About The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever

When you look at the Greatest Gift Catalog Ever, it seems like a simple concept at first; but when you look at the 6 objectives and nearly a dozen key elements, you will see that it is much more than it appears. 

 

The 6 primary objectives of the catalog include:

 1. Changing conventional retailing dollars into charitable contributions

 2. Helping organizations raise new charitable dollars

 3. Teaching children philanthropy

 4. Creating Exposure for the Organizations to Help Them Reach New Audiences and Highlighting the Work They Do.

 5. Helping those who need help find it

 6. Being a third party advocate for a group of nonprofit organizations in the community.

 

 In addition, there are around a dozen additional elements worth reviewing as you look at the objectives.  Explanations and examples of each element and objective are below.

 

 

Objective #1 Conversion of Conventional Retail Dollars into Charitable Contributions

 

When the catalog was first developed, the primary goal was to take dollars that were generally spent during the holiday season on tangible retail items like a set of kitchen knives or a sweater and convert them to charitable giving dollars.

 

There are two primary ways the catalog converts retail dollars into charitable contributions. 

• The first is presenting the opportunity to give in a gift catalog and an online gift catalog format. This format is one of the traditional ways retailers package items and expose potential customers to their product or service.  The catalog gives charitable organizations a way to reach donors through the same communication device.

 

• The second way is through the gift card program. The gift card is a mechanism used to capture conventional retailing dollars.  There is a separate sheet explaining the functionality of the gift card, but a retail parallel can be drawn by looking at a Home Depot gift card.  If your friend is a “do-it-yourselfer” and you do not know what to get him or her for Christmas, you could purchase a Home Depot gift card.  You hand the friend a tangible item, the card, and they can select what they want. 

 

We accomplish the same thing by allowing someone to buy a gift card that allows the person who receives the card to choose a charity in the catalog for which they can direct a contribution.  The same elements apply.  By giving someone a gift card, they have a tangible way to make a choice to where their dollars are given.  Choice is a very powerful gift to give.  If they care about homelessness, the elderly, and children, they get to direct the funds as they wish.

 

By arming the charities with 2 tools to go after the same dollars as a retailer, they have a better shot than others at converting them to contributions.  There are several success stories we have collected over the years since the catalog has been in existence to show that we are reaching our objective.  One of my favorites involves a medical clinic in the mid cities that called and purchased 20 gift cards preloaded with $30 contributions on them.  When they purchased the cards, we asked what they were for.  They let us know that they had seen the catalog and loved it.  Each person who works in the clinic normally spends $30 on a white elephant gift exchange. This year, they decided to pool their money. After their Christmas dinner, they discussed their favorite projects in the catalog.  Then, they redeemed the gift cards to help their favorite organizations.  What I love about this story over others is the nature of the white elephant exchange gifts.  They are generally funny, useless items that have relatively little value to the recipient 3 days after they receive them.  In this case, the Catalog was able to take dollars that would have traditionally gone to Hallmark and Big Lots and funnel that money to the nonprofit organizations in the catalog.

 

 

Objective #2: Helping Organizations Raise New Charitable Contributions and Find New Donors

 

One of the most difficult things for an organization to do is raise new charitable dollars.  There are several things making it continuously more difficult.  These include message bombardment, attention fragmentation, technology blocking direct interaction, and the overall economy. The new donor is also becoming more difficult to find.  This is especially true in the case of small business owners who are becoming a larger segment of the large contributions.

 

Creating new donor acquisition programs that make economic sense is also difficult because of cost and the length of development.  They are generally labor-intensive and expensive, as it can take up to 10 years for them to pay off.  Most institutions lose their resolve well before these projects work.  One of the ways to cultivate new donors is to create programs where organizations can share the costs. The challenge is that each organization is in competition with the other for fundraising dollars.

 

The catalog is unique in its ability to eliminate competition. It creates an equitable 3rd party program to help raise new charitable dollars that has community buy-in and support.  Its formula finds organizations that understand, in some cases, that fundraising is not a zero-sum game. By creating a device that works similar to grouping restaurants in a single part of town and benefiting all of them individually by doing so, the catalog creates a 1 +1 = 3 fundraising device that benefits all the participants.

