MBA2451 What I Learned Raising $12,000 for Charity

Summary

Detailed Summary of The $100 MBA Show Episode MBA2451: "What I Learned Raising $12,000 for Charity"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The $100 MBA Show
• Host/Author: Omar Zenhom
• Episode: MBA2451 What I Learned Raising $12,000 for Charity
• Release Date: April 5, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode MBA2451 of The $100 MBA Show, host Omar Zenhom delves into his recent experience of raising $12,000 for the charity "Hands across the Water." Drawing from over two decades of entrepreneurship, Omar shares valuable lessons, strategies, and insights on effectively fundraising for charitable causes, especially when resources are limited. This summary encapsulates the key discussions, strategies employed, and the overarching insights Omar imparts to aspiring entrepreneurs and philanthropists alike.

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Background: Omar's Personal Journey

Omar begins the episode with a candid reflection on his past involvement with charity work. He admits, "In recent years, I haven't been great when it comes to charity. I haven't really given back in the way I should" ([01:10]). His focus had been predominantly on building his software company, Webinar Ninja, and expanding his podcast. However, a pivotal dinner conversation in April 2023 with Dale Beaumont, a successful Australian entrepreneur, sparked a renewed commitment to charitable endeavors for Omar and his wife, Nicole.

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Choosing the Charity: Hands across the Water

Dale Beaumont introduced Omar to "Hands across the Water," a charity founded by Peter Baines in 2004 in response to the devastating 2004 tsunami in Thailand. The charity focuses on providing shelter, clothing, education, and support to children orphaned by the disaster. Omar explains, "The vast majority of the money, close to 100%, goes straight to the children" ([05:15]), highlighting the charity's commitment to transparency and effectiveness compared to others like Habitat for Humanity.

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Understanding Charity Transparency

A significant motivator for Omar and Nicole's choice was the transparency of Hands across the Water. Omar emphasizes the rarity of charities where nearly all donations reach the beneficiaries: "We were happy to see that with Hands across the Water... the vast majority... goes straight to the kids, which is not the case for most charities" ([07:30]). This transparency built trust and motivated them to support the charity wholeheartedly.

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Fundraising Strategies Employed

Realizing the financial commitment required to participate in Dale's charity bike ride—$3,000 to cover personal expenses and a $5,000 fundraising target—Omar outlines the multifaceted approach he and Nicole took to meet their goals:

1. Initial Outreach:

   • Social Media Campaigns: They began by announcing their participation and sharing photos and videos of their training ([06:25]).
   • Personal Networks: Initial donations came from friends, family, and business colleagues, contributing approximately $2,000.

2. Creative Fundraising:

   • Incentivizing Donations: Omar asserts, "If you really want to raise a lot of money, you got to incentivize people to do it" ([08:10]). They organized a one-day event, OSCON Give, featuring speakers, workshops, food, games, and prizes.
   • Donation-Based Entry: Attendance required a donation, with a recommended amount of $300. Many attendees generously contributed $500 or more.

3. Strategic Partnerships and Negotiations:

   • Venue Sponsorship: They secured the event venue, Fishburners co-working space, for free by leveraging their network and emphasizing the charitable nature of the event ([10:00]).
   • Cost Management: By negotiating costs and securing in-kind donations, they kept event expenses around $2,000.

Omar reflects, "The more you give, the more you get. So if you do decide to do some charity work, whether it's with your time or with money, you're gonna find this episode very helpful" ([02:50]).

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Event Planning and Execution

The success of OSCON Give hinged on meticulous planning and execution:

• Value Proposition: Ensuring that attendees felt they received substantial value in return for their donations was crucial. This included high-quality catering, engaging activities, and professional organization.

• Transparency: Donations were processed directly through a charity page, providing donors with tax receipts and displaying their contributions publicly to maintain trust ([09:30]).

• Speaker Engagement: Omar and Nicole involved speakers who were also passionate about the cause, reinforcing the charity’s mission and ensuring that all contributors understood the event's purpose ([10:15]).

