School founder Ron Clark told reporters “I was just excited to have the letter. But then a sheet of paper fell out on the floor and I picked it up and looked it was a check for $365,000 and I was just overwhelmed.”

They followed up their first hit with another, “Dear Obama” which surprisingly hits on some heavy issues.  This time the effort earned the students a trip to Washington DC for the inauguration.

Take home lessons in short… focus on great education for your students, be creative and innovative.  As Jim mentioned recently, great teaching can often be free.  Then don’t hide your great kids.  The Ron Clark Academy students sang their song at Atlanta events, got their videos on local TV and YouTube, which helped them go national.  This kind of publicity can be great for your school — for the students themselves and for getting funding!

According to the USA Today Newspaper, Tom Farber is a teacher at Rancho Bernardo High School in San Diego, California. Due to budget cuts at his school, his allowance for making photocopies shrunk from over $500 per year to only $316. Since teachers already spend significant amounts of their own money to buy school supplies that are unfunded by their districts, Farber sought to find a more creative solution.

He decided to sell advertising space to local merchants on his homework and test papers- $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final.

So far, the USA Today reports that approximately two-thirds of the ads sold are actually inspirational messages bought by parents who want to and are in a position to help financially support their children’s education. The other third of the ads have been purchased by businesses such as an orthodontist and an engineering firm.

Supposedly, his idea is catching on with other teachers in his school, who see this as a way of getting what they need without having to cut into their own salaries to get it.

I have to admit that I was floored when I first read this. I mean, really, how can we, as a country, spend $10 billion dollars per month in Iraq, but we cannot afford to provide our children with enough paper for their tests? There is absolutely no justifiable rationale for this. Something is really out of whack.

OK, that being said, I do think that selling advertising space on tests is actually a terrific solution for cash-strapped schools.

Advertising is a fact of life. We are exposed to dozens, if not hundreds, of marketing messages per day. Not only are they on television, radio, and billboards, but ads underwrite our school yearbooks, sports programs, school play bills, and auction handbooks.

If it weren’t for advertising dollars, many of the items associated with schools that we take for granted would disappear. We are already neck-deep into this world of trading access to our students for money, so why not sell a little space on a quiz or a test?

Of course, there need to be logical guidelines pertaining to the appropriateness of certain sponsors. I wouldn’t think that a liquor store or a tattoo parlor would be good choices, for instance, but barring these common-sense exceptions, I would be open to any business that wanted to help the school system in this fashion.

Since advertising has become so pervasive and so slick in its delivery, the bigger issue here, I believe, is the real responsibility on us, the adults, to educate our children on how to live in an advertising culture. We need to talk to our kids about developing their resistance to aggressive marketing everywhere. If we can successfully do this, then it really doesn’t matter if the McDonald’s or Nike logo is at the bottom of their final exam.

For more suggestions on how to develop partnerships with local business, please check out my blog post entitled The Single Best Way to Turn Local Businesses into School Supporters.

First of all- a disclaimer: I only know about this working in my local newspaper. I have never heard of it working in others, but I can’t think that my little rag in northern Michigan invented this practice. Therefore, I suggest you do some calling around to see what you can arrange.

Obviously, newspapers want to sell as much advertising as they can. But, they also have strict deadlines. Sometimes a paper will sell all of its advertising space, while other times, they won’t be as fortunate.

In these instances, when large blocks of ad space are left un-purchased, the ad sales reps become desperate. They try to make as many deals as they can before the paper has to go to print. In these last-minute situations, however, the ad reps are in a bind, because many companies won’t have print-quality ads ready to go. They have to make them from scratch, which can take time, which the ad reps don’t have. It can all get rather stressful.

In order to solve this dilemma, my local paper has struck deals with several local businesses to sell them a full page ad, which normally costs around $800 per run for a drastically reduced rate of $150! This is an amazing savings; however, the ad has to be pre-made and just ready to slip into the print run. No fuss, no muss.

In addition, the business has to commit to a certain number of these ads per year to get the deal. From what I understand, they don’t have to snap up the offer every time it comes around, but there is some sort of expectation that they are regular players in this game.

Of course, this also means that the cheap, full-page ad has to be generic. It can’t advertise anything time or price sensitive. But, it’s great for general awareness. All-in-all, I think it’s a great deal.

Now, how does this benefit non-profits?

Most non-profits I know don’t want to enter into a binding agreement that will cost them $150 several times per year- even if it is a great deal.

