The Beacon

Today’s topic is related to establishing additional credibility and accountability.

GRANTS:

I haven’t pursued this much lately for the following reasons:

• The circuitous labyrinth that the government has set up for their grant system is daunting. I have a limited amount of patience for clicking here, reading eligibility requirements there and finally finding out that you need to have published two consecutive issues before they’ll look at you.
• There’s Arts, Publishing, Magazine and Small Business grants, so there are actually too many to spend time reading.
• There’s a structure for Provincial vs. Federal and the two rarely meet in the same place.

Anyone who feels the urge to filter for my eligibility is more than welcome, I’ll gladly accept URL’s on this one. It all boils down to time for me. Once I find one that I’m eligible for though, I have to prepare a package for them too.

At my per-sponsor page rates, my time is far better spent speaking with “private money” people right now.

ASSOCIATIONS & MEMBERSHIPS:

• Curriculum Services Canada. They can add push power and links to our site. Average hits: 40 to 50,000 per week. Cost to join: $300/year.
• Advertising Standards Canada. This group is the recipient of complaints and concerns from consumers over the appropriateness of advertising. They have a membership of 160 advertisers and media producers who voluntarily allow the ASC to notify them of concerns, so that they can amend their campaigns. Cost to join: $410/year.
• Media Awareness Network. These folks help make students more media-literate. They focus on Educators and Parents by providing them with tools to do this. Cost $250/year.
• Canadian Marketing Association. They offer market protection and self regulation and have over 800 companies in their fold, including Doubleday and Harper Collins. Cost: $1,170 and up, depending on revenue.

Once we have a revenue stream set up, I will definitely be joining these groups. I may be overlooking one or two in my haste to post this, but this is a pretty good start.

Narrowing the gap and all that…

This entry was posted on Monday, August 21st, 2006 at 4:40 pm and is filed under News and General Information, Finance, Public Relations, Sponsors, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.