• Time Management: They planned well in advance, securing all necessary arrangements months before the event to maximize participation and minimize last-minute stress.

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Key Takeaways and Lessons Learned

Omar distills several essential lessons from his fundraising journey:

1. Incentivize Donations:

   • Providing tangible benefits or experiences encourages people to contribute. "You want to encourage people to give to charity in exchange for something that they'll actually want, they'll enjoy..." ([08:00]).

2. Don’t Compromise on Quality:

   • Ensuring that events are well-organized and offer good value makes donors feel respected and appreciated, fostering trust and future support. "Don't go cheap... make it spectacular" ([09:00]).

3. Maintain Transparency:

   • Directing donations to the charity without intermediaries builds credibility. "Make sure they just donate straight to the charity. It was much easier to keep things on the up and up" ([09:30]).

4. Clear Communication of Purpose:

   • Making it explicit that the event is for charity aligns all participants and speakers with the mission. "Make it clear to everybody involved that this is a charity event" ([10:15]).

5. Thorough Planning:

   • Early and detailed planning allows for better coordination, increased participation, and alleviates last-minute pressures. "Planning ahead allows you to fill more spots, allows you to hit your goal faster" ([09:45]).

6. Personal Fulfillment:

   • Engaging in charitable activities can be more rewarding and motivating than business endeavors alone. "There's something about doing something for somebody else... it really allows you to give it your all" ([11:00]).

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Conclusion

Omar Zenhom's journey in raising $12,000 for Hands across the Water serves as an inspiring blueprint for entrepreneurs looking to give back. By leveraging his business acumen—marketing, event planning, and strategic negotiations—he demonstrates that even with limited resources, impactful fundraising is achievable. The key lies in creating value for donors, maintaining transparency, and planning meticulously. Omar concludes with a heartfelt message: "As entrepreneurs, we have an obligation. If you're doing well, even a little bit of money makes a big difference for some people" ([13:00]).

This episode not only sheds light on effective fundraising strategies but also reinforces the intrinsic value of contributing to causes greater than oneself. For listeners seeking actionable insights on integrating philanthropy into their entrepreneurial journey, Omar's experiences offer both guidance and inspiration.

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Notable Quotes:

• "The more you give, the more you get." — Omar Zenhom ([02:50])

• "You want to encourage people to give to charity in exchange for something that they'll actually want, they'll enjoy..." — Omar Zenhom ([08:00])

• "Don't go cheap... make it spectacular." — Omar Zenhom ([09:00])

• "Make sure they just donate straight to the charity. It was much easier to keep things on the up and up." — Omar Zenhom ([09:30])

• "There's something about doing something for somebody else... it really allows you to give it your all." — Omar Zenhom ([11:00])

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By meticulously outlining his approach and the underlying principles, Omar Zenhom not only shares his success story but also equips his audience with the tools needed to embark on their charitable ventures effectively.

