break and when asked about what it was like to work with Bring Light’s system, Cottle said “it was very easy to set up and use compared to other fundraising sites I’ve worked with.”
I did notice that the ASO set the fundraising goal at their Bring Light page to a level higher than what was originally planned and according to Cottle, the goal was increased because of the increased interest in MAGIC from schools and the organization’s desire to expand the program to more schools in the following year. Since the goal of the program is to purchase instruments for the ASO’s Musicians Activating Growth In Classrooms (MAGIC) program, they decided to set a fundraising deadline of early summer.
Of course, any fundraising project is only as good as the execution plan and when asked how the ASO plans to promote fundraising efforts, Cottle indicated that in addition to measures currently in place, they plan on developing ideas through the deadline.
“We included a link on our education webpage, we’re putting together a press release, and we’re going to include notices in scheduled email blasts for Young People’s concerts and our youth orchestra,” said Cottle. “We’re also figuring out the best way to use our Twitter and Facebook accounts. We would like to take a look into using some of the marketing support Bring Light offers but we need to get the staff time to do that.”
At the very least, it seems as though a traditional PR has managed to produce some immediate results as The Birmingham News published a feature article by Michael Huebner about the entire project on 1/17/2010.
You can visit the ASO’s Bring Light donation page here and we’ll check in on the project from time to time to see how it is coming along.
Filed Under: Development • Featured
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The ASO has also posted links to both the bringlight page and to Huebner’s story on the ASO Facebook page to take advantage of advertising the project through social media. Everyone here is very excited and truly appreciates your help to highlight this project.
- Megan Cottle