Our calendar means more exposure for your event, more messages to potential participants and to philanthropists, more participation in your events and, ultimately, more funds raised for your cause.

We call it a calendar, but it is much more. State College Magazine is providing a mini cause marketing tool kit. And, it is FREE!

Using the web tools included with the calendar, you can:

1. Register your organization,
2. Schedule all your events for the year,
3. Post your events to the most comprehensive calendar in the State College Region,
4. Create a four page "event" website for each event and campaign your have througout the year, and for years to come,
5. Execute an email campaign inviting your volunteers, vendors, associates, friends, family, and everyone else to: Participate, Donate, and Spread-The-Word, and
6. Take registrations and collect donations online.

Take a Tour of your new "Mini Cause Marketing Tool Kit".

First, lets look at the calendar and look at the free four-page EZ website.. Click Tour 

EZ is Easy

Volunteers work hard. There is always too much to do to make an event successful. To save time, you only need to register your organization on the State College Master Calendar once. Registering your organization is EZ using the Internet form provided on our calender. Click here to view the information you will need to provide: Organization Registration Form - Tutorial.

Also, to save you time, you can tell us all abour your event using our EZ to complete Internet event registration form. Never again will you need to send a press release, fax notification, email notification or make a telephone call.  To learn how to submit an event click here: Post Your Event Form - Tutorial.

Schedule Events As Far In Advance As You Can.

Think of an event as a mini-business that will be started, run, and closed in a very short period of time.  This business MUST END IN THE BLACK.  By scheduling your event in advance, you notifiy all the other event planners in our region and eliminate conflicting events. You give them the opportunity to avoid scheduling their competing events on the same day.

But this is only the beginning. While scheduling your event can save you time and prevent unnecessary competition, there is much more power in your State College Magazine Mini Cause Marketing Tool Kit.

A FREE "Event" Website.

Most non-profit organizations have one or more "cause" websites.  The cause website explains the organization's purpose. An example is the site for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. There is a difference between a "cause" website and an "event" web site. The cause web site motivates browsers to support the cause. The event website motivates browsers to:

1. Participate in a specific event,
2. Make online donations,
3. Spread the word about the event.
4. Motivate their friends to participate

As part of your cause marketing kit, State College Magazine provides the option, with each event listing, to create your own event website complete with four separate, and very effective, pages. Again, you create this website yourself by completing some EZ online forms.

There can be multiple paths to your event website. First, the Press Release page you viewed in the tour can automatically link to the event website. Second, you can provide a link on your cause website to the event website you create on the State College Master Calendar. You can also ask your corporate supporters to link from their sites to your event website. The more paths to your site, the more traffic. The more traffic, the more participation. The more participation, the more fun during the event and the more funds raised for your cause.

Four Pages of "Event Marketing Power"

The Tour of the calendar above provides a description of the four-page EZ event website. 

It may seem a bit scary at first, building your own event based website, but you find that all you need do is, again, fill in some forms.  To view what a site can look like click here:  Sample Site

For a guide on how to create the site, click here:  EZ Website Creation Guide

Need To Raise An Eyebrow

Need your attention to a few very important facts about the EZ site.

First, you can have an EZ website that does not include registration.  This means you pay nothing for registering your organization, listing events, or using the website to market your cause and event.

Second, if you elect to use registration (accept online donations) Kintera, our calendaring partner, does assess a charge of 4.75% of the amount + $1.50 per transaction for processing online transactions. If your event is a casino night, the charge per ticket is $25.00, and the average transaction is two tickets, Kintera will reatin $3.88 for this transaction and send (twice each month) the difference of $46.13 to you.  THIS IS EVENT MONEY and NOT CHARITY MONEY.  Event money is what we spend when we print and mail invitations, rent the gaming tables, pay the dealers, buy the food, etc.  Internet marketing is much less expensive than posted mail marketing and much more effective. The fee withheld means more money to the bottom line profitability of the event.

Third, if you absolutely need to have the entire ticket price, then add a "Convenience Fee" to each transaction.   Most online ticketing services add such a fee.  Will people pay it? ABSOLUTELY!

You may want to calculate a convenience fee that nets an amount close to the price of the tickets if they were sold offline.  The following table displays the effect a "closely calculated" convenience fee would have on the total ticket price and the amount rebated to the non-profit organization.

The fourth point, involves security of your transactions.  Kintera has been providing online registration and donation collection for the past two years for organizations such as The America Heart Association, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, American Diabetes Association, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, AIDS WALK, Easter Seals, Epilepsy Foundation, Gilda's Club, Special Olympics, and many others. Your funds are safe, deposited to your account twice per month and accurately reported.

Which brings us to the fifth,and final, point we need to cover; reports.  Every transaction is captured, recorded into a transaction database and made avialable for reporting.  All you do is enter your login user name and password, navigate to the EZ Reports feature and the select the report you want for ticket fulfillment, product fulfillment, will-call list generation, and payment reconciliation.  To learn how to generate these reports, click on Generate Reports Tutorial.

The Power of "Molecular" Cause Marketing

If you have taken the calendar Tour, then you know about the last page of the four-page EZ website.  We cannot emphasize the importance of this page enough.  This is where your volunteers, family members, friends, emloyees, bosses, peers, associates, vendors and everyone else you know and meet use the internet to spread-the-word about your cause, your campaigns, and your events.

On the "Spread-The-Word" page, people everywhere can

1. Enter their name and email address.
2. Create an e-mail message with automatic embedded click back to your site
3. Enter the names and e-mail addresses of eveyone in their community, and
4. Broadcasts email messages motivating a click back to your EZ site, registration and donation, and, again, spreading the word to their community..

It Really is EZ To Be The Cause Marketing Guru of Your Organization

Again, three simple steps.

1. Register your organization - Tutorial
2. Post your event - Tutorial
3. Create your EZ website - Guide.

We are very excited about our Master Calendar and ready to help you register your organization, list your event and create your free event Web page. If you have any questions, call me, Sallie Huey, 814-867-2222, or e-mail me: Sallie@statecollegemagazine.com

Spread the word about our calendar to every event planner and promoter you know in Southeastern Wisconsin. We will have one comprehensive Master Calendar that everyone can use with confidence.