I’ve found that one the best and most effective ways to get the word out about anything you want to promote is to send out emails to list serves.
Lots and lots of emails.
It’s as easy as copying and pasting and forwarding the same write up about your organization or event to a few friends, who then send them off to hundreds of their club members, followers, Facebook friends etc.
In a spam (haha, get it?) of half an hour you can potentially reach thousands of people.
The problem is, you don’t get many responses back. And there are only so many times you can send out your emails before getting annoying, redundant or worse, be kicked off the list serve all together.
I’ve gotten some pretty nasty emails back from people who felt that I “abused” my list serve privileges.
I have to laugh at that, because, really is getting email that you don’t want to read the worst thing that can happen? The worst though is when list serves are closed so that the administrators are the only ones who can send out emails, so unfair.
Well, it just so happened that I had run out of people to email (see: spam) about the Fistula Free Climb, when to my delight, I got an email from the Cornell Director of Volunteers for the upcoming Net Impact Conference at to be held on campus November 13th and 14th.
I wasn’t so pleased to be getting an email from her, (because the FFC already has a display during the conference, score!) as I was to see that instead of creating a list serve to email to, this woman wrote out every one of the hundreds of emails in the “To” section.
Here I was sitting in front of my computer looking at a list of about 400 people passionate enough about social entrepreneurship to sign up to volunteer at the conference.
Jackpot.
As you’ve probably already guessed, yes, I did copy and paste all the emails and send out the generic FFC blurb to each and every single one of them -except the sender. I didn’t want her to see that I’d spammed, I mean communicated, with her list.
And, out of the hundreds of emails I sent, so many in fact that Hotmail said I’d reached the 24-hour limit, we only got one response. And it changed everything.
As I’ve mentioned before, my journey to Uhuru Peak started ever since I made the decision to climb the mountain in front of my computer screen at work in Sydney last June.
Ever since then, people (Seth, Ally, the CU team, Gligor Tashkovich, Former Minister of Foreign in Investment of the Republic of Macedonia, no big deal) and events (Club Fest, DoSomething.org Boot Camp, Net Impact Conference) have been coming into my life and contributing to the success of our trip; that email was yet another Alchemist moment.
The email was from Christian Polman, a Cornell grad who was back to get his MBA from the Johnson School. He had climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro the summer after graduation with his Dad, Brother and a team of blind climbers, including the famous Eric Weinhaymer, who has climbed all Seven Summits – blind. That’s right, he’s reached the tallest point on the planet and he cannot see. Please do yourself a favor and click on his name.
Their climb was, at the time, the largest number of blind people to have reached Uhuru Peak at once.
After his trek, Christian and company went on to found Kilimanjaro Blind Trust, a non-profit that works to raise money for blind children in Africa.
Like obstetric fistula patients, blind people are seen to be cursed and a useless burden to their families and communities as they cannot aid in providing for the family. Many children do not know what they are capable of and by helping them to become braille literate, KBT gives these children a chance to be normal.
Christian also said in his email that he was willing to donate $50 to OperationOF.org, making him the very first donor! He also said his parents will donate to the cause, so we’re well on our way to raising $100,000.
Finally, Christian referred me to his porter, Nickson of www.masaigiraffe.com, who guided him and 7 blind people in 2005 to Africa’s rooftop.
The way I see it is if Nickson’s team can get a group of people who can’t even see to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, chances are he can figure out a way to get our team up there.
We settled on the Macheme, or whiskey, Route (after all we do go to Cornell) and will be going on a safari in the Ngrongro Crater afterwards, followed by visits to Kilimanjaro Christian Medial Center where we will meet some of the women whose lives we’ve impacted.
After months of planning, debating, soliciting, meeting, arguing, estimating, researching and contacting, we’ve finally settled on a porter and trip itinerary we are confident with and believe will give us the best chance of reaching the summit and having the time of our lives.
There are now 93 days until the start of the climb on January 12th, 2010 and we’ve got $99,950 to go.
And so the journey continues.
