Archive for November, 2009
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Decrease in Housholds with No Bank Accounts
Five years ago, UK government and banks established a goal to build up the number of bank accounts with adults. Recent survey confirms that the statistics has increased more than half. The Financial Inclusion Task Force infomed that the number of these household has increased nearly 60% as of 2008.
Finance news reports that the treasury was glad that this specific goal has been achieved. It shows how cooperation between the government, public and private sectors, and industries can make it possible for everyone to have fiscal aid for their everyday lives. Reducing the number of people with no bank accounts has been the plan of the UK Government to make various financial services be available to people all over the UK. People would also gain from it in case they go through financial difficulties.
It also bring more people together under transactional banking to obtain and put up payments and protect their funds more effectively. The Financial Inclusion Task Force still continues to lessen the quantity of unbanked people In the UK and have called on banks and the government to successfully enforce banking regulations and services.
Insuring Your Investment
Recent research has revealed that about half of investment savers declare that setting up a guarantee on their previous investment would give them confidence the next time they invest on another pension or stock market. According to a survey conducted by Metlife, savers who has an investment secured by a guarantee feel more protected in investing cash on another investment venture. 47% of savers agree with this finding while 11% say their attitude toward further investment has not changed.
The popularity of guarantees has risen since the start of the year. Savers who have a warranty on their earliest cash investment feel more confident in investing than people who do not have guarantees. Everybody may need to think twice before investing in certain stock without a guarantee. The worry of losing money in an investment is one of the major reasons why people are reluctant to invest, especially in these days.
Investment guarantee is the insurance for people not to lose their original investment, and for one to gain long term returns, investing in stocks is one of the best ways. People who plan to play it safe regularly invest lesser sums so in the event of a stock crash the loss would not seem too severe or secure it with a guarantee if the money invested is of hefty worth. Most investment guarantees do not come free, but it is safe to say that paying a small price to protect ones hard-earned investment is a price worth paying for.
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Here are some great tips about getting your home office area more organized
An organized home office will make for a faster and more enjoyable workday. Here are a few thoughts to get you and your home office organized.
Do you have a home office? You don’t necessarily need an entire room, but you ought to have a well-defined space to have all your office essentials and files. A desk in your bedroom that will hold your files, paper, pens, calculator and of course PC will do fine, especially at the start. If your office consists of the dining room table, some of the drawers in your kitchen, a file cabinet in the basement and the computer in the bedroom, you may well want to consider organizing everything in one spot.
Are you wasting a lot of time searching for a specific article, running from room to place to locate it? Think about moving all your records and documents to one main area, if possible by to the PC if that’s where you are doing the lion’s share of your work.
Stash your private documents and documents apart from your business items.
You will ultimately have enough paperwork to deal with without having your personal bills, magazines and the kids after-school schedule mixed in there. Make a separate area for those somewhere separate of your home office space.
Establish a file system that works for you. Remember, you may be working for someone else, but when it comes to your home office, you are your own boss.
Take a good look at your work area. Do you have lots of documents, records, mail, floppy discs and CDs lying around? Do you notice anything else piling up? Set aside a few hours and put the lot away. Utilize your new file system and find a place for everything else too.
Now that you have your office organized, set aside a few minutes at the end of your day to keep it that way. Try to leave work for the day with a clean, clear desk. You will be thankful for it the next morning. This will also stop you from ever coming across a giant pile of papers yet again.
Let’s chat about the files on your PC. You can waste just as much time hunting for an online file as for a piece of paper. If your PC is needed for work as well as for personal use, create a work folder and use subfolders for certain employers, projects etc.
Again, create with a file system that works for you and keep your work files away from your personal files. This is exceptionally essential if your other family members access the computer also. If that is the case, and you are using Windows XP, I solidly recommend setting up a separate user account solely for work and password protecting it. This will avert other family members from inadvertently altering or deleting your work records. Visit for other good info about bed linen here
In addition to your ordinary files, you also want to keep your emails sorted out. Let’s be direct, we have all wasted time searching for a certain email that contained some very important information we required in a hurry. Setting up folders for various clients and projects has worked fine for me, but once again decide on a system that works for you and stay with it. Sort the email as soon as you read it. It only takes a second or two to drop it in the appropriate folder, but will save you a lot of time if you have to locate it later.Find other great information on baby bedding
I encourage you to get going with a couple of these pointers to get your office and yourself more organized. You will be flabbergasted by how much time you will save not looking for files, papers or the stapler. Before long, you won’t know how you ever got along without an organized home office.Visit for other information on comforters there
Important disclosure: This article was based on freely available info in the popular press and medical journals that deal mainly with home decor and organizing. Nothing here is intended to be or ought to be taken to be any sort of medical advice. For medical advice the visitor needs to consult with their MD or health care specialist.