 

New donors are critical to the organizations.  As a rule of thumb, an average donor supports an organization for 7 years, and they give on a bell curve; so, the average donor’s new contribution could yield between 7 to 15 to 1 with proper cultivation by the organizations.  The average we use internally is 10 to 1.

 

There are 3 other interesting elements of the fundraising component of the catalog worth noting. First, the more convenient you make it for the donor, the more likely you are to receive a donation. By creating a donor convenience device, you are logically going to get more donations than if you do not.  Donors are going to give the way they want, when they want, and how they want. The gift catalog has become a donor convenience device on several levels.  It makes it easy for a donor to find projects to support and for a donor to support multiple organizations at one time and in one place. If people are going to contribute to a single organization, it is easier to do it directly.

 

Second, people can give through the catalog anonymously, and they will not be contacted by the organizations or by the catalog.  Today, the amount of follow-up bombardment that could come from supporting 15 organizations would stop a person from giving.  They could receive, on average, 60 pieces of mail.  If they give through the Catalog’s anonymous donor mechanism, they will not be contacted by the organizations. 

 

Finally, the catalog’s focus is on creating a program of choice.  Every aspect of the Catalog program is a choice.  The catalog’s distribution mechanism is unique, and the donor has the choice to pick up the catalog at a doctor’s office, car wash, etc.  There is no direct mail piece. They then choose to read it, and they choose the organization they want to help.  This model is much different than the direct ask models.  For a segment of the population, the self-selection and discovery piece of the catalog makes it more effective.  It is also a strategy that a conventional nonprofit organization cannot adopt.

 

 

Objective #3: Teaching Children to Give to Charity

 

Another key objective of the program (TGGCE) is teaching children philanthropy.  The catalog works to accomplish this in several ways.   The first is that the catalog format is simple and teachable to children.  The requests from the organizations in the form of the three gifts are finite, tangible, and understandable. 

 

The other way the catalog is used to teach children philanthropy is through our Education Partnership Program.  These programs are implemented with the help of a private foundation in town.  These programs allow students to act as miniature foundations, going through the process of giving money away.  After, they go through the due diligence process, assessing the organizations that make actual monetary allocations to the organizations.  We have implemented three separate programs in this area. The schools interested in this type of program like having a well-vetted group of organizations to support. 

 

The Education Partnership Program affects the students in two powerful ways. The first is that the students really learn a tremendous amount about the organizations.  The second is that they learn how good it feels to give. For the organizations, it gives them a chance to reach an entire group of future givers.

 

 

Objective #4: Creating Exposure for the Organizations to Help Them Reach New Audiences and Highlighting the Work They Do

 

The catalog has a unique distribution method and advertising / promotional schedule that is not normally used by nonprofits.  The catalog uses unconventional distribution mechanisms and distribution points to reach new audiences.  We do not ask the organizations for their donor lists.  We do not want them.  We distribute through magazines, specialized newspapers, and through over 300 distribution locations where people have time to read.  Doctor’s offices, car washes, and popular restaurants are prime spaces for the gift catalog.  We also use a unique promotional schedule to help build exposure to specific catalog audiences.

 

The first element worth looking at is the catalog’s focus on helping the featured organizations cut through the nonprofit clutter. There are over 4,000 nonprofits in Tarrant County.  With this number of charitable organizations, the catalog helps bring attention to some of the best.

 

The second element worth looking at is how the catalog helps put local organizations with strong local brands on the same footing as organizations with national affiliations.  All local organizations with national affiliations pay dues to a national organization. The Mental Health Association of Tarrant County, Meals on Wheels, Catholic Charities, and Boys and Girls Clubs of Tarrant County, which are featured in the catalog, would fall into this group because they get support from the national organizations, like best practices information and national branding campaigns. There are some competitive advantages to having a national brand, and we are glad that some of the catalog participants have those advantages, as they are great local chapters of these organizations. 

 

We also feel great hometown organizations like Camp John Marc, Gill Children’s Services, and Don’t Forget to Feed Me do not have the same type of support and do not benefit from a national branding effort.  The Gift catalog helps in this area as well.  The catalog creates individual and group PSA campaigns and print ads to help all the organizations continue to brand their organization and the great work they do. 

 

A third element related to the communications effort involves finding and developing media opportunities for small organizations unable to develop them on their own. We have had some success in this area over the year.  In addition, we have helped supplement some of the stronger organizations with their own communications department by targeting media they do not normally seek. This, too, has been effective in helping all the organizations long term branding efforts.

