Three years ago, Google launched Google for Non-Profits to help non-profits raise money and operate more efficiently. Among other things, that portal offered tips and tutorials on ways that non-profits could leverage Google’s tools and services. Google also historically offered Google Checkout for free to non-profits who accepted donations on their site, and has allowed qualified non-profits to participate in Google Grants – free advertising via Google’s Adwords network.
Two days ago, Google re-launched the non-profits portal and added several new and important benefits that non-profits should know about.
One important change was in the application process to use the Google tools and programs. Previously, non-profits had to apply to each Google product individually. Now, non-profits can sign up through a one-stop application.
Among other benefits, approved non-profits can receive up to $10,000 per month in advertising credits on Google AdWords (to reach more donors), free or discounted Google Apps products, and premium features for YouTube and Google mapping technologies. And there are now even more educational resources and case studies tailored specifically for non-profits.
The Google for Nonprofits Marketplace connects approved nonprofits with a worldwide network of Google Certified Partners specializing in a variety of Google products. Certified Partners are carefully vetted by Google and meet rigorous qualification standards.
Google for Nonprofits Featured Providers below have agreed to offer their services to approved nonprofits at a free or discounted rate. Rates for services and projects vary by provider. Please research multiple organizations to find the one that meets your needs.
If you’re not familiar with Google Tools and how non-profits can leverage them, watch this short video (it includes some excellent case-studies about how Direct Relief International raised more than $1 million using AdWords and about how other non-profits benefited from Google’s programs):
Do you know about other free or discounted Google programs for non-profits or have questions? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The image above has been altered using Adobe Photoshop. To see 80 more creative and funny Photoshopped images, look for the article in the Random Fun section below.
In our 12 Questions blog series, we feature interviews with someone from the crowdSPRING community. For these interviews, we pick people who add value to our community – in the blog, in the forums, in the projects. Plainly – activities that make crowdSPRING a better community. Be professional, treat others with respect, help us build something very special, and we’ll take notice.
We’re very proud to feature Shawndra Renée Cox (crowdSPRING username: OOPS) today. Shawndra lives and works in Lodi, NJ.
1. Please tell us about yourself.
My name is Shawndra Renée Cox. I currently live and work in Lodi, NJ, but I was born and raised in Queens, NY. I am a single mother, a lover of all things creative and became a registered business owner at the age of 26 (technically, I was still 25 but turned 26, twenty-nine days later). I can’t say that my path to running my own business was something I knowingly set out on so much as it was a really cool, unexpected place I ended up at after taking a wrong turn somewhere. Well, maybe not a wrong turn. It was more like being forced to taking a detour due to major road construction.
As soon as I graduated from college, I applied for jobs, went on interviews and got rejected by every studio and firm I visited. Over the course of about 4 years, there were at least 30 places that I went to in person. Some places I had actual appointments with. Others, I just walked in with my portfolio and resume and tried to shake someone’s hand. Plus, you can tack on the 50+ places I sent my resume to that I just never heard from lol.
All the while, I was picking up work from random people on craigslist and friends of friends that were trying to start their own businesses. They were always quick jobs though, and with my newborn son, I was more focused on finding something steady and stable rather than searching for the next gig to maintain for the moment.
So, finally, I landed in a small photography studio in Queens. It was 17.2 miles away from the Manhattan office I had always pictured myself in and it was about 5 times smaller. Still, they liked my work and I created some really cool things there. That was until they stopped being able to keep up with their expenses and I ended up without a job. That was when I got hit with the choice (yet again) to get a job that I could somehow convince myself was still “art related” or dig in and fight to do the design work I wanted to, full time. That’s (the short version of) how my studio was born.
2. How did you become interested in design?
Drawing was always a major part of my childhood. I used to watch “Imagination Station” with Mark Kistler as the host. I would follow along and draw with him probably at the age of 5 or 6. He always had the cutest little cartoon creatures and was really big on “foreshortening” and “shading.” I learned how to incorporate both techniques into my drawings early on. Looking back, I was able to keep up with his pace and did a decent job of copying most of the characters he made up.