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Present For a Man
Every year its the same … I struggle to figure out what presents to get for the men in my life. The women in my family and my lady friends are no problem, but finding gifts for men drives me crazy. They just seem a whole lot more difficult to please than the women.
You can find creative gift ideas online, and this is what has finally helped me in my search for a gift for a man in my life. The problem seems to be that stores have the same stuff each year, and most of the stuff is worthless to the men that I know. They don’t need any golf clubs, and if they did, I should not be the one picking one out. Surely a big screen television would be great, but it is a little bit out of my budget. So when it comes time to buy, I turn to the Internet to find what I need.
A little searching should help you come up with some good ideas. You don’t have to buy online, but it is a great place to find a gift for a man that you cannot find anywhere else. You can even look on eBay for your choice, to see if you can get it for a better price than offered by the website you found. The great thing about searching online is that you can get items delivered to your home, which totally bypasses the crowds in the stores.
When it just seems like nothing is working out, and you think buying a gift for a man is hopeless, know that you have one last option. This may not seem like the best gift, but it will always be a welcome one. No matter what their favorite hobby may be, you can find a gift certificate that will help them buy time, equipment, supplies, or anything else they may have a use for. Buying a gift for a man should not be this hard, but perhaps that is just how it is.
Justice League Action Figure are hugely popular with fans of all ages. Is there an avid photographer on your list? You need to go shopping for a canon rebel digital camera. Photographers love them for their powerful features and superb results.
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Lookup Criminal Reports To Find Out About Someones Past
Regrettably, not every person is as forthcoming with their past, especially a criminal history and in some situations having knowledge of somebodies history is very significant. However how are you going to dig up this information? You can actually find a public record on whichever person who has any arrests, jail time, and convictions. That’s right. You might had heard how free criminal background checks save lives? Because of this, employment becomes highly selective and competitive, which makes sure that the employees are safe.
Place the data in quotation marks to narrow down the results. There are many newspapers that publish their police section online, so you may be able to criminal records search their. and view this government website. Utilizing a no charge online service to check a persons background for amusement probably is going to be okay as long as you think about that the statistics probably will not be accurate. If you wanted to access state criminal records in the past, you would have gone to a series of steps that might leave you very frustrated.
As of now, the FBI is the only one who is allowed to keep national criminal records. If this is what you want, then you would have to go through manual application of the records. I highly doubt that you would even try and do this because usually, high profile criminals are the one who are being viewed in the FBI database. The information that you will find in here will be very helpful. You can now live safely without doubting the people.
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Finding a Sidekick for Internet Marketing
When embarking on an internet marketing campaign, it doesn’t matter if your focus is awful plastic surgery or how to make money online, hiring a consultant to assist you in your Internet marketing campaign is a worthwhile endeavor if you have some experience in Internet marketing but are competing in a competitive niche and need some additional assistance to help you rise above the competition.
There are a few characteristics to look for when seeking a qualified consultant in the Internet marketing industry. Surprisingly cost is not one of the most important considerations. Experience and past performance are much more important. You can compare costs among consultants who are similarly qualified but using cost as a primary source of evaluation is not recommended
More experienced consultants will be better skilled at dealing with clients and will likely answer your questions more quickly and keep you better informed about the progress of your Internet marketing campaign. All of this is important because you will likely be very interested in receiving progress reports and staying up to date on everything that is going on with your Internet marketing campaign.
This does not mean that new consultants are necessarily going to perform poorly but there is some risk involved in selecting a consultant who does not have a great deal of experience or who has not performed well in the past. You can feel much more confident putting your Internet marketing campaign in the hands of a consultant who typically generates the type of results you are looking for in your own Internet marketing campaign.
Once you have evaluated consultants on the basis of experience and past performance, it is time to start considering price. Considering price early in the process of seeking a consultant may cause you to be influenced by price over performance. Some consultants may be incredibly affordable but if they are not capable of producing the desired results, it may end up being a complete waste of money. However, once you have narrowed your list of potential consultants down to a few qualified candidates, it is definitely time to start comparing prices.
