Advertising prices for a charity booklet

[nickb]

Hi

I'm new here so please bear with me.

I am Chair of a small national charity. We need to produce a glossy colour A5 booklet about our syndrome, for members, newly diagnosed people and health professionals, with a print run of 5000 copies initially.

The booklets need to be given out for free so to help cover the costs we would like to ask relevant companies (physio aids, special matresses etc) to buy advertising space.

I would like advice on how much to charge for this space please, we were thinking of charging per full page ad, 1/2 page and 1/4 page.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you :)

[Stephen]

Hi, and welcome!

I imagine it could be fairly difficult to get people to part with too much cash, as such requests are unfortunately quite common these days.

As such, perhaps it might be useful to take the question the other way around and think about what the costs are that you need to cover, then divide this by how much space you'll have available for adverts.

You could then consider whether this figure feels about right, or perhaps too high/low?

Perhaps you could also consider what other organisations in a similar position charge, who they target, and what such targets might be prepared to spend with you, rather than someone else.

Hope this helps; good luck!
Steve

[daveashton]

There are lots of sales issues here.

1: Who will read it as a MUST read. Because you have not track record this will also be hard to prove.

2: Steve is so right. There are hundreds if not thousands of these around.

3: 5000 is a very small number and even from a printing costs will mean you pay a lot more than getting 50K done.

4: Selling print based advertising is a declining market and times are hard so competition will be v strong.

5: Companies will pay more for a booklet/ magazine that cost money than free.

6: who is going to sell it? good salespeople cost good money and bad sales people do not sell because there are no prizes for being 2nd.
(please not that was not a tout for business and sorry to say we would not take on a project like this)

As Steve says , work out what you need to cover, get as many grants, government help as possible and then ask for donations to cover the rest is the most simple solution.

[nickb]

Thanks for the replies.

Mmmm, I had a feeling it was going to be difficult. Unfortunately most of the other trustees do not work in the commercial world-so they seem to think its the case of writing a few letters!

We've had no luck getting grants so far-but are looking into employing a professional fundraiser-so maybe our luck will change :)

[Stephen]

I'd venture writing letters - particularly if you've never done it before - would be a complete waste of time and money. Talking to people - telephone or in person - would be your best chance I'd imaging. I still see it being very difficult.

I've worked with professional fundraisers for charities before, and whilst some can be very good, sometimes their results can disappoint. Obviously it depends on your expectations.

If I was in your position, I'd certainly favour paying them only on a results basis. Would they still be interested then though?

I wouldn't discount the idea completely. In particular, if there are people whom you already have some kind of relationship with, you may well be able to get them to contribute in some fashion.

Good luck!

[winton50]

We get at least one of these types of sales calls per week and they usually eminate from the cheshire area!

I would never advertise in anything like this because 1) they very often don't print the amount they say they are going to 2) they are very often not distrubuted 3) they very often don't give anything to the charity anyway 4) we get nothing from them.
The problem you will have is that you will suffer by association with the rogue companies as you are trying to do exactly what they claim to do.

Try doing something more creative instead. It will make you more money in the long run

[nickb]

I've worked with professional fundraisers for charities before, and whilst some can be very good, sometimes their results can disappoint. Obviously it depends on your expectations.

If I was in your position, I'd certainly favour paying them only on a results basis. Would they still be interested then though?

I wouldn't discount the idea completely. In particular, if there are people whom you already have some kind of relationship with, you may well be able to get them to contribute in some fashion.

Good luck!

Thanks for the encouragement. Think I've found someone who won't start invoicing us until we see any grant money coming in :)