Transcript

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Hey, welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Powerful business insights you can count on with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. And in today's lesson, you will learn what I learned raising $12,000 for charity. I'm gonna be honest with you. In recent years, I haven't been great when it comes to charity. I haven't really given back in the way I should. I've really had my head down growing my software company, Webinar Ninja, building this podcast, growing this podcast. And I really didn't prioritize giving back to those who need help and need support. But in the past year, Nicole and I decided to commit to doing something to give back. We've done pretty well in business and it's our obligation really to pay it forward and help those who can't help themselves. As business owners, you will get to a level of success where you don't need to worry about your own financial means. You don't need to worry about paying your bills. You have a surplus and that's a good position to be in. But what I found in my experience is that the more you give, the more you get. So if you do decide to do some charity work, whether it's with your time or with money, you're gonna find this episode very helpful because I learned a ton in this process of raising money for a charity called Hands across the Water. I'll explain what this charity is all about. I'll explain the process of how we raised this money, why we chose this charity in particular, and how to make sure that your charity actually gets the money to the people that need it. When I went into this, I realized how murky the waters are when it comes to charity organizations. It's not super clear what's going on behind the scenes. I'm gonna show you how to get clarity, how to have an action plan, and what to do if you wanna get started and give back to those who need it. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Around April of 2023, Nicole and I were going out to dinner with a friend of ours named Dale Beaumont. Dale Beaumont is a very successful entrepreneur in Australia. He runs a company called Business Blueprint, which is one of the largest business coaching programs in the southern hemisphere. Dale mentioned to us that he's doing a charity bike ride in Thailand. And we thought, wow, that sounds cool. What's that all about? Well, he said, actually, this is my 10th year doing it. We've been doing it for nine years. This will be our 10th year in 2024. And he asked us, would you like to join us on the ride? And I was like, join us. There's more people that are gonna join. And he's like, yeah, you know, usually we get 50, 60, sometimes 70 people to do this charity bike ride. I said, tell me more. He explained that there's a charity called Hands across the Water. It's a charity that was founded by a man named Peter Baines back in 2004 when Thailand went through a very difficult time because they suffered a tsunami. Through that tsunami and through the aftermath of the tsunami, many children were left without parents and therefore had no access to shelter, clothing, education, food, a normal childhood. And every year, Dale, my friend, takes a group of his students or his clients at Business Blueprint to participate in a 500k charity bike ride. Basically, you go from Bangkok to Phuket over the course of five or six days, and your final destination is the center where Hands across the Water is based. And you get to meet the children that you're impacting and helping. And this trip happens every year. And I thought, okay, so where is the charity part? He said, yeah, so every writer needs to raise at least $5,000 to participate. In addition to that, each writer has to pay around $3,000 to cover the expenses of. Of the ride itself and the accommodations and things like that that are required to do that bike ride. So I'm like, okay, I gotta put up around $3,000 to participate, number one. And then two, I gotta raise $5,000 from other people for the charity so that I can hit my goal. I said, what if I don't hit my goal? And he said, well, you can't ride if you don't hit the 5,000 mark. So I looked at Nicole and I said, hey, do you wanna do this? And she said, yeah, this sounds great. This sounds exactly like something that we wanna do because we wanted to give back and do charity work. Something that we really been neglecting for a lot of years because we've been overwhelmed with our businesses. So we said, yes, we signed up and we started thinking, oh, you know, that's a year from now. We don't have to worry about it. Well, we're about two months away from the ride now that it's 2024 and it's happening. So in today's lesson, I'm going to explain how Nicole and I both raised $5,000 each. How we used our own resources, time, energy, creativity and money to raise that money and where that money actually is going. So, luckily, Nicole and I have met Peter Baines, the founder of Hands across the Water, the charity that we're raising money for. We met him on Zoom a couple times, and we're gonna meet him in person when we get to Thailand in April. But one of the things that we really love about the