Each time you implement a change to your marketing strategy; you should evaluate the results of the change to determine whether or not it generated a greater profit for you. This is important because it can help you determine what is working and what is not working for you.
If you are looking to get a crate full of cash i.e. a cash crate, you might want to start focusing on your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats regarding your internet marketing campaign.
Evaluating the response of your Internet marketing can be done in a number of different ways. Customer surveys and embedded HTML code are two of the most popular methods of evaluating the effectiveness of an Internet marketing campaign.
Hard work and dedication will help you reach your goals of making money online and attacking whatever niche your heart is content on including awful plastic surgery, credit cards, project payday opportunities, or cash crate endeavours.
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Get Paid for Surveys and Make Extra Cash
A great deal of business is being done over the Internet these days. People are making a lot of money there. Instant connectivity means that the whole world (well, maybe not ALL of it, but billions of people anyway…) are available to buy goods and services. The biggest market is for information. The Internet marketplace never sleeps. At any hour there are millions of people connected, most are looking for information; many will be looking for ways to buy and sell services (and merchandise.
Most of the ways to make money on the Internet require special skills, know-how, experience and significant investment in training and setup costs. There are still some exceptions where almost anyone can get started and make money.
You can find one exception to this rule by learning how to get paid for your opinion when you participate in paid market research surveys.
You see, large companies spend billions of dollars on market research every year. They must understand consumer preferences so they can improve their products and services, develop new products and measure the effectiveness of their advertising.
They hire marketing research experts to measure consumer opinion and get the info they need. These market researchers use surveys to measure public opinion The fastest, most effective and most economical way to make surveys is over the Internet. They can get answers back in hours or maybe a few days. There are now hundreds of surveys being made every day!
So with thousands of surveys going out, where in the world do they find people to actually fill out the forms and complete the surveys? That’s easy! They just make it worth their while by paying survey participants! To find online surveys that pay you can check with guide companies who compile lists of the best paid surveys, companies like Express Paid Surveys and others like them do this very well.
That’s how, if you are a consumer (if you consume groceries, you are a consumer!) with sufficient tech skills to send and receive e-mails, you can make good money on the Internet. By taking surveys that pay cash you can make real money on the Internet… if you do it right! For more info on how to choose the right guide company and do it right, just click on any link in this blog post…
Author: William Howard
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Surviving the Current Financial Crisis
In the current climate of near certain worldwide financial crisis there has been a traumatic worldwide economic meltdown which has put the world economy as we know it at risk. There are many companies who will not survive but there are some who will not only survive but will benefit in these unfortunate times. For instance our business in web design has increased recently because in an effort to reduce costs companies are turning to the internet to improve sales without incurring huge overheads. So companies like ours suddenly are in greater demand. However for the majority of the population it is a question of surviving and getting through it. If your business is on a sound financial foundation and you have money behind you then this will be beneficial in the coming months. You may even be able to reduce employee salaries for a period of time, rather than have redundancies or even closing down, but whatever strategy you apply it will need to be with the agreement of the workforce because a company is dependent of the good will of its employees at such a time. During the early stages of the crisis the British company JCB, which makes big machinery like bull dozers and diggers, chose with the agreement of the workforce, to reduce everyone’s salary for 6 months rather than lay off people or go out of business.
Cash flow
Most businesses go to the wall because of problems with cash flow. If there is not enough money coming it to pay for goods and services then it will not be long before a company goes into liquidation. Constant monitoring of the financial position is crucial. It is so easy to spend and not realise how much is leaking out and where it is all going. Keeping a tight control on costs is always a vital activity because that is what makes or breaks a company. More profits always come from reducing outgoings whether it’s reducing waste or cheaper purchasing or decreasing the workforce. I once listened to an audio tape on how to become wealthy and the one item to impact me was the advice to plug the leaks. Most people when running short of money try to find a way of making more money, but without a balance of reducing outgoings they never seem to resolve their problem. The simple reason is that when people earn more they spend more. If you imaging a bath with the tap turned on to fill it up. If the plug is securely in place the bath will fill up fairly quickly. But if the bath was full of holes no matter how much water you pour into the bath it will never fill up. The analogy is that the bath is your bank account, the tap is your earnings and the holes are your spending. Since listening to that tape, I have made a point of keeping expenses to a minimum at home and at work and every little sum of money coming in I see as a positive step to achieving wealth. To achieve sustainable wealth it is essential to take control of your spending and plug the leaks.