Of the many things businesses can do well (or fail at) none is more important than customer service. Although the marketing textbooks, don’t consider it to be one aspect of a solid marketing plan, this key function should be considered as a part of your marketing and approached the same way you would approach any of your other marketing tactics. I say this because the word of mouth that great customer service can engender is among the most powerful forces that can impact your business in a profound way – improving revenues, strengthening margins, and increasing customer lifetime value all while reducing marketing expense in other areas, decreasing employee turnover, and leading to expanded visibility and awareness for your brand.
Great customer service does not have to be expensive, complicated, or slow. There are some wonderful tools available that can help you increase your customer service capacity, build an efficient infrastructure, and scale your ability to be responsive as your business grows. Here are some tips and tools which you can put to use as you learn to market through service!
1. Be available.
Make yourself reachable by your customers in the ways they want to reach you. The best approach is to make yourself available to your customers in multiple ways: email support, phone support, instant chat are all tools that you can use. Of course this depends on your business and the resources you have available. For instance, many small companies simply do not have the capacity to offer full-time phone support, so many will offer it during certain specific hours. Chat is also a great way for customers to reach you, but this too may stretch your internal capacity. If you do offer these during limited hours, make sure to message this and be clear about exactly when you are available and by what means.
2. Be fast.
Don’t keep people waiting, whether it is for an answer to their email request or by simply limiting the hold time on your phone support. We are proud of the fact that 96% of all customer support requests that come in are answered in under one hour! But the flip to this is that you have to communicate how long it will take you to respond and to calibrate your customer’s expectations to what you can realistically deliver; in other words, don’t promise a response within 25 hours if you know it may take more than that.
3. Be honest.
People appreciate transparency and your answer to their questions, comments, or suggestions are each an opportunity for you to establish an honest, open tone. This goes for everything from your message when they first contact you all the way through your answers to them when you are actually communicating. If your site is experiencing issues, tell them so; if you think a solution may take a long time, tell them that, too; and if you think their suggestion is one that is just not appropriate thank them and move on. They will appreciate the candor and will tell their colleagues how refreshing it is to deal with a company that tells the truth.
I fluctuated between being a vegan and vegetarian for nearly three years. Though the promise of breakfast sausage eventually lured me back to the dark side, I still feel a certain kinship and understanding with those that have special dietary needs. It can be daunting and down-right frustrating to find a restaurant that has a diverse array of options if you don’t want to eat cheese, bread or meat. This struggle is especially true for those who do not have the choice to convert back to more traditional eating habits.
Claire and Rich Mercer started eatingGF.com after years of wishing there were an easier way to find places that served gluten-free options. Claire has been diagnosed with coeliac disease, a small intestine auto-immune disorder that renders its sufferer unable to digest gluten. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. The pair wanted to help out other coeliacs in eating good food and still adhering to their necessary diet. So, they created an online search engine that will allow people to search the city they’re in for restaurants that have gluten-free menu items.
Rich kindly took the time to answer a few questions I had regarding eatingGF.com:
1. How did you get things designed before crowdSPRING? (or, if this is your first project, what other options were you considering?)
We have been considering hiring a design agency as well as freelance designers and other crowd-sourcing websites.
2. Why in the world did you decide to use crowdSPRING?!
After meeting with several designers and talking with friends and colleagues, it seemed apparent there is a large amount of risk with the traditional model in that you engage one designer, only for you to realize their ideas don’t fit with your tastes or requirements. crowdSPRING enabled us to put our project to multiple designers and chose a design, not a person. This way we were able to see so many different ideas from different designers; a variety that would not have been otherwise possible.
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The image above shows the world’s most typical person. The original post is in the Random Fun section below.
We’re thrilled to be part of a new web/TV reality series – Trep Life – giving audiences a unique, 360-degree view of what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.
Each episode will focus on one company or organization. The first episode was about our friends Matt Maloney and Mike Evans from Grub Hub – a terrific place to find every restaurant that will deliver to you.
Last week I wrote about the pain many small businesses experience when hiring new employees: the effort involved, the cost, the time and the risk. I suggested 10 things employers can do to ease the load and make the process smoother, less risky, and (hopefully) more successful.
Today I want to speak to the job applicants out there. There are many things that you, too, can do to ease the process for the employer, and at the same time increase your own odds for getting the job and make yourself more valuable as a potential employee. Here is my letter to you:
Dear Job Applicant,
First off, thanks so much for applying – we really do appreciate your interest in our company and in the position we are trying to fill. We hope that you are the right person for the job, and are looking forward to learning more about you and why you are a great fit for us. Apologies in advance for not getting back to you sooner, but please understand that we have been swamped with applications and it does take time to slog through all of them.
