Last Thursday Griffin Fundraising and Marketing hosted our first workshop. We focused squarely on how to make your nonprofit website simple and efficient for donors while providing great content in a deliberate way.

The workshop speakers were husband and wife tag team Liz and Scott Hack. Liz is a Senior Consultant with GF&M and has had over 13 years of experience in marketing, sales and public relations. Scott Hack is a Real Estate Broker at Finish Line Realty and self proclaimed geek who was using email before AOL came out with “You’ve Got Mail”. Through out the morning the two covered tips, best practices and How To make your nonprofit website easy to use. Just one of the many ideas for a more efficient site was to prominently display your “Donate Now” button on your website by making it a different color and a bigger button than the others on the page.

We also talked about why GF&M prefers WordPress as a platform for a nonprofit’s website. Worldwide, WordPress based websites account for 20% of all sites on the Internet today. That’s more than 76 million sites. Plus, it’s easy to use and very inexpensive to operate.

We had a lot of great discussion with the group who attended. Thanks to all who attended. If you have more questions on your nonprofit website send us an email or give us a call at 502-671-0680. We’d be happy to help.

Spalding University

As graduation season comes to an end for secondary and post secondary schools in Kentucky, we thought we would take a look back at one of our education clients. JoAnn Rooney, then president of Spalding, invited GF&M to provide additional leadership for an endowment campaign. The campaign was to directly support the students through their scholarship fund. Since Susan Griffin is a proud graduate of the university and it’s one of the oldest educational institutions in the city of Louisville, we were thrilled to be a part of the effort. In a limited time frame, we were able to complete the goal of one million dollars and secured a matching grant from the Brown Foundation. The campaign was supported by fabulous community volunteers, like  Mac and Tori McClure and through their leadership the campaign was a complete success.

The campaign in 2008 was a great experience for GF&M and personally for Susan to be back on campus. It is always exciting to work with such dedicated educators like those at Spalding.

Since 2008 went so well, in April 2013 GF&M was again invited to facilitate a strategic planning retreat with the Advancement Team. Under the new leadership of president Tori McClure, we spent 2 days in closed door sessions reviewing and updating the goals for Spalding’s  future. The pennant pictured above was a thank you gift from the entire Advancement Team to Susan Griffin, who acted as the facilitator for the retreat. Each member of the team signed the pennant. Honored and flattered by the gift, she keeps that pennant in her office.

This week we are headed back to ’97. It’s the year Kentucky first hosted the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

1997 Intel ISEF poster

GF&M helped two Kentucky Governors and the Mayor of Louisville in bringing the world’s largest competition for high school students in math, science and engineering to Louisville not once but twice. I personally believe that this week long event helped strengthen the perception that Kentucky is a state of innovation and technology. At the time, some 1200 student competitors from 35 foreign countries came to Louisville. There were over 1000 judges and some 1500 volunteers. Now, the competition has well over 80 countries involved with many more judges and volunteers.

The Opening Ceremonies for the event were held at night on the Churchill Downs track. It was the first time Churchill had ever hosted an evening event and the first time the general public were allowed to walk on the same track used for horse racing at the Kentucky Derby.

Susan Griffin with six Nobel Laureates who were invited to Kentucky as part of the Intel ISEF in 1997.

As a part of the Intel ISEF 1997, GF&M helped to invite six Nobel Laureates. They visited Jefferson County Public School classrooms to interact with middle and high school students. This marked the largest gathering of Nobels in the state of Kentucky and the first time Nobels were involved with secondary school students. What a first that was for the state of KY. I bet the guys from “The Big Bang Theory” can’t say they’ve met so many Nobels.

The 1997 Intel ISEF really held the bar high for future fairs. With the support of Kentucky’s Govenor, we increased the number of scholarships awarded to the student finalist. That had never been done before. The result provided Kentucky Higher Education with the opportunity of awarding ISEF finalist to come to Kentucky for their bachelors degree. Talk about injecting international award winning innovators directly into our higher education systems and ultimately our economy.

Because of GF&M’s leadership during the 1997 Intel ISEF the Host Committee for the 2001 Intel ISEF requested our services in support of their fair in San Jose, California.

Services Provided By GF&M

• Developed all sponsorships for the 1997 Intel ISEF.
• Managed staff Kentucky’s Govenor provided for the identification and solicitation of Kentucky scholarships
• Supported Kentucky Host Committee in the identification and solicitation of cash and budget relieving items.

It’s Throw Back Thursday! (AKA: #TBT) GF&M is combing through our archives and collecting the cool memorabilia we have at our office to hop on the band wagon. Our first installment takes us all the way back to 1997. During that year, Louisville flooded almost as bad as the ’37 flood, Kentucky Kingdom was sold to Six Flags and Silver Charm won the Kentucky Derby.

America’s Promise is a national non-profit organization

The Facts
The Date:                                     September 1997
The National Non-profit:      America’s Promise
The Campaign:                          Campaign For Kids
Campaign Chair:                      Mayor Jerry Abramson
The Client:                                 The Mayor’s Office (Louisville)
The Partners:
Bank of Louisville, BellSouth, Children’s Hospital Foundation, City of Louisville, Office of the Mayor, City of Louisville, Dept of Community Services, Community Foundation of Louisville, Metro United Way, UPS Foundation, IGLOU, Elizabeth Lawler, Videobred. Business First, Cox Radio, Public Radio and more

America’s Promise is the national organization with a mission to keep five promises to American’s young people. 1. Caring Adults 2. Safe Places 3. A Healthy Start 4. Effective Education 5. Opportunities to Help Others

Campaign for Kids was in intensive six-week campaign to challenge the citizens of Greater Louisville to commit volunteer time, service, and other resources to benefit children and youth in our community.

Our role: Griffin Fundraising and Marketing was requested by the Mayor’s Office to develop the local program for Louisville to “raise” volunteers. With just a little over seven weeks, we developed the materials, tracked volunteers and corporate involvement, and kept Mayor Abramson informed of progress. By the end of the campaign over 65,000 volunteers had been “raised”.

GF&M’s All Access Pass to the Kick Off event for Campaign For Kids

Colin Powell, the chairman of the national campaign, visited Louisville in September because of the success Louisville was having and to inspire other cities to rise to the occasion. It was a true demonstration of the compassion Louisville has for the city and its community members. Susan Griffin reminisced about the campaign and remembers, “The city [of Louisville] really showed up to help kids.”

To this day you may still see a Campaign for Kids’ plaque in the businesses that “gave” volunteers to the campaign. America’s Promise just recently had a youth Summit here in Louisville. Making Louisville a continued example of stepping up for the youth.