charity is that the vast majority of the money, close to 100% of all the money that we raise goes. Goes straight to the children. The charity itself runs through other activities to sustain itself. It doesn't use the money that is being donated. Now, they don't say 100%, because there are some times where they use a little bit of money, especially as expenses have skyrocketed after Covid. But as close as possible to 100%, we're talking about maybe 95% or so, goes straight to the kids, which is not the case for most charities. I know this is firsthand. Cause I've done some charity work for Habitat for Humanity, other charities, and that is not the case for other organizations. A lot of the money goes to the organization itself for administration and to run the organization. And at the end of the day, you know, a small fraction of the funds goes to the actual cause. So we were happy to see that with Hands across the Water. So how did we raise the cash? Well, in the beginning, we just kind of posted on social media, told people, hey, we're doing this charity bike ride or raising $5,000 each. Here's some Photos of us training on our bikes around the neighborhood. Here's some video. And in the beginning, a couple of our colleagues in business, our friends, our family, donated, but it didn't really make a huge dent on our goal. You know, between Nicole and I, we had to raise $10,000, 5,000 each. And after kind of that initial push from just people that we know, we raised like $2,000. So we still had about 80% more to go. So we thought, hey, we gotta get creative. How are we gonna raise all this money? And Nicole and I are very big on value. I know this is for charity, but you want to encourage people to give to charity in exchange for something that they'll actually want, they'll enjoy, that they're going to get an experience or some sort of value out of it. I know this sounds not so great, but you can't just rely on people's, you know, charitable intentions. You can't just rely on the fact that people are going to be kind and hey, here's, you know, a couple hundred dollars for your charity. You got to incentivize people to be charitable. And that's what I learned as a major lesson in this exercise, is that if you really want to raise a lot of money, you got to incentivize people to do it. You got to actually push them in a way that benefits them. I know that kind of is the opposite of charity, but hey, if it gets you the money that you need to raise for your organization, for the charity, for the people that you're helping out, that's really what matters. And at the end of the day, we're entrepreneurs. We got to use all the skills we have, including marketing and sales negotiation, to get what we need to get to our goals. So what Nicole and I decided to do is throw a one day event. We do an annual event called oscon. And we called this one day event OSCON Give, because it's all about giving back. And what we did is that we sold tickets to this one day event where we're going to have speakers and workshops and fun and food and games and prizes and all bunch of stuff that we planned out. And in order to attend the event, you need to make a donation. Now, this is where we had to kind of be a little creative. We said on the page where they signed up, our recommendation for donation is $300, because at the end of the day, we want to hit our goal. But we also said if you can donate more, awesome. If you can't donate 300 bucks and you have to donate a little bit less. That's fine as well. Donate what you can, but our recommendation is 300, if you're wondering. And for the most part, Everybody donated either 300 or more. A lot more. Some people donate 500 and 550. And we found this very interesting. Now, a few people weren't able to do the 300 to do a little bit less, but that's okay because it more than evened out. Now the other thing we did is that we didn't want the money to touch our hands. We wanted them to donate directly to the charity. So we had a charity page where we're, you know, raising our funds for the ride. And all they need to do is just donate. When they donate, their name gets displayed on the page as somebody who donated. That kind of becomes their ticket to the event. So they just donate directly to the charity. They get a receipt for this, which is tax deductible. And it's just super transparent, super clear to them, hey, this is going straight to the charity. We're not going to touch the money that you're donating. The flip side of that is that all the cost involved of running this event is going to be on us. And that's okay because we know they're going to have to invest some money to make this happen. To raise the money that we needed. That means we had to secure a venue. We had to secure coffee and tea, catering a really nice lunch, some, you know, cash for some prizes and some games and things like that, and some supplies for the room. So the total was around $2,000 for the cost. But that's okay because when it was all said and done, we raised over $12,000, which is great. It exceeded our goal. And now we can comfortably ride on the charity bike ride without worrying about not hitting our goal. So we did it.