Avoid buying anything unless you absolutely have to or adjourn some necessary purchase for a few more months if possible. It’s amazing how you can manage without something for a period of time by using up existing or old stocks and making sure that waste is reduced to an absolute minimum. One of the things we teach early on is that being good with finances is often just a case of regular monitoring and being aware of what is going on with your finances.
Look for Bargains in Purchasing.
When you do have to procure goods to run the business, make sure you look out for bargains or negotiate for a better deal than you may have achieved previously. When times are tough, sales with no profits are better than nothing and there are some good deals to be had. One company I recently heard about sold a house for half the price when a customer came along with a cash offer.
We were recently tasked with setting up website hosting on a very low budget for our client www.hotelsinbrighton.org we actually managed to find a hosting company who are providing free website hosting if you buy a domain name from them. So just because you have a pre conceived idea that something has to be paid for, or costs a certain amount, it might not necessarily be the case and it is worth investigating all markets and reviewing all costs continuously.
Look at your Spending in purchasing.
By taking a good long hard look at all of the business overheads I am sure it will be easy to identify those areas similar to ours where you have large outgoings. If those costs are vital to the functioning of the business then looking for better deals with other providers or renegotiate with current provider to maybe save thousands of dollars. So in many ways the current economic climate could be seen as a good thing because it forces businesses to review their outgoings and get rid of the dead wood. In any business, the higher the outgoings, the smaller the profits. When there is an economic downturn or some loss of business unless you have unlimited capital set aside, it is essencial to reduce spending otherwise the business will not survive. Most really successful businesses understand the value of controlling outgoings and constantly review costs, even when times are good.
Tighten your Belt – No need for Extravagent Spending
Although looking at reducing large overheads is one way to improve the viability of your company, another is to pay attention to the small amounts going out. It is so easy to think ‘Oh it’s only a few pounds’ but small amounts add up and can so easily get out of control. Remember that old saying ‘take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves’ I think it is so true. So cut out unnecessary spending, no perks on the business such as lunches or dinners to woo customers. They rarely actually need it if your business is offering honest value for money and top class services, and in most cases customers and prospects will appreciate you being prudent if it means you stay in business and continue as their valued suppliers. Managing directors can lead the way by paying themselves less or taking a pay cut showing that they are willing to tighten their own belts.
Recently it was announced that Bruce Forsythe was taking a cut in salary for his position as the host of Strictly Come Dancing, one of the most popular programmes on TV at the moment. He believed that they were being overpaid and put his money where his mouth was. There is nothing worse than asking other people to manage on less when you are not prepared to do so yourself.
Another major area of expense is salaries and the costs that go with them. If you employ a large number of people the overhead expenses are huge. However there is always a natural wastage where people leave or retire so without actively having to make people redundant there may be chances to reduce the wages bill when times are hard. Efficiency and effectiveness of the people working in the company is critical and communicating with the workforce as to how they can reduce wastage and be more effective can be a rewarding policy.
One example from my previous work in organisations was when running a supervisors workshop. One of the delegates was complaining that when he needed to order supplies he had to sent the request up the line and wait until the senior manager had given the go ahead. As he was responsible for keeping supplies stocked and felt very frustrated at the time it took for him to get the approval he needed. I was appalled to hear that he was being so hampered in doing his job properly. So when I asked the question. ‘What’s to stop you ordering the goods yourself?’ after a long think, he said it had always been done that way. Nobody had questioned the procedure and whether it was still necessary to follow it. The outcome was that the he was given the go ahead to do the ordering himself and the senior manager was freed from one task he could happily do without.
Do Your Customers have Financial Fluidity?
If one of your customers is a very large company and they are source of the majority of your revenue then you are in a high risk position. It is a good idea to ensure that you have more than one high volume customer as well as lots of smaller ones so that you will be covered if one suddenly defaults on payment.
