Yearly Dollar (contd ...)

From all the replies to my mail about the Yearly Dollar plan, I think there is support for the idea. So we went back and did a little more talking about the plan. In Columbus we have 5 people working on fleshing out the details. We met over the weekend and came up with some action points:

• Since this is going to be a multi-chapter activity, we first need to make a team, with one person from every chapter that will work on this plan. So please discuss this in your CSH, and get one person on this team. Of course, if any chapter has more than one person interested, that's ok.
• We are currently working on a draft plan for the implementation. The first job of the team, once its formed, will be to review this plan, and make all necessary changes. The timeline that we could like to set for this plan to be reviewed and finalised would be such that we can publish it at the Boston Conference to the rest of AID for implementation. Basically if we want to do this on the 15th of August, we will need to start working at least starting June.
• One idea that we had to enhance our reach was to try and strike a deal with some chain of departmental/grocery stores, and place our collection boxes in their locations. Adnan in Columbus is currently working on finding such possibilities.
• Another important issue is what we want to sell as this plan's target. Because if we are shooting for large scale fund-raising, we need to show proper cause. For this, we were thinking of identifying a theme for every year. For example, this year's theme could be health development. So we can publicize the plan as a fund-raising attempt toward all our health development projects, the next year could be education...
• The success of this plan completely hinges on publicity and advertisement. We need to get as much reach as we can in terms of advertising the event. For this we need to try and get as much media attention as possible. We were thinking of going for sponsorships for this. The sponsorship will(need) not be monetary, but can be in the form of advertisement. For this, we could approach internet newspapers (Rediff.com, Samachar.com...) and also TV channels like Zee and TV Asia that have a presence in the US. We can make an attractive offer to them. Also local radio stations would be a good medium.
• As Arvind pointed out a few days back, the boxes we use for this will be another major factor. We need to standardize these and do a good job about them. The same goes for the posters we use. Again, if we could find some sponsor that will make these for us, that will be good.. that way we will have professional looking stuff.

These were the points that we have thought of. With just 4 weeks to go before Boston, we think it is necessary we start working on the planning full-scale asap. So please get back to us as soon as possible with your feedback, as well as the contact of one person for the planning team. Prahalad from Blacksburg already mentioned that he wants to be on the team...

Have questions on this session? Please contact Nigamanth Sridhar.