We are looking for certain specific experience in the person who gets this job and you may well have that experience. But a big part of helping us to understand that you are qualified comes in how you present those qualifications to us. Sure, the resume you attached to your application is helpful, but if you’re smart, you will find a better way to show us what you got. Here’s a few ideas that will help:
1.Do your homework. Did you take the time to do some basic research about the job and our company? No? Well LMGTFY. “What?” you ask? Let Me Google That For You. It’s easy – just take 10 minutes and have a look around the old internets about the company you’re applying to, the market they compete in, and the team you want to join. Really, we can tell if someone has done a bit of homework or not and, all else being equal, we will always err towards the one that has.
2. Don’t send us that stupid boilerplate cover letter.
If there’s anything that shows less about an applicant, it is a cover letter that starts off with “Dear Hiring Manager” and contains some generic content about how you really want this particular job. Major turnoff. What we want is a cover letter that was written just for us; we want to know that you get what we are as a company, what we are looking for in this job, and, most of all, we want a sense of who you are and what you’re about. Be sure to include some info about your experience and qualifications in there and show us that you know how to handle written language. Please?
In our 12 Questions blog series, we feature interviews with someone from the crowdSPRING community. For these interviews, we pick people who add value to our community – in the blog, in the forums, in the projects. Plainly – activities that make crowdSPRING a better community. Be professional, treat others with respect, help us build something very special, and we’ll take notice.
We’re very proud to feature Edward Laurin (crowdSPRING username: LOREWREN) today. Edward lives and works in suburban Toronto, Ontario.
1. Please tell us about yourself.
Husband. Father. Designer. Working Artist. Friend. Cousin to many. Canadian. No bandwagon jumping Toronto Maple Leaf hockey fan. Born on the shores of Georgian Bay in an English and French speaking small town. My french is limited to a few words and phases but I can always pull upon my drawing skills when language barriers arise. Live in the inner suburbs of Toronto, Ontario.
Started my career doing lots of freelance after graduating from college as full time jobs were few and far between at the time (Mum and Dad were wondering if I would ever get a real job). I think they honestly thought this career choice involved living in a artist loft, painting still life fruit and nudes. Freelance turned into a full time offer with my first agency and then a jump to a great client side opportunity for a 12 year stint as in-house creative director for a technology company. Joined when the company was private and experienced the transition to publicly traded company. Great learning experience and worked with some very creative folks outside the design realm – computer programmers, engineers and product managers are creative people too! If you’ve been in front of a PC and a red rectangle logo appeared upon start up then you have seen one of my logos. Now work for myself with direct clients and as a hired creative gun for boutique marketing communication firms.
Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account, I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design, web design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Here are some of the links that I’ve liked and shared this past week!
The image above shows an unusual collection of bookshelves. The original post, with photos of more unusual bookshelves is in the Industrial Design section below.
5 things that suck (about hiring new employees) and 10 things companies can do about it – http://bit.ly/hlXrEi
Good post about why you should not force-sell customers when they first visit – http://bit.ly/e279Iy
crowdSPRING is the world's #1 marketplace for entrepreneurs, small businesses, nonprofits and agencies who need custom logo design, web design, a new company name or other writing and design services. Over 110,000 designers and writers work on crowdSPRING. We are trusted by more than 27,000 happy clients around the world.
Of the many things businesses can do well (or fail at) none is more important than customer service. Although the marketing textbooks, don’t consider it to be one aspect of a solid marketing plan, this key function should be considered as a part of your marketing and approached the same way you would approach any of your other marketing tactics. I say this because the word of mouth that great customer service can engender is among the most powerful forces that can impact your business in a profound way – improving revenues, strengthening margins, and increasing customer lifetime value all while reducing marketing expense in other areas, decreasing employee turnover, and leading to expanded visibility and awareness for your brand.
Last week I wrote about the pain many small businesses experience when hiring new employees: the effort involved, the cost, the time and the risk. I suggested 10 things employers can do to ease the load and make the process smoother, less risky, and (hopefully) more successful.
