fundraising activities. We took the buy a brick onto our website and raised another $650 throughout the season on our Donate page. Make sure to keep track who donates and thank them publicly. We sent out thank you card postcards at the end of the year to our supporters. ● We had a strong team of grant writers and approximately $11,000 of our budget came from Nova Scotia Community Culture and Heritage, Canada Summer Jobs, and the Nova Scotia Health Board Wellness fund. ● Sponsorship took the least amount of effort for most money raised. Two businesses gave us $3500+ in cash and other businesses gave us $12,000 worth of building materials. Our process was to send them a letter with our 2 page overview, then schedule a meeting to see how they might want to collaborate. ● Other events to specifically raise money: ■ We hosted a Pizza and Jazz evening at a local restaurant - this raised over $1500 with everything donated, including labour. If we were to do this again, we’d add a silent auction. ■ We did a bake-your-own beavertail at the Devour Street Food Party, which was a lot of fun and raised the profile of the oven, but only made around $500 after expenses. ■ Future event ideas: ● Competition at the oven where people have to pay to sign up as a team ($500 per team) and there is some kind of cooking competition, while other things are sold at a silent auction. Promotion/Social Media In 2019, the best way to build an online community and reach people directly was email. With email addresses you can ensure people get the messages, whereas when social media platforms change their algorithms you may not be able to reach your community as effectively. We used Instagram and Facebook to get people to the website where we made announcements and asked people to join our email list. Social media did help people share what we were doing in the early days, which is where it had the most value by building awareness and telling the story of the behind the scenes process of starting the oven project. Since the Front Street Community Oven was in a rural area and we were looking for funding, we also asked several newspaper writers to write about what we're doing and six articles were published. When we had updates we just sent them over and they crafted their story. Here are a few specific comments about our approach: ● Strategy : Who are you promoting to and where do they get their information? What’s the easiest way for you, your team, and your friends to get regular updates? ● Email List: Wherever we were, we brought along paper for people to sign up to our email lists: one for general interest and one for people to sign up as Firemasters. Even though we know how to do this digitally, it was easier to use paper for the email lists because people struggle with devices and it can take attention away from the connections being built. ● Newspapers/Online Media/Blogs : Contact writers/editors who you know personally and gauge interest in them doing an article about your oven project. If you don’t know a writer at a newspaper, ask your online network for an introduction to one. If all else fails, send your concept document to all the “community editors” of your local newspapers/websites. ● Facebook and Instagram: Post behind the scenes events, share photos of people, invite engagement in regards to using the oven; for example, you could post questions such as “ what’s the first thing you will cook at the oven?”. ● Website: Ask a local web designer to make a decent looking website or use a platform like Squarespace that has good templates and is easy to use. Your website is the information, purchasing, and email list sign-up hub, so all emails, newspapers, social media, printed media, etc. should lead to the website. Budget/Cost Considerations This section will include basic budget considerations and ways to reduce costs. 12
13 Publizr Home