Country: United States

Organization: Kham Aid Foundation

3) Strategy Summary:
We work in Tibet, a place that many people dream of visiting, a place of mystery and enlightenment. To differentiate ourselves among the hundreds of Tibetan causes, and to create a constituency for our organization that spans the globe, we publish frequent reports on our programs. These reports offer an insider's view of Tibetan life, and nearly always end on a hopeful note as we relate how, through our programs, it is indeed quite possible to make lives better for Tibetans. The reports strike a chord, and many people on our mailing list end up being donors or volunteers.

4) How the Strategy Works:
How to apply this strategy to other organizations and causes:

1. Identify what it is about the work you're doing that inflames your own passion. Why do you find it fascinating and rewarding? This is what you need to communicate to others.

2. If you aren't a good writer, then you need to either improve your writing skills, or enlist the help of a journalist who can engage readers with stories of your organization's work.

3. If you don't have a website, get one. Make sure that your ISP is capable of providing you with a mailing list. It's best if it's auto-subscribeable; that is, people should be able to sign up, and unsubscribe, without human help. Otherwise, maintaining the list gets rather labor- intensive. Your website should have a page that solicits people to sign up to your list. You should post some examples of your newsletter so that they can see what they're getting.

4. Maintain the utmost integrity in managing your list. Do not put people on it without their permission. When they ask to be taken off, do it at once. Do not bombard your list with frequent pleas to donate to this or that special fundraising drive.

5. If some of the addresses on your list return error messages, remove them. There are some ISPs (for example, AOL) that watch for people who write frequently to dead addresses. The people get labeled as spammers, and then suddenly you may find you can no longer send to anyone in that domain.

6. If you must send embedded images or file attachments, do so extremely sparingly. People with dial-up connections will be grateful to you for not clogging their bandwidth.

7. Only send a newsletter when you have something interesting to say. Don't send one each month just because you've decided that your publication should be monthly. The content should be lively, novel, and engaging.

8. Some weeks after a story has gone out, we post it on our website, usually with photos. This helps to entice new members.

8. Ideally, more than one person should be writing stories. That way, there is more variety in style and tone.

9. At the beginning of each story, include a summary of the contents. This helps people decide whether they want to read it or not. If they don't know up front what they're going to see in your story, they may file it for later reading - and never get to it at all.

5) Key Strategy Elements:

i. Mobilizing Citizen Support:
We have ten programs and each has its own volunteer director. I encourage the program directors to write articles about their particular specialty: education, health care, etc. This provides our readers with a well- rounded and comprehensive look at Tibet.

iii. Establishing Relationships with Strategic Partnerships:
After receiving our reports for a few months, our readers start to feel like they know us, are part of our family. They are far more likely to volunteer for specific projects, send money to an urgent action campaign, or tell their friends about us.

v. Developing Information and Spreading the Message:
I feel that, the more people know about Tibet, the more they will appreciate the need for different types of aid. If one pays attention only to the media (newspapers), one gets the impression that religious oppression is the problem that's most on Tibetans' minds. In fact, Tibetans worry about basics such as food, economic development, and health - the standard menu of development programs.

6) Increasing Self-sufficiency and Social Impact:
The internet is an extraordinary way to expand one's reach around the globe. Because of our website and our mailing list, we receive donations from people in Indonesia, Australia, Europe, Hong Kong, and many other countries. Without our mailing list, I don't know how we could have grown as we have, or operated so many successful programs.

8) Organization Mission and Vision:
We offer various types of assistance to Tibetans living in Kham - that is, the eastern Tibetan plateau.

Contact Information:
Pamela  Logan
Kham Aid Foundation
556 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105
United States
Tel: 626 449-7505
Fax: 626 628-3109
Email: khamaid@khamaid.org
Website: www.khamaid.org