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Now in this process we negotiated a few things to save some money with the cost of the event. For example, we decided to host this event at our co working space, which is Fish Burners. And we absolutely love the space. And we talked to the management over there at Fishburners and they were generous enough to give us the space for free. Normally it would cost us a couple thousand dollars to rent it for the full day. And they said, hey, this is for charity. You guys are awesome. Members have the room for free. And that really saved us a ton, which was fantastic. And of course we gave them a shout out during the event and you know, recommended people to look up, you know, using Fish Burners as a place to work out of. Now a few key takeaways. I just want to repeat this because it's actually important when you're raising money for charity. You have to incentivize people to donate, whether it's a raffle, whether it's a dinner, whether it's some sort of prize or an event like us, you know, it's not enough for just people to say, hey, just throw money and get nothing in return. I know that it's supposed to be charity and that's how it's supposed to be. But human nature, people want something in return. Normally when they give up their money, make it easy for them so that you can raise your funds. Number two, don't go cheap on whatever you do in exchange for the charity, in exchange for, you know, the money they're donating. So for an example, we went all out on the event to make it as nice as possible, as good value as possible. You know, we had a really deluxe lunch. It was a Thai lunch catered by a beautiful Thai restaurant. We made sure that there was more than enough food for everybody. We catered coffee and tea and, you know, little pastries and little quiches and we just made it really nice. The space was beautiful. It was well organized, well put together, you know, and we did this because we wanted people to feel like they're dealing with professionals because maybe down the line, I will do this again, raise money for charity and want people to feel like, yes, this is well worth It, I'm happy to give to this charity. These people are going to take care of me. So don't just think, oh, this is for charity. I can go cheap. I can, you know, kind of half job it, you know, don't do such a good job. No, go all out. Make it spectacular. Third, always try to be as transparent as possible. People are skeptical when it comes to charities, sometimes make sure that they just donate straight to the charity. I found that that was much easier to keep things on the up and up and as well as make people feel like, hey, these people are actually not pocketing anything. They're just raising money for their charity and they're actually absorbing a lot of the costs of running the event. Four, make it clear to everybody involved that this is a charity event. For example, we had four amazing speakers that spoke at our event besides Nicole and I, and all of them, you know, gave back to the charity just like attendees, because they knew this was for charity. And they also gave their time and their energy speaking at the event. Normally, a lot of these speakers have a speaking fee and they get paid to speak. But when you make it very clear to everybody, including your speakers, that this is for charity and we're going to ask you to do everything just like everybody else, they'll respect that. 5. Planning is key. When you're on deadline to raise money for a charity, you need to make sure you plan ahead, that you give people a heads up. You make sure that you have enough time for them to pencil you in the calendar. It's easy for somebody to say yes to something that's a little bit more advanced in the calendar, like, you know, six or seven weeks ahead, two months ahead. That's kind of the sweet spot because they're like, hey, I can make it. And they're not really worrying about it being overwhelming. By planning ahead, it allows you to fill more spots, allows you to hit your goal faster, and you're not feeling the pressure towards the end. You know, our deadline was, you know, April, when we were going on the bike ride. But we're able to kind of secure all the money we needed to raise by February. And this allows us just to relax and, you know, train for the bike ride and just focus on that. Lastly, one of the biggest takeaways I experienced was how much enjoyment I got running this event, raising the capital for, you know, the charity because it was for a good cause. There's something about doing something for somebody else feeling you are contributing that makes it special. You know, it's different from Raising money or, you know, earning money in your business, knowing this is for a good cause, knowing this, you're helping somebody out, knowing that this is going to go to a good place and a good reason or a good purpose, it really allows you to give it your all. It's funny, we sometimes work harder and are more inspired when it's not for us, it's for others. Well, there you have it. I just want to lay out exactly what happened, exactly what we did to raise over $12,000 for Hands Across Water, our charity that we're going to be doing a charity bike ride for. I'm excited. I'm inspired. I'm really looking forward to seeing how I can continue to do more charity work in the future to help other people in need. As entrepreneurs, we have an obligation. If you're doing well, if you're getting to a point of financial independence, even a little bit of money makes a big difference for some people. It's also not about the money. You know, when you looked at our event, yes, we donated some of the money to run the event, all that kind of stuff, but really it was our time and effort, which is a lot of times more valuable than money itself. It's our network that we had to, you know, market to and ask them for help. So keep that in mind. Okay. That really the effort is the time and energy that's being spent. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 VA Show. If you love the show, do us a quick favor and subscribe to the podcast. Whatever podcast app you're using, whether it's Spotify or Apple podcast, hit that follow button so that you get our next episodes automatically. Thanks in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This project of raising money for charity is very time consuming. You know, you got to make sure you carve out time in your calendar, especially if you're busy with running your businesses and growing in your own personal life. We got a little bit lucky because we really had time to focus on this given the fact that we exited our software company and got acquired. Webinar Ninja. We're still kind of working on that, but. But we had a little bit more time to make this happen. So whatever you do, make sure you carve out the time to do this right. Thank you so much. I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. And we're back, folks. It looks like Jim from sales just got in from his client lunch and he's got receipts, his next meeting is in two minutes. The team is asking, can he get through his expenses in that time? He's going for it. Is that his phone? He's snapping a pick. He's texting round. Jim is fast, but this is unheard of. That's it. He's done it. It's unbelievable. On ramp expenses are faster than ever. Just submit them with a text. Switch your business to ramp. Com.