 

Finally, the catalog is unique in that it provides a catalyst to send out a communications message for the organizations.  Frankly, you could go to any of these organizations on any day and see the product of the important work they are doing.  The media could focus on the plight of homelessness, mental health, or family violence any day, and it is just as important and relevant as the previous day.  The publication and launch of the Greatest Gift Catalog Ever, as well as the programs surrounding the catalog, like The Community Partners Program, give the media an additional opportunity to cover these organizations’ work.

 

 

Objective #5: Third-Party Advocacy for the Organizations

 

Another integral component of the catalog is the third-party advocacy. It is one thing for them to talk about the work they are doing; however, it is far more powerful for others to do it for them.  The catalog creates a magnification opportunity for organizations to get their core message out. Everyone working on the catalog loves the organizations and is honored to be advocates in the community for them.

 

 

Objective #6: Helping Those Who Need Help Find It

 

When we first started the catalog, 30% of the distribution went to low-income areas where people who might need services could use the catalog as a directory to find agencies to help them.  There are many resources in the community for this, including The United Way’s 311 program.  The catalog is doing a great job in this area as well.  

 

My favorite success story in this area came when I received a call from a new family court judge who had just been appointed to the bench in Tarrant County.  The judge had a terrible situation in front of him.  There was a child, 13 years old, who was mentally challenged and functioned at a 3-year-old’s level.  That child was a good kid but suddenly started acting up and became violent.  The social workers were convinced that it was because his wisdom teeth were coming in.  He was able to find an oral surgeon who would donate his time to remove the wisdom teeth but needed someone to donate the money for the anesthesia to do the surgery. Otherwise, he would have to sign a court order to commit the child to a mental institution and drug the child until they could get money allocated from the state to take care of the surgery.  This process could take 6 months.  Knowing about the catalog, the judge called me, and I was able to refer him to Gill Children’s Services, and the child was taken care of the next day. 

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One can see from the discussion above of 6 primary objectives and nearly a dozen interesting elements of The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever that it is more than just a simple holiday gift catalog. The success the catalog has had in implementing these objectives is a testament to the organizations featured and the volunteers and supporters in the community who make it possible to do so.

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Why is this program so Unique?

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#1 No Focus on Growth

# 2 Created a counterintuitive incentive structure.

 

The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever does not measure success for the program by growth. It is great if it happens, but they do not care.  One of the challenges with third-party fundraising ideas is that the entity doing the fundraising is focused as much, if not more, on growing themselves as they are on the organizations they are helping.  This can obviously cause problems.  This is, however, not a problem for The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever.  It is not focused on more contributions flowing through the catalog but rather is 100% focused on making sure the organizations are taken care of.  The entire focus is to drive the relationship between the donor and the nonprofit directly. The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever is actually set up and incentivized to do so as it eliminates paperwork, accounting, and manpower every time we accomplish the objective.

 

To accomplish the goal of connecting the donor and the organization directly, the catalog places all the organization’s contact information into the catalog and encourages the donor to touch base with the organization directly.  No credit is fine with the catalog.  The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever is not even building its own direct mailing list.  It would defeat the self-selection aspect of the catalog.

 

In addition, The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever believes the organizations are in the best position to cultivate the new donor. It is rare that an organization is set up with incentives not to grow and control dollar flow.  We firmly believe that the best way to become more significant to the community is by aligning our objectives with the organizations we are helping and controlling and growing the donation flow is not part of that equation.

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Who Operates The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever Program?

 

When the catalog’s founders, Elliot and Heather Goldman, first came up with the concept for The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever and the gift card program that works with it, the program had to be administered by a nonprofit.  In addition, it was important that the nonprofit not be a “direct competitor” with the organizations featured in the catalog.  At the time, Elliot was Chairman of the Board of The National Leadership Foundation. The foundation is a diverse organization working primarily on leadership education and military, veteran, and community support programs. The foundation has been around since 1997 and is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.  In addition, because of its contribution and support structure, it qualifies as a public charity.

 

Elliot made a request that The National Leadership Foundation administer the program.   The board agreed to do so and agreed not to be featured in the catalog, competing for charitable contributions. The program was named The Greatest Gift Catalog Ever, and a local advisory board was founded to oversee the project.