Find out the financial viability of your best customers. When the income of a customer falls then their ability to purchase goods and services is affected. If they are able to pay, then you will be able to pay your suppliers. There is nothing worse than doing a lot of work or selling a lot of stock to customer and then not getting paid. Situations like this can often cost you money, and that is the road to financial ruin, so be sure to be aware of your client’s economic situation as best as possible. We use the free Dunn and Bradstreet financial tracking service to identify any negative changes registered against any of our major clients
A customer of ours who are a company providing uk town planning consultants to businesses were lucky their business was very healthy with positive cash flow when a large customer went into liquidation owing about £10,000. This was a lot of money to lose but their business was very healthy financially and they survived.
Find out the financial stability of your best customers. When the income of a customer falls then their ability to purchase goods and services is affected. If they are able to pay on time, then you will be able to pay your suppliers. There is nothing worse than doing a lot of work or selling a lot of stock to customer and then not getting paid. Situations like this can often make the difference between success or failure. The cost to you in money and wasted effort and resources could be the road to financial ruin, so make sure you are aware of your client’s economic situation as much as possible. When the financial crisis happened one of our best customers suddenly switched to a two month payment plan which meant that we did not get any money from them for a month. When we protested the chief executive told his manager to find another suppler. There were a number of outstanding invoices worth thousands of pounds and we were powerless to do anything. Our overheads were compromised for that month but we were fortunate enough to have access to a reserve fund to tide us over. And yes we did get paid the whole amount over time.
Avoid Borrowing Money
When the world is in a financial meltdown it is better not to borrow money if you can help it. If you have already borrowed significant sums of money then make sure you talk to your bank and get the best deal on repayments you can. If it’s possible to repay a chunk of money to reduce the interest you are paying out then do so. To me interest is money going out for nothing in return and is not good money management.
Having said all that, the interest rate in America is just over 1% and recently rates have been radically reduced in the UK. But that in itself is what caused this whole financial mess in the first place. People borrow money cheaply then re-lend it at a higher rate of interest and take the difference in profit. Once the interest rate rises to a more normal level they will bail out and take their billions off to buy an island somewhere while everyone else pays the price. I know that is an over simplification of the problem, but it serves to demonstrate that the greed of a few has caused the distress of millions of the majority.
In my property rental business, a few years ago I had to let a house at a reduced rent but found a good long term tenant. This meant that the income was only just covering my costs but subsequently, because of the drop in interest rates, the mortgage repayments on the property have been reduced by £150 a month. This means I have been able to realise a small profit and with that money I am reinvesting it in improvements to the house. Long term I see it as a good investment to maintain the standard and value of the property. So for some companies who have had to borrow money to stay afloat there is the benefit of lower interest rates to reduce the burden of repayments.
You Only Have to Survive
The world financial situation at the moment, I realise, is much more complicated than is indicated above. But the simple ways of dealing with crisis can often be the best option. Cut everything down to the bone and think about the days when people did not have such complicated lives. They managed their businesses without tax accountant advice, a water cooler, coffee machines and other such luxuries that we often take for granted. They made do by either doing extra work themselves or just going without. Obviously as your business grows, or recovers, it doesn’t become economically viable to sit and trawl through tax return forms or to have to do a lot of extra research and administration yourself, so you can restore those facilities that help to make you money once you have recovered your initial position.
Now I am not suggesting that we should go back to the good old days. What I am saying is that we might think we can’t manage without all our latest gadgets such as mobile phones that take photos, but the reality is that we can do more with a great deal less, as long as we put ourselves into the right frame of mind and think positively about what we can achieve rather than what we haven’t got. Obviously as your business grows, or recovers, it doesn’t become economically viable to sit and trawl through tax return forms or to have to do a lot of extra research and administration yourself, so you can restore those facilities as and when you have recovered your financial equilibrium.
Think what the Victorians did with the limited resources they had at their disposal. The horse was the main mode of transport and they used the manure to heat cold- frames and managed to grow pineapples without any other form of heating. They did not have cars, computers, mobile phones or even phones. The railway was only just coming into being, and they did not even have electricity. But with their energy and ingenuity they conquered the world. The industrial revolution with their steam driven machines changed our economy for ever. In the past there was no such thing as ecommerce web design and yet businesses survived|thrived.
Stay in a Positive Mode
By this I do not mean be in denial and pretend the world is not going through a tough time. But if you are continually thinking and worrying about the negative aspects of the financial situation, then you are likely to make it come true. Don’t forget you get what you wish for and by concentrating on something then it will work like a wish, so why not concentrate on ways of getting new customers, giving better value to your existing customers and how your company could offer new products or services to your existing customer base?
