Reframing the Discussion

Yesterday, I had a great discussion with Mary Beth Fresh, the Director of Strategic Alliances at First Book. First Book has had great success in cause-related marketing campaigns. Through these campaigns, they create revenue, increase name recognition, and drive website traffic through corporate partnerships. While many of First Book's relationship are national in scale (Cheerios, Target, etc.), Mary Beth helped me to think about how Reach can begin cultivating relationships with local businesses. For-profit businesses are ultimately most interested in making money, not doing good, so nonprofits must learn to approach businesses with profit in mind. That means we must ask some key questions:

• What businesses would benefit from having access to our students?
• What businesses would benefit from looking good to our donor base?
• Do we share an interest with any business in targeting a specific group?

This meeting really helped me in my thinking about a specific project. Recently, I've been thinking about ways in which I can cultivate relationships with the law firms and lawyers that play such a role in Washington DC. So, who else wants to target young lawyers? Additionally, how could we position ourselves - or what could we offer - so that the firms would be interested in providing support? I have some ideas, and I'm ready to start planning. So...

If you're a young DC lawyer, and you're interested in offering some assistance in planning an event this summer, please send me an e-mail: mark(at)reachincorporated(dot)org.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Mark