On June 20 Children Charity Foundation Gift to an Angel participated in the IV International Conference "Social Marketing". The following speakers acted on behalf of the Foundation: Prikazchikova Anastasia, director general and co-founder of the Foundation, Serikova Eugenia, PR manager of the Foundation, and Dmitry Chugunov, member of the Foundation's board. After the end of the conference very informative and useful material was published on the portal miloserdie.ru. It is so satisfying when you become the leader of opinion in your sector, when you are held up as an example, and when your experience is adopted. It should be beneficial to be a donator. Anastasia Prikazchikova How do Foundations use marketing approaches in their work? Anastasia Prikazchikova, director of the Gift to Angel Foundation, explained it using the example of her own Foundation. The Foundation emerged from social networks - at first it was just a volunteer group, which raised Foundations to purchase gifts for children with special needs. Starting with only a few people the group has amounted to several thousand participants over some months. As a result, a Foundation emerged, which now also operates under programs of help to such families, gradually moving away from targeted assistance. "Our mistake, faced by young Foundations, was that we kept up on private donations for a long time, without involving business," notes Anastasia Prikazchikova. But then the Foundation came up with package proposals - "wizard packages", combining the efforts of private donators and business opportunities, for example, "Kind Bank", "Kind Carrier", "Kind Retail" and so on. So a way the Foundation started to use social marketing. "For example, in the framework of the "Kind Carrier" project, we offered to donate accumulated miles, not money. In such a way we are able to pay for the flights of children to the places of treatment, surgery or rehabilitation courses." Often people are too lazy to visit websites and make transfers, or they have no time for this. But when you come to the store, you can buy a package of milk or juice with a Foundation emblem, and you know that part of the amount you paid will go to this Foundation as a donation. You help buying, and this is also a marketing approach. And at the same time the buyer memorises information about the Foundation. Such a co-branding action can be widely promoted.

"It should be profitable for a donator in terms of sales and positioning," reminds Anastasia Prikazchikova. - If you offer a company to make a social and marketing campaign with your Foundation, then you should use the win-win principle. Otherwise, the business won't agree to help." Cooperation of companies with Foundations increases sales, and this is the benefit for business. "For example, we made a campaign in the restaurant Porto Maltese - extra 30 percent were charged for one of their desserts, these Foundations went to our Foundation. It may seem odd, but in the end the dessert was very popular, the sales were high during the action, and then increased." So the restaurant without making any investments benefited from cooperation with the charitable Foundation. To present and to sell oneself Another important part of social marketing in the work of NPOs is the Foundation PR.  Eugenia Serikova, PR manager of the Foundation Gift to an Angel, reminds that it is very important to present yourself in a right way - then you will be able to sell yourself. "Starting from the website and social networks, the Foundation shall position itself correctly, it should attract, motivate the person who visits the page to help and to donate, the sales pitch should be "delicious", - Eugenia advises. "Be sure to stay in contact with your audience, to make a dialogue. It is always nice to propose a conversation: "We are starting a new project, how do you like it?",  advises Eugenia. It is worth paying attention to networks not yet familiar to charitable Foundations  - Telegram and YouTube. Foundation branding should be identical in all social networks and it is important to monitor this. So donators can understand that these are not fake pages, not fraudulent accounts, but genuine pages of the Foundation, the credibility of the Foundation depends on this. It is possible to create additional accounts in social networks that support the main pages of the Foundation. For example, the Foundation Gift to an Angel also created a separate page "Anastasia.Foundation" in Instagram, it is the blog of Anastasia Prikazchikova, where she gives practical advices, describes how to attract donators, how the Foundation works, explains what principles shall be observed to build a business company, and so on.

"With this account we attracted about a dozen of companies in just two weeks. Business managers visited the page to read business advice, clicked on the link to the Foundation's website, and so we made contact with them," Eugenia says. By the way, here is a useful technical advice from Eugenia Serikova. Be careful with hashtags. "You can not make posts in social networks with the same hashtag more than 50 times, otherwise a shadowban can be applied to your page in Instagram, for example. As a result, your page is less viewed, people rarely visit your account: because Instagram punishes for low-quality advertising." A good way of free promotion of the Foundation is opinion leaders. It's worth contacting bloggers who can tell you about your work. It is important that the blogger has the same target audience. Do not expect a quick result. You can promote your social networks for pay, but if your pages have bad content, bad articles, uninteresting photos, then paid promotion will not help. But at the same time, the expert recommends, do not give up. Even if you fail for the first time, do not give up your pages in social networks. One day a potential donator company may visit your page and lose interest in the Foundation, if the information has not been updated for a long time.  Is it dangerous.