The challenge of any financial crisis is to find ways of increasing your customer base by offering inducements for purchasers to use your company rather than the competition’s services.
Conclusion
Although during this recession there is no doubt times are hard for people who have lost their jobs. No work, equals no money coming in, so how do people pay their bills and their mortgages? If consumers have been prudent during times of prosperity and they have a nest egg for a rainy day, then they can probably manage for a few months until they get another job. But if they are already up to their eyes in debt then they will face personal bankruptcy and could lose everything.
One economist had identified that in the past the higher the level of personal debt in an economy, the deeper the depression that followed. Prior to the current financial meltdown the level of personal debt was extremely high and the recession is a worldwide event.
In spite of all that, some people are managing quite well if they have jobs or some other type of income. One article I read recently said that the death rate reduced noticeably during recession and put that down to eating more economically at home and not eating so much junk food. So OK we can’t afford to go out for meals as much, and things are more costly, but home prepared food is often better for you and sharing meals with the family is a way of coming together and communicating. So it’s not all bad. Good luck for a prosperous future.
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Fashion Jewelry Accessories
A backyard fish pond can be enjoyed year round by the entire family. Changing with the seasons, a pond is the missing ingredient to the perfect backyard. Most ponds built by homeowners are made of plastic, fiberglass and concrete will inevitable leak. Some, not all, can be taken care of during designing a waste stabilization pond. If you are looking to add an outdoor pond as a way to keep building a pond pet fish in a open area, or just as a way for the kids to cool off during the summer then check out this process. There you can have your own little project that gives you enjoyment day after day.
Cathy says the idea for Memory Jewelry came after she attended a scrapbook event with a friend of hers. When the hummingbird appears in a time of great sorrow and pain, healing will soon follow. Costs often range from a few dollars to $70 a pair for pliers that seem exactly the same, and one book seems to say you need a thousand dollars worth of tools to get started, while another touts an entirely different set of tools entirely. Back in the day, starting around the 1920s, women were becoming more adventurous in their cheap fashion jewelry, throwing off convention and the heavy clothes and bulky baubles of the Victorian era. I have discovered that the reason I have had so little success at buying jewelry for my wife in the last 16 years is that there is so much I do not know about jewelry and how to shop for it. Metal has been a valued possession throughout numerous civilizations now.
Smoking is termed as a bad habit from our school days. Unfortunately the percentage of smokers in the world goes on increasing. For so many years, studies have been done to prove the benefits of getting rid of smoking and what positive effects it can bring to an ex-smoker and the people around him. Thinking about quitting or considering if you should stay quit? If there are doubts in your mind, maybe the best option you would want to have is to take a second opinion. It is common knowledge nowadays that smoking can be dangerous to our health, but still, many people do it and need an easy way to quit smoking. If a chosen method did not work out in the past, keep trying until you succeed.
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The Construction Of Supporting Vines
Which comes first – the vine, or the support it grows on? Sometimes one, sometimes the other; but ideally, both together. Whether it’s an expensive pergola or a simple wire netting, no support should be either so elaborate or so out of proportion that it is in discord with the rest of the garden and the architecture. And unless the vine is in tune with all three, it does more aesthetic harm than good. A vine is only as effective as it is suited to its supporting structure, and the reverse.
Design-wise, supports and structures of all kinds should be kept on the simple side, conforming – not competing – with the architecture of the house or other buildings. Painting the supports the same color as the house helps tie the two together, with the vine to create the contrasting color and pattern. The best supports neither compete with their vines for attention nor outshine them.
Good construction is also important. A support should be strong enough from the start to bear the weight of the vine when it is fully mature – and even when it is whipped by strong wind. The bases of the support should be sunk below the frost line; and all wood, even durable cypress or redwood, should be treated with a rot-preventive. (Don’t use creosote or anything else that is poisonous to plants.) Copper nails and galvanized iron bolts also help make sure the whole thing won’t collapse when the vine has grown lush and heavy.
Most supports need periodic painting or refinishing. Plan ahead for this just like planning for the stages of tissue culture. Make the structure accessible; and train and prune the vine to keep it under control, so the stems can be removed and laid down without the job of unraveling a hopeless tangle, or even cutting the plant back to the soil.
For the sake of unity and balance in garden design, structures and supports need a reason for their appearance – to connect one building, area, or level with another; display a specimen or accent vine; keep the vine shapely and upright against a wall; lead the eye to an object of interest, like a fountain; integrate a restful bench or an outdoor living area with its surroundings.
