DRTV

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is paying for a 30-second television ad to be aired during the Super Bowl. Kauffman will be pitching “entrepreneurship.” The ad, to be run three times surrounding the Super Bowl (once before the game, once after the game and once during the game), asks football fans to ponder who will generate “the next big idea.”
The pitch is to get budding entrepreneurs to go to the Kauffman-sponsored WillItBeYou.com website, where inspired entrepreneurial fans can find resources for start-up businesses.

Here are some things to consider when trying to determine if DRTV is the right fit for your nonprofit organization and tips for successful DRTV campaigns.

To help charities around the world make the most of DRTV, this year’s International Fundraising Congress (IFC) will feature two workshops on the subject run by sector experts, Maria Phillips and Rob Patmore.

Since 2005, the average amount of time PBS member stations devote to on-air pledge drives has increased by 9 percent, according to PBS. Some stations now devote a full 10 weeks a year to the special shows.

Driving the expansion is the same theme weaving through much of public television: money. Financially troubled state governments are rapidly cutting and sometimes eliminating subsidies for public media.

Despite the attention paid to the role of social media after the earthquake in Haiti last year, many more people learned about opportunities to give from more traditional communications channels, such as television and print media, according to a new survey.

More than 63 percent of respondents said they had learned about ways to contribute from television programming, and just over 50 percent cited television commercials. More than 29 percent of participants reported that they had found out about giving through print media.

There's much debate underway regarding the effectiveness of traditional fundraising sources. We're hearing a lot about social media, the importance of websites, emerging technologies and the transitioning of direct mail to electronic media.

CARADEUX CAMP, Haiti — The movie screen rose like an apparition, in the middle of a tent city, on a hillside veined by rain. “Under the Sky,” the title card said, and sure enough, a soap opera about a family living right here suddenly appeared.

Love and scandal followed, but the episode focused mainly on one issue: con men in the camps. After a slick villain in dark sunglasses tried to sell registration cards to the show’s main characters, claiming falsely that they could be redeemed for cash, officials with the International Organization for Migration suddenly appeared to save the day.

Editor’s Note: Direct-response television isn’t for every nonprofit organization, but with the proper planning and execution, it can be a solid source of income. Here, three professionals talk about their experiences with both long- and short-form DRTV.

DRTV works for nonprofits and for-profits alike, but — like anything else — you want to make the most of your investment. Here are seven tips to help you do just that. 1) First run or rerun? Unless you have a couple of million dollars gathering dust, first-run blockbusters like “Grey’s Anatomy” are not the place for DRTV ads. Why? First, it’s expensive and, second, people want to watch the show and frequently use ad time to take a break or channel surf. As a result, they don’t see the spot and don’t respond. Game shows, second-run classics like “M*A*S*H,” or encore presentations typically are a

In its whitepaper “The Effects of DRTV on Search Engine Marketing,” multichannel-marketing company SendTec (www.sendtec.com) examines “the enormous impact DRTV has on search engine marketing, both on organic and on paid search listings, and how it can easily throw off the allocation of expenses and sales to both channels.” The key takeaways from the paper include that: * Search is a significant channel for DRTV response; * In order to calculate your true cost-per-response, you must factor in DRTV-driven search traffic; * You must be careful not to “double pay” for search traffic that already is being driven by your DRTV activities; and * DRTV has a