Therefore, what I recently saw happen was pretty ingenious. A local non-profit used a connection it had to a company that had one of these full-page deals in place. The non-profit, which was a school, wanted to advertise for next year’s enrollment. So, the school had a graphic artist whip up a full page ad, and the for-profit owner agreed that as soon as he got another chance to take the full page at $150 he would. Then he allowed the school to run their ad at his bargain price. The paper had no problem with this, as the ad was ready to go.

I don’t know if the business owner or the school paid the $150, but for the exposure and attention a full-page gets, it was definitely worth it.

As I said at the beginning, I don’t know if every paper does this kind of a deal, but it would sure be worth a few phone calls to see if your non-profit can take advantage of this pretty amazing savings idea.

Imagine: football players scooping ice cream, cheerleaders doing face painting, basketball players running a free throw competition. Of course, all the players should be dressed in their team’s uniform.

It is amazing how much elementary or middle school kids look up to high-schoolers. And, if the high-schooler is the starting quarterback, captain of the cheer squad, or point guard for the hoops team, you’ve got a bona-fide celebrity on your hands.

You can include this celebrity attendance/participation in all of your marketing materials. It’s sure to draw a crowd.

I would also add that there is an additional revenue opportunity with the athletes there, as well. As long as it is very clear that the revenue generated goes to the school, think about charging for photographs or autographs from the players. This can be done in good fun and as long as the high-schoolers don’t get an inflated ego because of it, I know they’ll have a good time.

Keys to planning the marketing strategy for your book sale:

• Create a webpage specifically for your own sale, preferably host it on your organization’s website.
• Market not just the sale, but also for donations.

• In this case, an inch deep and a mile wide is the best strategy – cover all possible markets, do not rely on one place to market your sale.
• Have a cause! If you a part of the Friends of the Library group, add what the funds will go toward (or have went toward in the past). If you are another nonprofit, what program will these funds help?

Places to market your book sale:

Book Sale Scout (http://www.booksalescout.com) – Book Sale Scout is the net’s only searchable book sale directory. It’s professional service and appearance matches your professional needs perfectly. Basic sale listings are free and, for bigger sales, our paid advertisement options are the cheapest out there.

Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org) – Don’t deny the power of Craigslist to promote ANYTHING.

Freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org) – Freecycle is a great program that is run in a ton of local areas through an email mailing list. Basically you can post things to give away or request free things. The moderation is pretty heavy on these lists, for good reason, but I talked with a few moderators who said a WANTED ad for used books would be permitted. This is a good way to drum up some more books for your book sale. I think book sales underutilize this tool.

Submit a press release (http://www.prweb.com) – PRWeb offers free press releases, which would be perfect for book sales. You’re probably not going to drum up any news stories from their free press releases, but it does help get notification of your sale out on the web.

AdWords (http://adwords.google.com) – Promoting a book sale on Google, using their Cost-per-click system, may not be for every sale, but it definitely would be worthwhile for events with gross sales of $10,000 or more. There are only a few book sales currently promoting on AdWords and they are very large. For most sales, including the large ones, it is most wise to limit your campaign to a local area. Also, you’ll want only to run your campaign on keywords that wouldn’t already bring up your sale webpage or notification.

Post at Upcoming (http://www.upcoming.org) Another free resource for posting and finding events (works best in urban centers)

-Post on the Amazon or other bookseller discussion boards – Booksellers love a good book sale and they are going to be the ones who really drop the money at your sale and, perhaps more importantly, clear out much of your stock.

- Free classifieds – There are a variety of local newspapers who offer free classifieds, if space permits. In Washington, DC, the City Paper does so. A great way to promote book sales in print (off the internet)

- Use organization newsletters and boards – This may be a no-brainer, but I definitely remember stumbling upon a book sale at my own public library, without even knowing it. Don’t forget to get the word out their in your organization’s newsletter, bulletin board, website, wherever!

- Hold your sale during a larger event – This way is the best, because you do not need to do anything extra. If you plan your book sale during a town’s garage sale days or community fair, you automatically get indirect advertising for your sale from this event.

- Get creative! Now, the return on time invested begins to dwindle here, but start Googling things like “post an event” and your city. Or “community calendar” and your city.

About the author: Lucas R Ames is the owner of LRABooks , an independent company providing services to the online bookselling community. Mr. Ames has been in the online bookselling business for 10 years. The company’s latest endeavor, Book Sale Scout, is the net’s first searchable book sale directory. Mr. Ames also is the editor of the Bookselling Online Blog.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com