It is for this reason that the objective of my promotion program is to increase awareness of the organization and also increase how much they get in donations. Their only form of fundraising is a direct mailing program that they do once in the early months of every year. In 2002 they received approximately $6,000, and in 2003 they received approximately $15,000 in donations from their mailing. MOW is setting their goals high for 2004 by reaching for an increase of triple what they received for 2003. This means that they want to bring in about $50,000 next year. This is where my promotional program will come into play.
The biggest challenge of my promotion program is awareness. Although I want to increase the amount of donations they received, without proper recognition from the communities they serve, donations will be minimal. Before I worked there, I had never even heard of them myself. I did a survey at the call center where I work at now to see how many people have heard of MOW and of those people how many knew what they did. I surveyed 100 people and only 30 people had heard of MOW, and of that 30 only 18 knew what the organization did. This is one of the main reasons why getting more recognition will be a challenge since so few people know about the program. .
Meals on Wheels already has some ways in which to promote themselves that they have been doing throughout the years. They currently have an ad running continuously on the public service stations in all the cities that they service. They also run an ad in the local newspaper, The Daily Republic, twice a year in Fairfield and Vallejo. All the senior centers in which they serve also run ads for free in their monthly newsletters. Currently, MOW does not have any brochures circulating around the community and I plan to change that. With brochures, they can leave them at business all around Solano County. People might not necessarily pick one up and take home, but they might at least read the brochure and find out what MOW is about.