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Direct Mail – One Way to Raise Donations
A mailing is often the most practical way to reach many potential donors. Sending letters also is a simple way to raise money. There is no need to recruit, train, manage and motivate a large group of volunteers. A few talented individuals can run the entire operation. And you will find you will get a lot more volunteers to fold and stuff envelopes than to cold-call potential contributors. That’s not to say all one must do is write a letter, post or e-mail it, and wait for the returns.
What makes mail fundraising campaigns difficult is that they are one-sided. No allowance exists for a campaign member to personally motivate prospects. The most enthusiastic letter simply cannot match the conversation between a skilled fundraiser and an open-minded potential donor. Lacking aggressive salesmanship, only minimum gifts can be expected, no matter how well written the solicitation letter and enclosures may be.
Here’s another angle to think about. Assume that I’m a small-gift prospect with some interest in your charity. There’s a good chance that I’ll donate generously to your appeal if you knock on my door or phone because your enthusiasm and presentation will be hard to resist. And how many other organisations will solicit me in these ways? Very few. But send me a solicitation letter and you place your request in the midst of enormous competition for my same gift dollar. And because it’s a letter, I have little problem withstanding its impersonal nature. If your organisation is not among my very favorites, you won’t receive a contribution of any consequence.
You see, although I think highly of your cause, I have a table covered with fundraising letters, from the best known national charities to all sorts of noteworthy regional and local groups. I am saturated with mail appeals. After sorting through them and making my top-ranked selections, I find my charitable budget is about depleted. But I still care about your cause, so here’s ten bucks to show you my heart’s in the right place.
With these factors as a downside, letter solicitations produce highly profitable income derived from small-gifts for organizations that plan and carry out meticulous programs. However, first-class mailing programs get extremely involved, both creatively and from a marketing standpoint. There are six elements to understand before considering a direct mail campaign:
1. Mail solicitation is an ongoing component of annual fundraising programs. In capital campaigning, letter writing is a tool for wrapping up an appeal and giving thanks.
2. Ongoing mail appeals focus equally on retaining and upgrading present contributors while discovering and cultivating new prospects to make up for donors lost to attrition and to enlarge the donor pool. Present givers won’t always be an available source of funding.
3. Donors via mail don’t come free. Depending on the package, to obtain a new contributor, you can spend from $1.30 to $1.60 (or more) for each initial dollar raised from that person.
4. Mail programs are long-term propositions and instant financial rewards are very rare.
5. Be clear who you designate as a donor and who you label a prospect. Donors are people currently contributing to your campaign. Someone who gave you a gift two years ago or a person who once contributed a painting to your auction are prospects, not donors. Get used to thinking of three distinct groups: current donors, past donor prospects, and new prospects.
6. Some prospects have more interest in and knowledge about an organisation than others. Cultivated potential donors are first approached because they represent the highest rate of return. For instance, a past donor prospect is a better bet to send you a new donation than someone who once came to a special event that you held. The person who came to the special event is more likely to fund you than someone who never heard of your group.
In planning a full scale mail campaign, don’t lose sight of the fundamental fundraising requirements. Make sure your project has compelling goals, high visibility, specific, attractive, and timely needs.
Additionally, make sure your group has start-up funds on hand for what can become a relatively large investment to get the program rolling. For example, depending on the scale of your operation, you might want to engage a letter shop or mail house to provide the many functions necessary to get your direct mail package to recipients. This is an expensive proposition.
Or you might opt to subscribe to an online software provider to help drive your mail program. Since the highest percentage of return comes from current contributors, they are the first group to target. If a goal is reachable by only contacting these people, expenses will be minimal and your problems will be solved. If that’s not realistic, additional prospects who might fund your project would need to be reached. That’s fine so long as you realize that their percentage of return will be far less than supporters.
For instance, you send a letter to current donors and perhaps 40 percent of them respond with donations. A letter sent to brand-new prospects typically yields responses of around 0.5 percent to 2 percent. Until you’ve won over a new potential giver, don’t expect relatively large contributions. A return of 5 percent to 12 percent can be expected from present donors.
If your group, school or club is looking for fundraising ideas and easy fundraisers, have a look at Goldstar Gifts and Stationary’s easy to manage ideas for fundraising.
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