Charities

We have just launched the ability to buy credits for your account, where you can just bring your card to the restaurant and just present the card and the certificate will be purchased and redeemed on the spot.  Wow… I love this.

In the next few days, you will be able to buy letsgofordinner cards as gifts.  You will be able to buy credit for other people – not bad, spend $25 and get someone a $50 gift certificate, makes you look good.

Looks like we are going to do some events with charities PWN and LDABC in the next few months, the details will be worked out over September… yes.  Also, we finally got the LDABC cards fron our supplier who is great for charging us and losing our graphics.. strange how that works., to bad it was not the other way.  New supplier being tee’d up.

It is good to hear that spending cuts will not occur for BC charities funded by lottery/gaming grants.  Given donations and revenues are down this would be a terrible third blow for nonprofits.

Restaurants

And once again Glowbal’s Italian Kitchen scores with an article in Western Living.. impressive string of PR in 1 week

Restaurants much activity afoot, just posted our new crowd sourcing page or in English if you want a certain restaurant to use the letsgofordinner service print out the sheet -add your own refer a friend code  to find it go to your my account page – and then give it to the restaurant manager.

We could have two more restaurants live this week… lets see.  BCRFA meeting soon?

Going to look for a salesperson to help us handle more restaurants and examine a few new thoughts on expanding our offering to other price points.

Consumers

Have meetings with a company in stealth mode (due to Techcrunch) who wants to use our service, going to meet a mega charity next week could be very good timing and tomorrow have a meeting with an association with 2000 well heeled members who are in our target audience. All looks very exciting.

Will let you know how it all goes

Good meeting with Bootup and its other companies, everyone seemed to be their hitting milestones.. way to go

Speaking of Bootup – featured in this weeks Georgia Straight.. good show guys

Charities, like advertisers, find their revenue drops in a recession, but the best companies continue to advertise and even step up their marketing efforts.  In this economic time, at a minimum it is about positioning for the future and getting mind share.  But with less money everyone has to be more creative.   This is where new media really comes in as raising awareness can be cheap.  Social media,  PR (stunts) and email can be great way of reaching new and younger supporters.    Further, if you do not have a Twitter or Facebook accounts you have to get them. If you do not have a good supporter email list and many charities I know don’t, you need to get your supporters email address as this is a cheap way to stay in contact and market to them, so this can be undertaken as well.  Also, at that time then we can help as well, let us know.

Speaking of social media just past having 100 followers on Twitter a mini milestone that I should not to be publicizing, I would guess

Further, I just visited Voya and Steamworks, my first restaurant visits – both good meeting, great decor and friendly staff.

We have a new administration tool to make handling inquiries that much easier .. thanks John.

One of our long time supporters and neighbour stopped by to collect  her card replacement and told all her friends… enjoy the meal and thanks Kim

Restaurant and Consumer News

For the restaurants that will never go hi tech, do not have a Point of Sale (POS) or just have an obscure POS system, we have a solution.  Just show the card at the end of meal for two and the diners get $10 off, nice and easy.

For consumers this means more savings and more restaurants to choose from have a look on www.letsgofordinner.com

In August, we will be looking to launch our automated telephone redemption service for a similar audience where the server just calls up our back office and the certificates are redeemed.  Watch this space.

Another new product is our pay as you go or annual membership

1) Free Membership with 40% discount on certificates or

2) $15 membership for a year and a 50% off certificates

Allowing potential new members to decide if they want to save money upfront or just see how things go.

Password Change

Last easy thing now if you want to change your password you do not have to contact us, you can just log in and change it your self.

Have fun

Just read a very interesting book review in the economist – which discusses using capitalistic methods to generate more revenue for charities.  The heart of the matter is paying people who do great fund raising  very well.  The specific example is Avon Breast Cancer Walk.  Avon started its own walks and generated $22.7 million.  They started the walks after leaving a firm that generated $70.9 million annually for the same walks. They left because the CEO  and founder was paid above the average.

Jealousy and charities should not mix and this is a great case.  Further, you get what you pay for.

Think big and you will be big.

Busy with
6) Arranging a Restaurant event and confirmed the date April 15 and 28th. thank you Jonathan at macleangroup now all I need is the marketing packs with the invitation

Getting there

7) Hopefully will get the PWN charity cards on Monday next week, they have been very supportive